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An investigation of the way instructors’ approaches to the curriculum shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels of thinking in the United States

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An investigation of the way instructors’ approaches to the curriculum shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels of thinking in the United States

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Content Running head: TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE WAY INSTRUCTORS’ APPROCHES TO THE
CURRICULUM SHAPE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ OPPORTUNITIES TO ENGAGE
IN HIGHER LEVELS OF THINKING IN THE UNITED STATES
By

Sozan Wali
_______________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERNCALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

Degree Conferral Date: August 2017

TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 2
Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Julie Slayton, for
the continuous support of my EdD study and related research. Her patience, motivation, and
knowledge in the field has facilitated my completion of this sometimes-daunting task. Her
guidance has helped me throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. She has
consistently allowed my dissertation to be my own work, while steering me in the right direction
when needed.
I would also like to thank the rest of my thesis committee: Dr. Briana Hinga and Dr.
Jaimie Hoffman for their insightful comments and encouragement, but also for their thoughtful
interrogation which motivated me to focus my research.
I am grateful for my wonderful parents who encouraged me to pursue a doctorate degree,
and trusted that I could work and study full-time to achieve this goal. I appreciate that they were
patient and supportive and accepted that I could not visit them for three years, so I could finish
my degree on time.
Finally, my sincere appreciation to my amazing husband, who was my main source of
encouragement and support. I am grateful for his discussions with me about my research which
helped me to clear my thoughts when I was confused. Without my husband’s encouragement,
support and reassurance, I would not have gotten through the EdD degree or the dissertation.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 3
Abstract
Content, teaching approaches, and assessment are the main components of a curriculum. To
understand how instructors’ selections of these components direct students to adopt surface
versus deep learning approaches, this study addressed the following research question: “How do
instructors’ approaches to curriculum shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in
higher levels of thinking in the United States?” This multi-case study examined the decisions two
instructors, who taught undergraduate social studies courses, made while selecting the different
components of their curricula and how their choices directed their students to adopt surface or
deep learning approaches. The data for this qualitative study included instructors’ interviews,
classroom observations, student focus groups, and documents and artifacts.
The findings from this study showed the significance of the instructors’ decision-making of the
curricula on how the students approached their learning. The findings revealed that although both
instructors aimed to develop engaging curricula that created learning opportunities for students to
adopt high levels of thinking, one of them was more successful than the other. The instructor
who aligned the choices of the different components of the curriculum with the learning
objectives of the course, and carried out these choices thoroughly, was more successfully able to
direct and guide students to adopt deep levels of thinking and to become independent learners.
However, the instructor who made inadequate choices of the curriculum, or made good choices
but did not carry them out appropriately, confused students and reduced their learning
opportunities. The two instructors reflected on their teaching and how they could improve it.
Keywords: effective teaching, curriculum, content, teaching approaches, assessment,
feedback, deep learning, reflection
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 4
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 2
Abstract 3
Chapter One: Introduction 6
Background of the Problem 7
Statement of the Problem 11
Purpose of the Study 12
Significance of the Study 12
Organization of the Study 13
Chapter Two: Literature Review 15
Core Principles and Factors of Effective Teaching 18
Choices of the Content 22
Theoretical Literature 23
Empirical Studies 27
Choices of Teaching Approaches 35
Theoretical Literature 35
Instructor centered approach 36
Student-centered approach 41
Empirical Studies 45
Choices of Assessment 50
Theoretical Literature 51
Empirical Studies 57
Instructors’ Reflection 62
Conclusion 66
Conceptual Framework 67
Instructors’ Choices That Create Opportunities for Students to
Engage in Higher Levels of Thinking
69
Instructors’ Choices That Lead Students to Adopt Surface Levels of
Learning
72
Chapter Three: Methods 75
Research Design 76
Sample and Population 77
Site Selection 77
Participant Selection 77
Instrumentation and Data Collection 79
Data Collection Procedures 80
Interview 80
Observation 81
Documents 83
Students Focus Group 83
Data Analysis Procedures 84
Limitations and Delimitations 86
Limitations 86
Delimitations 87
Credibility and Trustworthiness 87
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 5
Ethics 89
Conclusion 89
Chapter Four: Findings 91
Description of The University of the South West 92
Case Study #1: Professor Zahier 92
Content 96
Narrowing Down the Content 97
Expertise 98
Selecting Interesting Content 101
Organizing and Structuring the Readings 103
Level of Challenge 106
Teaching Approaches 108
Class Discussion 108
Simulations 111
Assessment 118
Assignments 118
Debates 119
Project 130
Feedback 137
Alignment with The Course Objectives 143
Reflection 147
Case Study#2: Professor Ford 150
Content 153
Teaching Approach 161
Assessment 175
Assignments 176
Feedback 187
Alignment with The Course Objectives 191
Reflection 197
Cross-case analysis 199
Content 200
Teaching Approaches 201
Assessment 202
Alignment The curriculum with The Course Objectives 205
Reflection 206
Chapter Five: Discussion, Implications and Recommendations 207
Summary of Findings 208
Implications and Recommendations 211
Policy and Practice 211
Research 215
References 216
Appendices
Appendix A: Interview Protocol 222
Appendix B: Focus Group Protocol 224

TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 6
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
In 2007, I came to the United States as a Fulbright scholar. While working as a Teaching
Assistant, I was required to take at least one course each semester. I was excited to study at
American universities and I wanted to familiarize myself with higher education in the States. I
thought that the quality of teaching in higher education in America would be much better than it
was in Egypt and the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the courses I took.
Some instructors did not follow the syllabi and I did not know what the courses were about.
Other instructors followed the syllabi, but the workload was heavy and the lectures were long,
boring, and not engaging. The way the courses were taught lead me to be a passive learner and
the assessment tools forced me to memorize rather than apply higher levels of thinking.
After finishing my scholarship, I stayed in the US and became a full-time language
instructor in a higher education setting. I have students who study at different schools including
medical, engineering, and law school, as well as students who study political sciences,
international relations, history, economics and comparative literature among other majors. I
usually ask my students about how they find the other courses, what learning experiences they
have with other faculty, and what pedagogies facilitate or hinder their learning opportunities.
Although my students have different majors, they share the same complaints such as that
instructors neither give them a chance to interact together, nor to create with the new material. In
addition, students express their dissatisfaction that most instructors give long hours of lectures in
which they discuss the content from angles that are not interesting for students who just listen
passively. Students also complain that there is too much reading. Thus, they are overwhelmed
and do not enjoy their studies. Students say that they study just to pass exams and finals while
they do not acquire the knowledge they expect when they enroll in some courses.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 7
The disappointing experience I had when I took undergraduate courses and listening to
the same complaints from students from different schools and majors raised questions in my
mind regarding the quality of teaching at higher educational institutions in the United States.
These questions made me seek out whether there were core principles of good teaching that
could be shared across disciplines. In the remainder of this chapter, I present background of the
problem of the quality of teaching undergrads, the statement of the problem, the purpose of the
study, the significance of the study, and then the organization of the study.
Background of the Problem
Deresiewicz (2014) argues that real education is not offered any longer at elite American
universities. What Deresiewicz means by real education is education that address students as
complete human beings. Deresiewicz claims that instead of elevating students’ humanity by
guiding them to develop the abilities to think clearly, independently and confidently in order to
make autonomous choices, American universities now have nothing but commercial purposes to
serve the market. However, it seems that American universities did not even achieve the goal of
preparing students to meet the needs of the market as Bok (2009), the former president of
Harvard University, laments the fact that students graduate without being able to write
competently, analyze logically or perform adequately to meet the requirements of any given
work or satisfy employers in any field. Thus, business leaders wonder if graduates have acquired
the necessary skills to ensure competencies, and parents question if investing their money in
sending their children to colleges or universities pays off. Thus, Bok (2009) stress that colleges
and universities offer their students far less than they should.
In addition, Roksa, Arum and Cook (2016) argue that the value of higher education is in
question. Although the public acknowledges the importance of higher education, the majority
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 8
doubts if it is worth the money being invested in it. They argue that although it is evident that
college graduates get better job opportunities and higher paying jobs, “questions remain whether
higher education could do more to prepare students to transition into life after college” (p. 15).
The authors also suggest that there are increasing concerns among public and policymakers
regarding accountability in higher education. The concerns about accountability of higher
education are the result of the low and declining rates of graduation, the rising of tuition, and the
indications that students graduate without developing the skills they need in the 21
st
century
including critical thinking, solving problems and group work. The authors claim that most
employers hardly ask students or graduates for their college transcripts as they do not reflect
students’ abilities and skills and also because employers are skeptical about the educational
system in higher education. Skepticism is also the reason that students face obstacles when they
try to transfer credits from one institution to another. Thus, credits and grades from one college
or university sometimes are not accepted in another.
In addition, Roksa, Arum, and Cook (2016) accuse higher education of failing to prepare
students to be active citizens in a democratic society. Thus, colleges and universities need to
develop in students “a passion for learning and discovery and help students develop higher order
skills that will foster long-term professional success” (p. 16). Therefore, higher education
institutions need to develop a more expansive vision of higher education in which they agree on
desirable outcomes that students should achieve by the end of their undergraduate studies. The
authors suggest that there is a long list of concepts and different competencies that students
should be considered as a base that all undergraduate students should achieve to get their
Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BS) degree from any given institution. Thus,
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 9
different tools of assessment should be utilized to ascertain that students achieved these
outcomes.
Shulman (2004) argues that American students in higher education are usually behind
their counterparts from other countries because the quality of teaching provided to K-12 and
higher education students is lower than that provided to students in many other countries.
According to Shulman (2004), rigorous teaching in the American educational system is defined
as teaching that exposes students to mountains of material while only discussing that material at
a superficial level. Shulman (2004) adds that educational systems in other countries focus on the
quality of their courses more than the quantity of ideas presented. In other words, Shulman
(2004) claims that the American educational system supports quantity over quality teaching and
learning.
Ramsden (2003) asserts that there is a need to increase the awareness among higher
education stakeholders that the theoretical understanding of learning and teaching and their
relationship is a fundamental base for quality teaching at university level. Therefore, to improve
the quality of teaching at higher education, there is an urgent need to make connection between
theory and practice. According to Ramsden (2003) this connection should not be just at the level
of teaching courses, but also in evaluating instructors’ performance, managing programs and
departments, and educating staff, faculty and chairs. The connection between theory and
practice, therefore, is required so that every stakeholder in higher education thinks about what
s/he does and why s/he does things in particular way (Ramsden, 2003).
Ramsden (2003) argues that having a common understanding of good teaching helps
programs to evaluate teachers and courses so they can design and plan professional development
opportunities to improve teaching at higher education level. Spotting the points of weaknesses in
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 10
a program would help moving forward in a positive way. Thus, there might be a need to change
the content, the number of required material or reading, or design different kinds of assignments
in a course. Ramsden adds that understanding how teachers’ teaching decisions shape students’
learning experiences helps teachers to adjust their decisions so they can better facilitate students’
learning experience.
In addition, Miller, McNear, and Metz (2013) critique the idea that children are taught to
be active and get engaged in cooperative learning techniques to acquire complex tasks while they
are at elementary schools. Then, the same students are treated as passive learners and empty
vessels to be filled with knowledge while instructors give them traditional didactic lectures
during their undergraduate education experiences. Miller et al. (2013) argue that once students
start their undergraduate education, they are expected to listen passively to unengaging
PowerPoint presentations and lectures while active teaching that respect students’ autonomy is
congruent at other levels of education.
Thus, there are increasing concerns among scholars who are interested in the quality of
teaching in higher education that although undergraduate courses expose students to a huge
amount of information, they do not require students to connect between what they study and real
life. Therefore, students spend 4 years developing approaches to enable them to pass exams and
score high, but they do not gain meaning or make sense of what they study. Thus, Ramsden
(2003) states that:
evidence of inadequate skills at work, incapability to solve problems or collaborate,
lacking self-critical awareness and self-confidence, limited skills in collecting data or
finding sources are indications that the learning levels that students achieve by their
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 11
graduation are inadequate and do not satisfy the resources invested in educating them. (p.
37)
Ramsden (2003), Entwistle (2009), Biggs (2012), and Kiraly (2014) are among scholars
who argue that the way courses are designed at undergraduate level leads students to memorize
and recall some principles they are exposed to rather than develop deep learning approaches that
require high levels of cognitive skills. The scholars also argue that students acquire isolated
pieces of information that neither add to their knowledge, nor enable them to apply what they
study in their real life. The scholars refer the reason of this problem to some common
misconceptions among many university instructors. One of these misconceptions is that teaching
is a one-way process of transmitting knowledge, and that their job is to deliver content to
students who are passive learners (Biggs, 2012).
Statement of the Problem
Although students spend four years studying to get their undergraduate degrees, it is
evident that they graduate with a superficial change in their knowledge. Thus, students ingest a
lot of information in superficial ways and do not engage in meaningful learning that enables
them to be powerful thinkers positioned to carry over the knowledge and skills from college or
university into their post college or university experience (Ramsden, 2003; Shulman, 2004).
Thus, undergraduate students usually adopt learning approaches that enable them to meet their
courses requirements and their instructors’ expectations. Research on students’ learning at the
undergraduate level shows that there is an undeniable relationship between the learning
approaches students adopt and their instructors’ choices of the curriculum (Ramsden, 2003;
Shulman, 2004). The choices of the curriculum include selecting the material, the teaching
approach, and the assessment tools. Although most of the research focuses on how each of these
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 12
three components of the curriculum influences students’ learning, there is a need for more
research that examines how these three components work together to guide students and
facilitate their process of acquiring new knowledge.
Purpose of the Study
Although there are many studies in the United Kingdom and Australia about how each of
the three components of the curriculum influences the approaches students adopt to learn, there
are few studies about this topic in the United States (Biggs, 2003). In addition, the limitation in
almost all the research conducted about this topic is that the studies did not investigate the three
components of the curriculum together at the same time. Hence, this study explored the influence
of the three components of the curriculum on students’ learning concordantly. Thus, this study
answered the following research question: How do instructors’ approaches to curriculum shape
undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels of thinking in the United
States?”
Significance of the Study
This study was important because there was an increasing need to conduct research about
the quality of teaching in higher education and how it affected students’ learning experience
(Ramsden, 2003). The rareness of studies about this particular topic in the United States made
this study a must and a start for more research in this area. In addition, most of the research
conducted about this topic in the United Kingdom and Australia discussed how students
perceived teachers’ choices of the curriculum, however this study offered instructors the
opportunity to discuss the factors that guided the decisions they made while choosing the
material, the teaching approach and the assessment tools. This study offered instructors the
chance to talk about their students’ learning outcomes and if the outcomes met their
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 13
expectations. At the same time, the study provided students the chance to express how the
curriculum facilitated or hindered their learning experience.
In addition, the most common limitation in studies conducted about this topic was that
each study focused on either instructors’ choices of the material and workload, or the teaching
approach, or choices of the assessment tools. Almost all the empirical studies I consulted in the
literature review section recommended conducting studies that investigate the influence of the
three components of the curriculum on students’ learning concordantly. Therefore, this study
contributed to the literature bringing the three components together, examining how they related
to each other and exploring how they shaped students’ learning approaches.
In this study, I investigated the approaches instructors took to selecting their curriculum
and how they aligned their choices of the curriculum with the outcomes they expected their
students to achieve by the end of the course. I also explored how they applied their approaches
and carried out their decisions in their classrooms. At the same time, I sought to understand
students’ experiences with respect to the choices made by their instructors and their perceptions
about the way their instructors’ choices of the curriculum facilitated their learning. As I teach
undergraduate courses, this study enhanced my teaching practices and enlightened me on how
my choices of the curriculum might create learning opportunities for students to adopt high
levels of thinking or create obstacles that directed students to learn on a surface level.
Organization of the Study
This dissertation consisted of five chapters. The first chapter included an introduction and
background of the problem. It presented the context of the quality of teaching at the
undergraduate level and the purpose of the study was to examine how instructors’ choices of the
curriculum shaped students’ learning approaches. The first chapter also discussed the
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 14
significance of the study and the reasons that it was going to discuss instructor’s choices of the
material, teaching approach, assessment tools at the same time.
Chapter two started by presenting the literature written about the quality of teaching at
undergraduate level and preceded to introduce the literature written about instructor’s choices of
the material and workload, teaching approach, and then the choices of the assessment tools. The
literature section was followed by the narrative and graphic of the conceptual framework, which
I used to inform the process of collecting data.
Chapter three focused on the research methods I employed to collect and analyze data.
Therefore, the chapter provided information about the reasons I decided to conduct a qualitative
rather than a quantitative research. Then, the chapter provided details about the research design,
sample and population, data collection instruments and procedures, data analysis procedures,
limitations and delimitations, credibility and trustworthiness, and ethics.
In chapter four, I analyzed the data I collected about each of the two instructors
separately. Then, I presented a cross-case analysis in which I discussed the similarities and the
differences between the two cases.
In chapter five, I summarized the findings and then discussed the implications and the
recommendations
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 15
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
This literature review explores literature that has addressed the impact of instructors’
curriculum choices on the way undergraduate students approach their learning. This literature
review helped me as I sought to answer the following research question: “How do instructors’
approaches to curricula shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels of
thinking in the United States?”
In order to answer my research question, I first needed to define what I mean by the word
“curriculum.” Kember (2004) rejects the common misconception that the terms “syllabus” and
“course outline” can be used as synonyms for the word “curriculum” in higher education.
Kember claims that instructors reduce the meaning of the word “curriculum” to a list of the main
topics to be covered in the course, arguing that “academics envisage their courses in terms of
lists of content which they intend to deliver in their lectures” (p. 181). Tyler (2013) also critiques
this definition, stressing that curricula should reflect the educational objectives of any given
course. According to Tyler, “these educational objectives become the criteria by which materials
are selected, content is outlined, instructional procedures are developed, and tests and
examinations are prepared” (p. 3). Schiro (2013) agrees with Kember and Tyler that the word
“curriculum” should not be reduced to the list of topics that will be lectured in class, as he argues
that the word “curriculum” refers to: the knowledge that should be taught, how instructors should
instruct, and how students should be assessed. For the purposes of my study, I adopted this
definition.
Thus, to answer my research question, I draw on three bodies of literature: the first
focuses on the criteria for selecting classroom material; the second relates to the teaching
approaches that instructors choose to adopt in class; and the third concerns the choice of
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 16
assessment types and tools. In order to narrow down the literature written in these three areas, I
focus on literature that investigates how these three curriculum choices have led students to
adopt what Biggs (2003), Entwistle (2009), and Ramsden (2003) define as deep versus surface
learning approaches. Although there is a huge body of literature written about these two learning
approaches, I touch only briefly on this literature as my focus is not on students’ learning
approaches per se, but rather on the curriculum choices made by instructors that lead students to
adopt either one of the two learning approaches. Thus, I found it important to define these two
learning approaches as I referred to them continuously throughout the study.
Biggs (2003), Entwistle (2003), and Ramsden (2003), among other scholars, define the
deep learning approach as students’ deep level of engagement with the learning tasks so they
make sense of it. Deep engagement helps students to expand and supplement their existing
structure of knowledge. Students who adopt this learning approach try to find a relationship
between the different components of the content and create new maps of knowledge.
Furthermore, they consider assignments as a chance to reinforce what they have learned. In this
deep learning approach, students’ learning experience is both internal and personal.
In contrast, Biggs (2003), Entwistle (2003), and Ramsden (2003) argue that students
adopt the surface learning approach when they get separate facts. Isolated pieces of knowledge
can easily be forgotten because they are not part of a structure. Consequently, students who
adopt this approach consider each assignment as an end in itself not a means to an end.
Therefore, students’ learning experience is distorted, external and shallow.
I chose to study the several teaching and learning factors I have mentioned together,
because, according to Ramsden (1987), educational research must not deal with the teaching and
learning processes separately. For Ramsden (1987), students’ experiences, perceptions, learning
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 17
skills and approaches in addition to instructors’ choices of the content, workload, instruction and
assessment are all factors in the educational setting. These factors are not discrete items but
rather integrated and orchestrated to support each other. Thus, my study needed to address the
relations between all of these factors. In other words, as teaching and learning are two sides of a
coin, there is a need to study them together. Therefore, I brought the literature written about
specific aspects of teaching and their impact on students’ learning experience to bear on this
study.
It is important to mention here that my study did not focus on teaching a particular
discipline or field of study. Although there is variation in the way effective learning and teaching
influence each other in different subject areas, Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, and Norman
(2010), Biggs (2003, 2012), D’Andrea and Gosling (2005), Entwistle (2009, 2012), Doyle
(2011), Kiraly (2014), Ramsden (2003), Shulman (2004), Schiro (2013) and Tyler (2013) argue
that there are core principles, ways of thinking, and activities that are common to all successful
educational experiences in higher education. However, as described earlier, I limited my study to
teaching and learning at the undergraduate level.
In the following pages, I present the theoretical literature written about the core principles
and factors of effective teaching that instructors should be aware of in order to make good
choices regarding the curriculum. The core principles and factors of effective teaching will be
followed by three sections: The first concerns choices of the material, the second is about
choosing teaching approaches and the third section discusses assessment. I conclude this chapter
with my conceptual framework. My conceptual framework guided the design of my study and
my approach to data collection and analysis.

TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 18
Core Principles and Factors of Effective Teaching
In the following pages, I will present the literature written by Ramsden, Shulman and
Biggs about the core principles and factors of effective teaching. I will then present the
theoretical and empirical research written about how instructors’ choices regarding these three
components of the curriculum shape students’ learning experiences at the undergraduate level.
Ramsden (2003) argues that being clear in stating the course objectives helps instructors
to think critically and deliberately about the content to be covered, to design activities to
maximize the benefit of the material in the most efficient way, and to assess students in a way
that demonstrates if the course objectives have been achieved. To be able to state and accomplish
course objectives, furthermore, instructors should be aware of core principles and factors that
affect and shape their practice.
Ramsden (2003) offers six principles that lead to effective teaching. First, in order for
students to enjoy learning, instructors need to be able to make the material of any given subject
genuinely interesting. Explaining why a particular method or fact has to be learned increases
students’ enthusiasm and engagement. Thus, one of the instructor’s jobs is to make the challenge
interesting rather than dull by clarifying for students what must be learned in order to achieve
understanding and what can be left out for the time being. The second principle of effective
teaching, according to Ramsden (2003), is helping students to feel that a subject can be mastered
instead of focusing on their ignorance about the subject matter. Highlighting what students
already know and connecting it to the new material encourages students to try things out for
themselves instead of feeling disconnected from material that can be best described as a
meaningless workload. The third principle focuses on questioning the students in a way that
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 19
demands evidence of understanding, using techniques for discovering what students have
learned, and avoiding requiring students to rote-learn or merely to reproduce detail.
The fourth principle stresses the importance of trusting students’ capabilities and setting
high bars for academic expectations, as studies prove there is an association between high
expectations and high levels of student performance. Ramsden’s (2003) fifth principle of
effective teaching is recognizing that each student will learn best in his or her own way. Thus,
students need to get the chance to learn independently and get the help they need from the
instructor rather than the instructor forcing their understanding on students. High quality
teaching requires a recognition that students must be engaged with the content in a way that is
likely to enable them to practice the art of inquiry. Trying to practice inquiry is an effective way
to learn how to cooperate, search, negotiate knowledge, and to use imagination. However, in
order for students to be able to accomplish these missions, instructors should be cautious
regarding the amount of the material they assign for the course and what they want students to
get out of the content.
The sixth principle is monitoring and improving the effectiveness of the curriculum, how
it is taught and how students are assessed. This can be done by constantly trying to find out what
the effects of instruction and workload are on learning, and modifying them in light of the
evidence collected. Collecting evidence requires finding out from students, colleagues, research
and any other sources about the difficulties students experience in learning the subject matter as
well as what fosters their knowledge. Consulting different stakeholders helps instructors to
determine the right objectives as well as the right workload. Thus, comparing what students
know before starting the course and what they achieve by studying it, and analyzing the gap
between these two levels, is imperative to improve teaching.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 20
Shulman (2004), meanwhile, proposes that effective teaching takes place when an
instructor masters both the content and its pedagogy. Thus, a successful instructor is “Someone
who really understands the subject deeply and understands how exquisitely complex it is to make
your knowledge accessible to the knowing processes of those who do not yet understand”
(Shulman, 2004, p. 133). Done well, effective teaching leads to a transformation in the students’
learning.
Shulman (2004) argues that for effective teaching to happen, instructors are required to
comprehend and interact with several categories of knowledge. The first category includes the
subject matter and the content they teach. Thus, instructors must understand what they teach in
several ways and connect it to its discipline from different angles. The second category includes
a strong grounding in general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogy-related content, and curriculum
knowledge. The third category is knowledge of their students and their characteristics, and
knowledge of educational purposes, values and philosophies. Interacting with all these different
levels of knowledge can be translated into effective teaching when instructors are ready to
facilitate students’ individual processes of knowledge acquisition. Thus, effective teaching leads
students to exert vigorous mental effort in order to interact with the new material in the same
way that instructors interact with the different categories of knowledge.
Shulman (2004) illustrates that comprehension of, and interaction with, these different
levels of knowledge occurs across several steps that the instructor must go through to achieve
effective teaching. Some of the steps take place before class, some steps are in class and others
happen after teaching. The first step is preparation, in which the instructor interprets the content
in his/her own way, then segments and restructures the content in a way that makes sense to
him/her so s/he can walk students through the new content. The second step is representation, in
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 21
which instructors map out the main ideas and decide what tools, examples, metaphors and
illustrations can help to build a bridge between what students already know and the new material.
The third step is when the instructor decides what teaching approach to adopt and what activities
to design. The activities may vary from a controlled lecture, to collaborative or discovery
learning, Socratic teaching, projects or field trips. The fourth step is to adapt the content,
presentation and teaching approach to fit students’ needs, backgrounds and characteristics.
While the first four steps take place before class, the fifth and sixth steps are in-class. The
fifth step is instruction and it refers to how successfully instructors get students to interact with
the material through individual, pair and group work that facilitates discussions, explanation and
negotiation. This interaction should lead to a change in the students’ concepts and in the way
they see and interact with the world. The sixth step is evaluation, which starts in-class and
continues after. Evaluating students in class means checking their understanding and interaction
with the new material, which requires the instructors to have a deep understanding of the
material and the process of learning. Evaluating students through exams, projects, and finals also
reflects how students have grasped the subject matter. The seventh and last step is the reflection
that instructors perform when they look back at the teaching and learning that has occurred, and
consider what happened in class so as to avoid what went wrong and enhance what worked well.
For Biggs (2012), effective teaching specifies what students will be able to do after
studying each topic. Effective teaching also means that the instructor has a plan for how to get
students interested and engaged so that they are well-equipped to do what they are supposed to
do after studying each topic. Then, instructors design assignments that reflect whether students
have achieved the outcomes successfully and also reflect where they are facing difficulty in
achieving the outcomes. Biggs argues that engaging students is the cornerstone to the student
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 22
learning process as students need to play an active part in constructing their knowledge. The
critical questions instructors should ask, in order for effective teaching to happen, is what
activities instructors should create so students meet the intended outcomes.
Biggs (2011) adds that, for instructors to teach effectively, they should be clear if they
expect their students to achieve declarative, functional or conditional knowledge. By “declarative
knowledge,” Biggs means knowledge about a discipline that enforces surface knowledge, while
“functional knowledge” refers to knowledge that can inform decision-making and “conditional
knowledge” is related to knowing when, where and why to apply knowledge. Biggs argues that
undergraduate courses should be designed to get students to achieve functional and conditional
knowledge so they achieve a deep knowledge that enables them to take the responsibilities of
making decisions, solving problems and knowing why, how and when to apply knowledge by
graduation.
As I will explain in the next three sections, the core principles and factors of effective
teaching discussed above are essential for an instructor to make good choices surrounding the
curriculum. In other words, it is mainly instructors’ conscious choices of how to design a course,
present it, how they construct students’ knowledge, and what they expect students to achieve by
the end of the course that may make or break students’ learning experience at the undergraduate
level.
Choices in Content
In this section, I will first present the theoretical literature I have found useful in thinking
about how instructors’ choices relating to material and workload influence students’ learning
approaches. The theoretical literature will be followed by four empirical research studies
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 23
whereby instructors’ choices of classroom material have led students to adopt one learning
approach over another.
Theoretical Literature
While Biggs (2003), Ramsden (2003), and Shulman (2004) do not write about
“meaningful teaching” as an independent concept, it emerges within their writings about
effective teaching. Thus, in the following pages, I present what is written about meaningful
teaching and introduce it as a new concept. In addition, while these theorists touch on how
workload affects meaningful teaching, the empirical studies I present stress the strong
relationship between a light workload and meaningful teaching, and therefore, I cannot discuss
one without mentioning the other. Furthermore, upon examining the literature, a similar
relationship emerged between a heavy workload and “content-teaching,” which I will elaborate
on in relation to meaningful teaching in the following paragraphs.
By “meaningful teaching,” Ramsden (2003) is referring to instructors’ ability to narrow
down the material covered as they aim to get students to understand the material appropriately.
Ramsden asserts that one of the common mistakes made in teaching in higher education is
assigning too much content. A thoughtful selection of the readings that students need to study in
order to understand the new content gives students enough time to think about, integrate and
interpret the meaning behind the tasks. It allows students to make sense of the tasks and connect
the new material to their previous knowledge. However, instructors who are interested in
traditional content-teaching consider students as consumers of fixed knowledge; knowledge that
can be transmitted to students who remain at the receiving end of the teaching process. Thus,
Ramsden (2003) claims that, while meaningful teaching helps students to acquire quality of
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 24
knowledge and to build interest in their learning, content-teaching causes students to struggle to
acquire quantities of information that they cannot make sense of.
Ramsden (2003) argues that “busy work is bad for hard work and bad news for the
quality of education” (P. 132), explaining that instructors who are interested in covering the
ground are interested in offering a huge number of topics rather than in what students can do
with the new content. The breadth of coverage places a heavy workload on both students and
instructors. Trying to cover a huge amount of content does not give students or instructors the
opportunity to integrate or connect the new material to what has been studied before. It prevents
students from spending time and exerting effort to make meaning from the new material. In
addition, offering a huge amount of content prevents instructors from conducting in-depth
discussion or designing hands-on activities. This lack of applicability and integration, tackling a
mountain of information with a continuing pressure to get through it, conveys a clear message to
students that they should adopt a learning strategy that meets the course workload and pleases
instructors rather than studying the content in-depth in order to make sense of it.
Ramsden (2003) adds that while exposing students to a huge amount of material,
instructors create an obstacle that hinders students from establishing a well-founded base of
knowledge. Ramsden stresses that covering the ground, in terms of content-selection, does not
ensure that students will actually engage with the content covered. Overwhelming students with
an excessive workload forces many students to adopt minimizing strategies and to develop
confused interpretations that may push students away from studying the subject matter. Students
keep memorizing scattered pieces of information and develop a distorted map of concepts which
they forget once they finish the course. Being overwhelmed by the quantity of information while
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 25
having no time to make sense of it leads to frustration and a lack of interest. Thus, students
develop a shaky foundation that they cannot build on in the future.
Another problem that reduces the quality of teaching and intensifies the workload,
Ramsden argues, is assigning unnecessary material to fill in contact hours. This problem reduces
students’ interest in the subject matter. Ramsden claims a common problem in undergraduate
education is that instructors fill in contact hours by offering new material, rather than spending
time on and giving special attention to the important ideas that students usually find difficult to
grasp. Instead of an unnecessary workload, it is more efficient to create opportunities for students
to practice, discuss and understand the essence of the curriculum. Assigning an unnecessary or
meaningless workload to cover meeting times decreases students’ interest and increases their
stress, frustration and feeling of pressure.
Thus, while selecting the content to be covered in a course, Ramsden stresses that the
instructor should be clear on what changes in understanding they expect the students to undergo.
If the instructor does not have clear idea of what he/she is planning to change in students’
thinking, knowledge and concepts, effective teaching will not happen. Clearly stating the
outcomes and what students will be able to do by the end of the course guides instructors in
selecting the material. Ramsden further notes, however, that defining what the instructor or
course designer wants students to be able to do is different from listing the topics that will be
covered in the course. Thus, good teaching at undergraduate level induces change not only in
students’ knowledge but also in the way students interact with the new material.
For Ramsden, the instructors’ responsibility is not to impose material on students but
rather to select material that allows students to analyze, imagine, create, design, and come up
with new maps of knowledge. On the contrary, a breakneck workload that covers the ground in
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 26
the absence of a clear structure intensifies students’ confusion and reduces their excitement.
Overwhelming students with a heavy workload prevents students from thinking critically and
comprehending principles and theories. Thus, instructors’ main challenge while designing a
course is how to give students both the time and the capacity to allow their intellect to be
stretched to its utmost while studying the material they need to tackle to understand the subject
matter. Therefore, according to Ramsden (2003), the main challenge that instructors face in order
to achieve meaningful teaching is to keep the balance between the amount of new material they
want students to learn and the amount of new material students can study in depth without
feeling overwhelmed.
Meaningful teaching in any subject area, according to Ramsden (2003), requires
instructors to guide students so that they are accustomed to the freedom of higher education.
Ramsden states that it is evident that students struggle to discover what instructors want them to
learn. In addition, students may get lost in the transition between their previous learning
experiences and the work they are required to do at university. Therefore, meaningful teaching
requires instructors to provide students with the right amount of material and be vocal about
what skills students will be able to acquire by the end of the course rather than exposing students
to long lists of material and letting them struggle to figure out what they really need to study.
Biggs (2012) argues that a major problem in teaching university courses is that courses
are centered on content topics to be taught rather than how, why and when this content is to be
taught. Biggs also notes a gap between the knowledge that students acquire in their
undergraduate courses and what they need in the real world after graduation. While courses are
designed to expose students to declarative knowledge and overwhelming workload, the real
world requires students to demonstrate a functional knowledge which they are able to apply
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 27
while solving problems. When instructors fail to connect the course content and workload with
real life situations, students feel frustrated and lose interest in the subject area.
Shulman (2004) similarly argues that teaching more means teaching superficially,
drawing on the difference between students’ achievement in the US and the achievement of
students from other countries as evidence. Low performance among American students, he
claims, can be explained by the teaching strategies adopted in American education: while the
American system defines rigorous education “as teaching students more, however superficial”
(p. 41), other countries focus on a smaller workload and give students more opportunities to
discuss, elaborate, evaluate and construct deep learning.
According to Shulman (2004), outstanding pedagogy recognizes that instructors cannot
teach everything. Therefore, they should understand the discipline and the subject matter deeply
and select the material that best serves their outcomes. He further contends that covering the
ground implies that students are ignorant and that the instructors’ job is to fill the students’
empty heads with an enormous amount of information, whereas good teaching refreshes what
students already know and gives them opportunities to connect and build on this knowledge.
Empirical Studies
In this section, I examine empirical studies that demonstrate the impact of content-
teaching and workload on students’ learning approaches. The empirical studies in this review
show that it is difficult to investigate one factor that may influence students’ learning experience
at higher education without touching on some other factors such as teaching approaches,
assessment among other factors. I selected the next four empirical studies because, although they
study how the choices of class material shape students’ learning, they also touch on how the
instructors’ choices in terms of their teaching approach and assessment influence students’
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 28
learning experience. Thus, the four studies have provided me with insights that aid me in
answering my research question on how instructors’ approaches to the curriculum shape
students’ engagement in higher levels of thinking.
The first is a research study conducted by Kember (2004), in which the sample consisted
of 17 classes from different disciplines across seven universities in Hong Kong. Each class
consisted of between 25 and 50 students. For larger classes, subunits such as tutorial groups were
selected. Kember’s research tried to answer two questions: the first is what influences students’
perceptions of workload? The second is what effect do perceptions of workload have on learning
approaches and outcomes? To answer these questions, students were asked to complete a
detailed diary for one week. For each day, there were two facing pages in the diary. One page
had a fill-in-the-box grid for quantitative data. The facing page had space for written comments,
which was mainly used for clarification of the activity undertaken. A smaller sample of five
students in each of the selected classes was interviewed to collect more in-depth and meaningful
data.
Kember (2004) found that workload was not interpreted by either class hours or study
time, but by students’ feelings of being tired and overwhelmed. Thus, Kember argues that there
must be a limit to how much work students can push themselves, or be pushed, to do without
starting to feel overloaded, pressured, stressed and resorting to study on a superficial level.
Kember also found that instructors’ inadequate selection of the teaching approach, the
assessment tool and the lack of interaction between instructors and students had resulted in
students losing interest in the subject matter.
Regarding content and difficulty, Kember (2004) found that although first-year students
did not study complex concepts, they struggled with the broad-based content. Although first-year
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 29
instructors intended to design courses with an interesting breadth of topics, first-year students
encountered a heavy workload because it was difficult for them to cope with the multiple topics
and requirements. This finding highlights the importance of obtaining feedback from students
and consulting with other instructors in order to improve courses; otherwise what instructors
intend will not necessarily be what students perceive. In addition, it was shown that first-year
students needed time to adjust their learning process in the transition between their previous
studying experience and the freedom they experience in undergraduate studies.
The study also found that using frequent quizzes and tests that were based largely on
measuring students’ ability to recall forced students to adopt rote learning. This type of
assessment forced students to develop a declarative knowledge of isolated pieces of content
rather than applicable knowledge. As they were largely assessed on recalling information,
students developed a surface learning strategy and complained about the heavy workload.
Working individually to memorize quantities of information prevented students from working
together, which made the courses boring and the learning environment unwelcoming for
students.
Although the study found a reciprocal relationship between the surface learning approach
and a high workload, there was a less evident relationship between the deep learning approach
and perceived workload. Some students who were assessed by projects developed a deep
approach and committed themselves to many hours of study without complaining of excessive
workload. Those students’ deep learning and their workload perceptions were influenced by
good course design and teaching. However, statistically speaking, this co-dependence had no
significant correlation.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 30
In Finland, Postareff, Parpala and Lindblom-Ylanne’s mixed-method study, published in
2015 focused more specifically on the deep learning approach. The scholars focused on the deep
approach by interviewing 12 students selected on the basis of their scores on the deep approach
scale in the Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory (ALSI; Entwistle and McCune
2004). The students were selected from four Bachelor-level courses representing different
disciplines: bioscience, educational sciences, mathematics and theology; and from each
discipline, an obligatory course was selected. All the courses were of a lecture format and
included both lectures and activating assignments for the students. The first aim of this research
was to identify factors that could explain any increase, decrease or stability in the students’ deep
learning approach by comparing those students who showed similar changes in their learning
approach. The second aim of the study was to analyze how students representing different
changes in their deep approaches experienced the same teaching-learning environment.
The interviews took place approximately 1 to 4 weeks after the final examinations and
each interview lasted from 30 to 60 minutes and was transcribed verbatim.
The researchers found that different teaching approaches or the quality of teaching did
not provide clear explanations for the changes in deep approach. This was confirmed when
students from the same course described their experiences of the teaching-learning environment
in a very similar manner, but showed changes in different directions in their deep approach of
learning. However, the factors related to the teaching-learning environment that seemed to
explain changes in the students’ learning were the challenge that the course presented, designing
the course in a way that encourage students to invest time and effort, the type of goals set for the
course, as well as the level of interest. Insufficient challenge such as a lack of challenges and
very easy content or, on the other hand, too many challenges seemed to contribute to the
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 31
decrease in students’ deep approach during the course as well. Investing time and effort in
studying the course content was another important factor explaining the increase in students’
deep approach. Thus, organizing learning material in one’s own way enables students to build
connections between prior and new knowledge, which in turn affects their academic
performance. At the same time, being overwhelmed and having little time to study as well as a
lack of interest seemed to explain any decrease in the students’ deep approach.
The researchers found that many students in this study described their experiences of the
course and the teaching positively. The findings showed that students who were satisfied with a
course’s quality and found it interesting were more likely to employ a deep approach than
students who were less satisfied. The researchers concluded that, even though perceptions of the
environment could be positive, the deep approach might decrease because of individual factors,
although when the learning environments were extremely low or high quality their effects on the
changes in the deep approach were stronger. However, using students’ own perceptions as data
did not necessarily fully reveal how the learning environment affects their studying, which could
be considered as a limitation of this study.
In 2011, Kyndt, Dochy, Struyven and Cascaller conducted published a mixed-method
study conducted in order to investigate the influence of workload perception and task complexity
on students’ approaches to learning. By workload, the researchers referred to the pressure, stress
or frustration that were placed upon students because of the demands of the syllabus and the
assessment tasks. The researchers gave an example of task complexity in higher education by
asking students to apply a theoretical model in practice. This task was complex because theories
are rarely found as they are in practice. The researchers designed their study to answer the
following research questions:
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 32
1- What is the relationship between perceived workload and the students’ approaches to
learning?
2- What is the relationship between perceived task complexity and students’ approaches
of learning?
A representative proportional sample of 128 students participated in this study. They
were in the second year of a Bachelor program in educational sciences. The study was conducted
within the setting of a university course, “Theory and Practice of Group Work.” After five
lectures of theory, students were given four assignments with various workloads and task
complexity. After completing the four tasks, students were asked to order the tasks from high to
low twice. Students were asked first to order assignments according to workload, such as the
amount of reading and hours invested. This was the quantitative aspect of the study as it asked
about numbers. Second, students were asked to order the tasks according their complexity.
Correlations were calculated between students’ approaches of learning and three factors of
course complexity: familiarity, solutions and lack of information. Then, individual and focus
group interviews were conducted.
The results related to the first research question showed that a perceived workload was
not usually a predicator of deep learning, while it is significantly related to surface learning.
However, the researchers found two workload-related factors that seem to influence students’
learning approaches. The first was assigning many readings, the second was the hours of work
and the pressure of time. These two elements on the quantitative side of workload seemed to
force students to adopt a surface learning approach. On the qualitative side, the results showed
that texts that were difficult, broad or not discussed in class hindered the students’ learning
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 33
process. The researchers found a positive relationship between a quality workload and deep
learning.
The results related to the second research question in this study, which was about the
relationship between workload complexity and students’ learning, show that there was a
significant negative relationship between a deep approach to learning and a lack of information.
Thus, the less information students received or had access to, the more likely they were to adopt
a surface approach. It was also found that familiarity was positively related with deep learning
when the task was heavy in load and high in complexity, while familiarity was not an important
factor when the tasks were low in load and complexity. Students explained that they considered a
task complex when they were asked to link theory and practice, when there was insecurity
concerning the answers and when they were concerned about their grade. Students revealed that
when they did not get enough information, they felt insecure about instructors’ expectations.
Finally, Chigerwa, Ilkiw and Boudreaux (2011) conducted a study at the University of
California-Davis to evaluate veterinary students’ learning approaches across the entire school at
different stages in the curriculum, as well as the factors within the curriculum that may influence
these approaches. The study was conducted to assist in designing new curricula and improving
existing ones. A version of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST)
survey was designed for this study. A General Curriculum Questions section was added to the
survey to collect data on students’ perceptions of the curriculum offered at the school at the time
that this study was conducted. In addition to the quantitative questions, the survey had open-
ended questions to collect qualitative data. The survey was sent to students using a website
application. 504 students were enrolled at the Veterinary School when this study was
administrated. 442 students began the survey and 405 students completed it.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 34
The results showed that the deep learning approach was positively related to the
responses of students who stated that they prefer instructors who encouraged them to think for
themselves and demonstrated to them how they think. Students expressed that they preferred
exams that allowed them to show that they had thought about the course material. In addition,
students said that they preferred courses that encouraged them to read about the subject a lot for
themselves and not for the exam. They preferred the content that challenged them and provided
explanations that went beyond lectures. At the same time, students who adopted the surface
learning approach wrote that they preferred instructors who told them exactly what to write down
in their notes. This group of students stated that they preferred exams or tests that asked them to
reproduce the material provided in lecture notes. At the same time, they expressed that the
workload was too high, so they made more use of test files when studying for an exam than
learning the material to understand the subject matter.
The results showed that several instructors used the same exams every year. Students
who have the test files adopted the surface learning approach as they searched right answers
although they did not necessarily understand them. Students who chose not to follow this
strategy were usually worried about their performance in exams and frustrated by this
educational experience. Students also commented that tests required too much memorization, too
much testing and that there was no time to study so they opted to use test files and adopted the
surface learning approach.
The study found that although students in veterinary medical school were eager and
interested in deep learning, they applied the surface approach to meet the increased workload as
they mentioned that they struggled with content overload, too much detail, too much
memorization, and teaching to the test. As students focused in their study on what was going to
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 35
be assessed, they adopted the surface approach. The researchers found that students ended up just
studying what was enough to pass exams, as they did not have time to study in depth. The file
exams encouraged the bad learning habits that students had developed.
In conclusion, the literature I have discussed above regarding instructors’ choices of
content shows how instructors’ choices of class material and the workload of a course are of
significant importance to what students will be able to achieve by the end of the course.
Selecting content that could make a change in how students think and act without overwhelming
them with unnecessary work might get students interested in the course and the discipline.
However, selecting material that covers the ground and overwhelms students without improving
their knowledge and skills might shut students down so they lose their interest in the course and
in the discipline as well. At the same time, it is important to note that making good choices with
regards to content cannot guarantee the students a good learning experience if instructors do not
make good choices in terms of their teaching approaches and assessment tools, as I will discuss
in the following sections.
Choices of Teaching Approaches
In this section, I will first present theoretical literature about the instructor-centered
approach and lectures as example of this approach, then I will present the theoretical literature I
have consulted about a student-centered approach. The theoretical literature is followed by
empirical research into how instructors’ choices of teaching approach influence the way students
approach their learning at undergraduate level.
Theoretical Literature
D’Andrea and Gosling (2005) argue that there are challenges that face traditional
concepts of knowledge transmission adopted at teaching at university level. The first challenge is
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 36
that higher education curricula cannot be a predetermined set of skills and literature, but rather a
negotiation of knowledge that enables students to critique different perspectives. The new
theories of teaching developed by Martin and Ramsden (1993) constitute another challenge to
traditional teaching. In these theories, Martin and Ramsden argue that teaching at higher
education requires instructors to move from an understanding of themselves and the content to an
understanding of the pedagogy related to the content as well as students’ understanding of the
content. Thus, there is a need to shift teaching at university level from the traditional instructor-
centered approach to student-centered approaches.
Biggs (2003) asserts that the instructor-centered approach and the student-centered
approach are associated with different aspects of learning such as students’ dependency or
independency from the instructor, transmitting versus transforming knowledge, rote learning
versus meaningful learning, and surface versus deep learning. Biggs adds that instructors’
choices regarding not only their teaching approach but also the way in which the approach is
used may help or hinder students’ learning. Thus, the adoption and application of a teaching
approach should be adjusted to the content, course outcomes, and students’ needs.
The instructor-centered approach. Kiraly (2003) describes instructor-centered classes
as a reflection of the transmission concept of learning. This concept tends to view knowledge as
a ‘static entity’ that the instructor, who is the only source of knowledge, can transmit to learners,
who in turn should passively absorb it. In this process of transmitting knowledge, the instructor’s
job is to provide input and feedback to fill the gaps in students’ knowledge, and to minimize the
gap between his/her model knowledge and the students’. Students subsequently memorize
isolated pieces of information to reproduce them in exams and quizzes. Kiraly (2003) argues that
in this instructor-centered class:
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 37
…[t]he learner comes to the classroom as a passive listener, a consumer of
knowledge. And if knowledge can be packaged for distribution, then it can be
conveniently dissected into digestible chunks for transmission...As the
instructor is considered the fountain of knowledge, then naturally it is the
instructor who should have control of the knowledge distribution process in
the classroom. (p. 22)
Kiraly (2014) writes that the process of transmitting knowledge takes place in lectures in 50- or
90-minute sessions each week. The lecturer reads or speaks about the points he/she finds
interesting about a topic. Usually, the topics of the lectures are mentioned in the syllabus, but
students are not required to do research or prepare for discussion. In lectures, students listen
passively and take notes. If there is enough time at the end of the lecture, students may ask
questions.
For Kiraly (2014), there is no significant difference between lectures and seminars, as in
seminars the instructor reads or talks about a topic for several introductory lectures. Then, he/she
passes it to students who individually prepare independent research work and each student
presents his/her research orally in front of the instructor and classmates. Imitating the instructor,
each student talks or reads solely about a topic. The instructor has full control over the class and
works to fill in the gaps in the presenter’s knowledge. The rest of the students listen passively
most of the time and there might be a chance to ask questions.
Entwistle (2009) agrees with Kiraly that neither lectures nor seminars, in which the
instructor-centered approach is adopted, can help students to construct their knowledge.
Entwistle (2009) explains that the relationship between teaching and learning is neither a
straightforward nor a linear one. A university instructor who is a fountain of knowledge that
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 38
students will acquire by passively listening to the instructor was the notion that haunted higher
education for decades. Because of this notion, the techniques of presenting new material are
overemphasized. Instructors give long lectures, use colorful PowerPoint presentations and
handouts to distribute their knowledge without considering how students will receive and process
the new material. The presentation of new material is a unidirectional mode of communication
directed from the instructor to the students and does not include guiding students to think, argue,
present evidence, evaluate or apply the new material. Adopting such teaching techniques means
that there is no emphasis on how a curriculum influences how students tackle their learning
techniques.
Ramsden (2003) suggests that it is not surprising that improving teaching at higher
education is considered a process of mastering how to lecture, how to use a computer, or how to
use PowerPoint rather than digging into what teaching is, what the teaching theories are and how
to connect teaching theories to instructors’ practices at university level. While Ramsden (2003)
concedes that it is not problematic to learn how to use computer and how to present, he argues
that it is not easy to learn to make the technical skills of teaching part of a greater pedagogical
understanding. It is even more complicated to reflect critically on teaching practices in an
ongoing process to improve teaching.
Lecturing. Ramsden (2003) argues that with the growing number of students enrolled and
the fixed space available at colleges and universities, administrations continue to offer lecture
courses as they are low cost. Lectures represent rigidly instructor-centered conceptions of
teaching and learning in which education is minimized to a one-way mode of transmitting
information; from the lecturer to tens or maybe hundreds of students who would supposedly
master it after listening passively for an hour or more. The lecturer’s job in this process is to
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 39
transfer portions of information from their minds into students’ short-term memories. Ramsden
further notes that, despite this approach appearing dated, research papers and Institutes for
Teaching and Learning state that instructor-centered approaches are widely adopted in higher
education.
Ramsden (2003) claims that Lecturers who adopt the instructor-centered approach
believe that what they present in a lecture will be understood by all students and will be
understood by all of them the same way. They refer students’ poor learning to faults in the
students. Students’ laziness, unwillingness to prepare, not having time to study are among the
lecturers’ excuses as to why students do not learn. The reasons for any problem in students’
learning reside outside of the lecture.
Ramsden (2003) refutes the assumption that asking students to do something following a
lecture can improve students’ engagement as students get to apply what they have listened to He
explains that this assumption implies that student learning bears a linear relation to what the
lecturer does. Thus, in this assumption, “the technique and the instructor take precedence over
the learning objectives and the students” (p. 148).
Ramsden (2003) argues that lecturing represents an instructor-dominated view of subject
matter. Lecturing students means imposing the lecturers’ opinions on students and depriving
them from their right to create meaning on their own. While lecturing, lecturers talk too much
rather than conducting a dialogue, making students dependent on the instructor so they wait to be
given solutions to problems rather than discussing them. According to Ramsden, another
problem in lecturing is that students do not prepare, and if they do not have prior knowledge
about the subject matter, they may find it difficult to follow the lecture or even to identify its
main points. They may never talk to the instructor, however they may have a superficial talk with
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 40
the tutor. Ramsden adds that as students do not know what they do not know and may not feel
comfortable to show their ignorance, they neither ask nor respond to questions in the tutorial.
Being under pressure, tutors feel compelled to fill the silence by giving a mini-lecture.
Ramsden (2003) asserts that students tend to learn less from impersonal teaching
strategies that focus on transferring information, keeping a distance between instructors and
students. These strategies minimize students’ independency and encourage a low-level of
intellectual engagement. Thus, when instructors develop their teaching technique in higher
education, they need to keep in mind that university teaching should encourage students to
experience dynamic and responsible learning within a cooperative, clearly structured and
productive atmosphere. Every instructor’s choice of approach should accommodate their
students’ autonomy.
Although Ramsden (2003) discusses the negatives of the instructor-centered teaching
approach adopted in almost all lectures offered in higher education, he mentions that the
approach may be successfully adopted when it services the students’ learning and the flow of the
content. A lecture may be conducted successfully when (a) the lecturers believe they have
fundamentals to offer that students would not be able to acquire through discussion, and (b)
when they imagine themselves as one of the students. In addition, the language used in the
lecture should appeal to students so they are interested in listening at the time of the lecture and
in researching more about the subject matter after it.
Biggs (2003) and Bok (2009) criticize the fact that giving lectures in which instructors
transmit knowledge is the default method of teaching in most institutions. In his book, Our
Underachieving Colleges, Bok highlights a study from the university of Texas which found that
university instructors spent 88 percent of their time lecturing to students. Biggs stresses that,
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 41
rather than transmitting knowledge to passive students in a lecture, effective teaching requires
the adoption of teaching approaches that get students involved in deep learning. For Biggs,
effective teaching takes place when students are motivated and lecturers can get students
motivated by engaging them actively in their learning.
The student-centered approach. Kiraly (1995) explains that the student-centered
approach depends on a transformative concept of knowledge. This concept emphasizes the
autonomy and the empowerment of the learners. Thus, every student is treated as an individual
who has his/her way of thinking, acquiring knowledge and finding relations between methods
and results. Through this approach, instructors cannot impose knowledge on students, but they
can facilitate the process of acquiring the subject matter. In other words, students should be
trained to find their own way, get used to finding solutions to the problems they face, and build
general hypotheses that enhance their knowledge, skills and their ability to apply what they have
studied.
One of the main characteristics of the student-centered approach is the students’
interaction with and independence from the instructor. In this setting, the passive and silent
student becomes an active participant in classes where pair and group work are carried out.
Kiraly (2014) recommends establishing different groups and changing them regularly in order to
move towards interactive classes and to create a positive and cooperative working atmosphere. In
this way, the learning environment enhances the students’ ability to discuss and negotiate their
decisions.
In applying the student-centered or collaborative approach to lectures and seminars,
Kiraly (2014) suggests that neither students nor instructors need to present topics individually;
instead, they can prepare topics in groups at home where they can discuss the topics together and
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negotiate on how to present it to their colleagues. This approach encourages students to read, do
research, discuss, debate, negotiate and organize their thoughts. They do not need to report on
literature, but to come up with their own perspectives after analyzing and summarizing the
experts’ views. Contrasting their final perspectives with other groups will open the way for more
discussion. This discussion will enrich their knowledge and polish all the skills they acquire
throughout the learning process.
The student-centered approach Kiraly promotes is influenced by the collaborative
learning approach devised by David and Roger Johnson, which is in turn based on the social
interdependence theory developed by the American psychologist, Martin Deutsh. Johnson and
Johnson (1991) claim that learners work productively when they cooperate in their tasks. They
outline five main points that should be applied to secure the efficiency of this collaborative
approach: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual accountability and
personal responsibility, interpersonal and small group work, and finally reflection on what the
group has achieved and identifying the points that they need to improve. Another significant
contributor to the collaborative learning environment is that it allows students to experience
different sub-tasks from which they can choose what suits their interests, abilities and skills. This
encourages students to learn how to learn and to figure out the methods of learning that they can
carry out successfully in their vocational life.
Johnson and Johnson (2005) state that there is a great deal of research indicating that, if
student-student interdependence is structured carefully and appropriately, students will achieve a
higher level of knowledge acquisition and use higher-level reasoning strategies more frequently.
Positive interdependency secures higher levels of motivation as students become more
intrinsically motivated. In addition, interdependency allows students to develop more positive
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interpersonal relationships with one another, to value the subject area being studied more, to
have higher self-esteem, and to become more skilled interpersonally.
Sorvali (1996) believes that the role of the instructor in this approach is to monitor pair
and group work by going around the class and helping the students if they struggle or need a hint
to continue processing. This way, the instructor can make a personal comment or correction to
individuals who need help. She goes to far as to suggest that the instructor should instead be
called a “master,” “mentor” or “facilitator” in order to emphasize the nature of his/her
relationship with the students. The instructor can show students different techniques and methods
but cannot force the students to apply them. At the same time, the availability of a skilled
instructor who knows how to guide the students to find out solutions and techniques, as well as
how to provide an appropriate learning environment, will ensure that students have a much better
capability of learning things in the future. In order to achieve this, instructors should keep an eye
on students’ development and create appropriate ways of testing their progress regularly.
Biggs (2012) provides us with an illustrative example of how the instructors’ decisions
might take students in one direction versus the other by describing how one history course may
direct students to memorize dates and names to narrate stories in the past while another course
directs students to connect, compare and contrast between history and present and take lessons to
be implied in the future. The latter class may force students to rethink the history and interpret
the present. In this example, it is not just the content that students will be exposed to but also
what instructors expect students to do with the content and how to guide students in either
direction. Biggs also highlights how course outcomes inform teaching decisions. He stresses that
if the desired outcome is to be able to explain a concept, it is the students’ responsibility to find
ways to explain the concept, rather than the instructor explaining and the students taking notes.
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In this way, students exposed to several explanations tackle different perspectives and negotiate
different levels of knowledge. Finally, Biggs also suggests that instructors may divide a project
into small tasks that require multiple skills so that each student can figure out which skills s/he is
strong or weak at.
For Shulman (2004), the student-centered approach is part of problem-based pedagogy
that focuses on “engagement, understanding, performance, reflection, generativity, and finally,
commitment” (p. 55). Shulman argues that observable engagement is not enough; students
should be engaged mentally in order to achieve a deep understanding that can be reflected in
their performance. In other words, meaningful teaching, in which instructors adopt problem-
based pedagogy, aims at engaging students mentally in order to enhance their understanding.
Mental engagement is the fundamental purpose of higher education and what meaningful
teaching should aim for. Mental engagement leads to a deep learning process that allows students
to paraphrase what they have studied in their own words and to differentiate between
paraphrasing and plagiarism.
Shulman further states that students’ reflections should show their ability to explain how
and why they make their decisions. Although interrupting students’ performance to ask them to
explain their rationale used to be considered negative teaching, Shulman claims that it is an
important step in teaching. It is necessary for students to reflect on their decisions to achieve
high levels of accuracy and logical thinking. Shulman uses “generativity” to describe how
problem-based pedagogy allows students to generate new ideas and come up with solutions that
instructors might not predict. While instructors might find this approach risky, as students’
engagement could be challenging and unexpected, instructors themselves improve their teaching
by taking this risk. Creating a learning environment in which students get opportunities to reflect
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and generate exposes students to different perspectives that broaden their universal knowledge.
Finally, the last dimension of problem-based pedagogy, according to Shulman, is students’
commitment. Shulman (2004) explains that students develop commitment to the subject matter
when they build an interest in it rather than simply studying for the exam. In this case, students’
commitment is “both moving inward and connecting outward” (p. 73), meaning that students feel
mentally invested in the subject matter and are interested in negotiating it with others.
Empirical Studies
Trigwell, Prosser and Waterhouse (1999) conducted a quantitative study to investigate
the relations between an instructor’s approach to teaching and the learning approaches of the
students in the class of the same instructor. Until this study was conducted in 1999, all studies
relating high quality teaching to student learning outcomes had been based on students’
perceptions of the quality of teaching. In Trigwell, Prosser and Waterhouse’s study, the
researchers tried to find relations between instructors’ reports of their approaches to teaching and
their students’ approaches to learning or learning outcomes. The researchers wanted to study
quantitatively the extent to which information transmission, or an instructor-focused approach to
teaching, is associated with a surface approach to learning, and to what extent a conceptual
change/student-focused approach to teaching is associated with a deep approach to learning.
To answer their questions, the researchers surveyed 46 science lecturers and their 3956
science students in 48 first-year science classes in Australian universities. The Approaches to
Teaching Inventory (Trigwell and Prosser, 2004) was completed by the instructors who
participated in this study and a version of the Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs 1987) was
modified and sent to students. The instructors and students were asked to complete the
questionnaires in relation to a particular lecture topic.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 46
The results of the study showed relations between instructors’ approaches to teaching and
students’ approaches to learning. An information transmission/instructor-focused approach to
teaching was strongly associated with a surface and non-deep approach to learning at the class
level. At the same time, the results showed evidence that a conceptual change/student-focused
approach to teaching is associated, though less strongly, with a non-surface approach to learning.
Students of those instructors who reported adopting a more information transmission/instructor
focused approach to teaching reported adopting more surface and non-deep approaches to
learning. In contrast, in other classes where the instructors reported adopting approaches that
focused on students rather than on content, the students reported adopting more of a deep and
non-surface approach to learning. According to the researchers, their study defined good
teaching as teaching that involves giving timely and helpful feedback, trying to understand the
difficulties encountered by students, giving clearly illustrated explanations, getting students
interested in the subject, setting an appropriate level of challenge, and getting the best out of
students so that they continue to study the subject matter. The study identified good teaching also
as helping students to build on their previous knowledge and to construct and transform their
own knowledge. In addition, the results revealed that students achieved better outcomes when
instructors paid more attention and focused on what students were doing and learning rather than
on what the instructors were covering. Thus, instructors who encouraged students’ autonomy,
gave students enough time to interact and discuss what they understood, provoked debate and
challenged students’ ideas had students who were less likely to adopt a surface approach.
In a quantitative study conducted in 2016, Baeten, Dochy, Struyven, Parmentier and
Vanderbruggen investigated student instructors’ instructional preferences with regards to
learning environments and how their preferences were related to the learning approaches that
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their students adopted. The main research question in this study was about which instructional
preferences and approaches to learning student instructors have. Two different questionnaires
were sent at the same time to 760 professional Bachelor students. The students were either in
their first or second year in instructor education programs at ten different universities in
Belgium. The first questionnaire was about instructional preferences and the second was about
students’ learning approaches.
The results of this study showed that although many attempts had been made in higher
education to promote the student-centered approach in which the instructor is a facilitator,
student instructors preferred getting instructors’ directions. Students were in favor of getting
input in which the instructors summarize the basic concepts at the end of each topic or meeting.
The researchers argued that student instructors preferred the instructor-centered instructional
approach because either this approach was what they were familiar with, or because they did not
have previous knowledge that they might relate or connect to when they study new material,
particularly if the students were freshmen.
At the same time, students did not prefer passive learning as they disliked following the
instructors’ views and preferred to communicate their thoughts and ideas. Thus, students
preferred cooperation and knowledge construction, which are features of the student-centered
approach. The researchers argued that students enjoy a combination of both the instructors’ and
the students’ teaching approaches as long as they meet students’ needs. The results also showed
that because students were required to interpret, explain and apply information, they adopted the
deep learning approach. Thus, students tried to find relationships in content, making sense and
meaning of the new topics and connecting them to content they had studied earlier.
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Maloney, Storr, Paynter, Morgan and Ilic’s mixed method study, conducted in 2013,
compared the efficacy of two practical skill-teaching methods against a traditional teaching
method. The two practical teaching methods were Pre-recorded Videos Tutorials (PVT) and
Student Self-Recorded Video of their clinical performance (SSV), while the traditional teaching
method was referred to as TRAD. The participants were 49 third year pre-clinical physiotherapy
undergraduate students at Monash University. This study was conducted in a campus-based
course focused on developing clinical reasoning and the development of complex clinical-skills
and professional behaviors in preparation for entering the clinical environment. Student
participants consented to participate in a randomized controlled study. Surveys were tailored to
ask the questions in reference to the teaching method specific to each group.
Participants were divided into three groups and each group was exposed to one of the
three teaching methods. The TRAD group was taught using traditional teaching methods that
included a live demonstration of the required skill provided by a practical class tutorial. A
student from the class was selected to be a patient actor during the demonstrations. Then,
students were given the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the skill with their classmates.
The PVT group was taught the same skills using a pre-recorded video tutorial. Each video was
30 minutes in duration and included a demonstration of the skill being applied to a patient actor.
The videos instructed the students to conduct 10 minutes of practice with a student colleague.
The SSV group were given a written simulated patient scenario and were required to produce
five minutes’ film of themselves as therapists managing the patient in the scenario. A remote
tutor was able to review the online submitted video and give students brief written feedback.
The results showed that students perceived the three different teaching techniques as
producing the same level of learner satisfaction, although the two practical techniques were rated
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 49
higher in educational value. Students were satisfied with the traditional teaching when the tutor
got students to practice the skills they were learning. Students also praised traditional teaching
when they learned a challenging or confusing skill as they could ask questions and get answers
quickly. At the same time, students thought that communication skills and mannerisms are better
acquired when students recorded their own videos. Watching self-performance helped students to
spot their strengths and weakness and students became conscious of their performance and
worked to improve it. Although there was no face-to-face interaction with faculty, students got
written feedback. Students also liked the video-tutorial technique and considered it an adequate
source of knowledge that they had access to during clinical placement.
In 2000, Kember and Kwan conducted a qualitative study in which they interviewed 17
lecturers in engineering, social studies, and paramedical studies departments. Lecturers were
reasonably representative in terms of ranks, years of teaching experience, and years of
professional or industrial experience. The lecturers selected were broadly typical of those at the
university. They taught large and small classes, and supervised practical classes. Each interview
in Kember and Kwan’s study lasted for 45 minutes and was recorded and transcribed. The
interviews were semi-structured and focused on five main aspects of teaching: how lecturers
defined good teaching, how they motivate students, the in-class and out-of-class activities they
designed for students, the most effective teaching strategies, and the last aspect was lecturers’
perceptions of teaching part-time versus full-time students. The NUD.IST program was used for
coding and analyzing while the two researchers coded and analyzed the interviews manually as
well.
The findings of Kember and Kwan’s qualitative study reflected that faculty perceived
teaching as either transmitting knowledge or facilitating learning. Faculty who perceived
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teaching as transmitting knowledge adopted a content-centered approach to teaching by
lecturing; they thought that students’ motivation was intrinsic and that the only way they might
motivate students was by supplying them with references, notes and handouts. They dealt with
students as a whole and did not consider individual differences or the students’ interests. They
gave examples and illustrations from their own experiences and considered students as empty
vessels. These instructors employed frequent tests and quizzes to assess students’ ability to
reproduce what they were taught in lectures. In contrast, Kember and Kwan found that faculty
who perceived teaching as facilitating students’ learning tended to find ways and designed
activities to motivate students. These instructors thought that their role was to construct students’
knowledge by encouraging them to connect what they knew to the new material. They offered
students a flexible system of assessment and catered the course to meet students’ individual
differences.
In this section, I have presented literature written about the instructor-centered teaching
approach and student-centered teaching approach and how instructors’ choices of teaching
approach might facilitate or hinder students’ learning. However, making good choices while
selecting content, and while teaching in class, does not guarantee that students will have a
valuable learning experience if instructors do not choose the right assessment tools. Hence, there
was a need for the next section, in which I discuss instructors’ choices of assessment tools.
Choices of Assessment
In this section, I present the theoretical literature I have consulted as to how instructors’
choices of assessment tool shape the way students approach their learning. The theoretical
literature will be followed by reports of three empirical studies.

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Theoretical Literature
Ramsden (2003) argues that, at higher education, students should not only be judged on
what they have learned but also on their critical awareness of what they do not know and their
willingness, readiness and interest in finding out more about the subject matter. Thus, assessment
should not be designed to examine if students can reproduce what the instructor conveyed to
them in lecture but rather students’ skills in gathering information, logical thinking, and
problem-solving in addition to their growth in self-confidence and independence, flexibility, and
motivation.
Ramsden (2003) suggests that inappropriate assessment methods may push students
towards learning in ineffective and dispiriting ways. For example, assessing students using
activities and questions that require them to simply memorize class content leads students to
believe that there is no problem with rote learning. Consequently, they think that all they need to
do is to add more isolated words and phrases and descriptive details from the textbook to their
repertoire in order to get high grades, without making sense of the meaning conveyed in the new
content. On the contrary, asking students to compare and contrast, discuss, evaluate, criticize,
reflect, solve a problem or relate the content to real-world problems encourages students to think
about, test out, and discuss with each other the relationships between concepts and everyday
events.
Biggs (2012) builds on Ramsden by stressing how instructors’ articulation of their
expectations shapes the way students learn. The way instructors articulate the desired learning
outcomes and assignments will direct students to adopt a deep or surface learning approach.
Biggs gives examples of how instructors’ expectations and the way instructors design
assignments shape students’ learning. Biggs argues that, while instructors might assign essay
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writing in which they expect students to use reflective writing and adhere to high levels of
knowledge (such as comparing, contrasting, evaluating, criticizing, and making connections with
previous knowledge), students may reduce their level of writing to knowledge-telling essays in
which they list facts. Biggs criticizes instructors who accept this kind of writing because they do
not have high expectations of their students and do not assign time in their courses to
differentiate and explain writing styles and what they expect from students.
For Biggs (2003), assessments are the principal factor in what and how students study.
Thus, the assignments outlined in each syllabus direct students to adopt either the surface or the
deep learning approach. Therefore, assignments should represent genuinely the objectives of the
course or the unit and be designed as tools to help guide students to achieve the course objectives
in addition to assessing them. Biggs claims that most summative assignments give students
signals that they will be asked to reproduce the information that the instructor would say in
lectures. Thus, students think that they need to memorize the handouts in order to pass exams.
Biggs (2003) elaborates on this last point by explaining that, while instructors focus on
the course objectives while designing a curriculum, students focus on the assignments and how
they may strategize their learning approaches to satisfy the course requirements and to get good
grades. Biggs calls this process a “backwash,” as students plan to learn what they will be tested
on. In this backwash process, students do not study the curriculum but rather study for the
assignments. Biggs highlights that, “in a poorly aligned system, where the test does not reflect
the objectives, this will result in appropriate surface learning” (p. 140). Thus, Biggs argues that it
is the instructors’ job to align the assessment to what students should be able to do by the end of
the course. In this way, while students prepare for assignments, they will be learning the
curriculum.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 53
Biggs (2012) criticizes using multiple-choice testing as a dominant style of assessing
students, arguing that multiple choice questions are used to assess only the number of items
students have learned after the instructor has adopted a covering-the-ground style of teaching.
Biggs emphasizes that both knowledge-telling essays and multiple-choice exams reflect
knowledge quantitatively while reflective writing represents the qualitative learning that
instructors should adapt their teaching strategies and design their courses to help students to
achieve. He adds that another problem in assessing students is comparing students with each
other rather than assessing the improvement in their qualitative knowledge achieved by each
student.
Biggs makes the impact of assessment on students’ learning clear by comparing the
assessment tools instructors use to assess graduate students and those used with undergraduates.
While graduate students are expected to write theses that display a strong foundation in the
literature, raise and genuinely answer a research question, analyze findings and defend them,
undergraduates are usually assigned multiple-choice exams, timed exams and other closed
methods of examination. Biggs supports the use of assessment tools that assess students’
creativity and deep learning. One of these assessment tools is portfolios that require students to
place samples of their performances throughout the course; samples that reflect what students
have achieved of the intended outcomes of the course. The benefit of the portfolio is to construct
students’ metacognition of their progress so that they have control over their learning after
graduation.
Biggs (2003) further explains the difference between convergent and divergent
assessments and how they influence students’ learning approaches. Convergent assessments have
a particular and unique right answer, as in most quizzes and multiple-choice exams. Biggs
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regards convergent thinking as closed and limited, designed to encourage students only to
memorize. Divergent assessment, on the other hand, is open to students’ creativity, production,
critical thinking, originality, usefulness and self-expression; and encourage students to adopt the
deep learning approach. However, Biggs stresses that divergent assessment does not mean that
there is no need for convergent assessment, because creativity and originality require a solid
knowledge-base made up of facts. Rather, what Biggs is suggesting here is that assessment
should not stop at the point of assessing students’ ability in recalling facts but expand further to
assess their ability to apply and make sense of these facts.
Biggs argues that instead of summative exams, multiple-choice tests, short answer
questions and other decontextualized, quantitative assessment tools that lead students to adopt a
surface learning approach, there is a need for instructors to adopt more contextualized,
qualitative criterion-referenced assessment tools. These tools include, but are not limited to,
formative assessment such as criteria portfolios, concept maps, reflective journals, problem-
solving, and diagnosis of case study assignments. According to Biggs, these qualitative
assignments do not address how much students know but how well they learned. In adopting
these assessment tools, students are not compared to each other on a quantitative basis but rather
graded according to how they are able to make personal and individual meaning of the subject
matter.
It is important to note that for Biggs (2003), assessment is not separate from teaching.
Effective teaching, he argues, provides students with frequent formative assessment and
feedback. Biggs considers lectures an ineffective source of knowledge because they are not
formative and students do not get personal feedback. In lectures, there are hardly sufficient ways
to check students’ ongoing understanding. During lectures, there is no personal communication
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 55
between instructor and students, so students do not get monitored or trained to monitor their
achievement in the course. Similarly, summative assessment takes place after the teaching is
over. Thus, it does help students to understand their problems in understanding the course. Errors
in final exams do not improve or guide students in their learning process. They are final and they
are punitive. In other words, while formative assessment monitors students’ achievements,
summative assessments judge the students.
Entwistle and Entwistle (1997) argue that if there is a poor alignment between course
objectives and assessments, students will resort to surface learning habits such as: (a)
reproducing isolated pieces of knowledge from lecture notes and handouts without any clear
structure; (b) try to imitate the structure of content developed by the instructor even if it does not
make sense to them; (c) develop distorted maps and structures of content to generate answers to
anticipated questions; and (d) list facts. Even if students are told that they will be penalized if
they do not have genuine answers, they will develop these habits in order to pass their courses
and because they were not instructed or guided throughout the course of the semester or the year
on how to develop an individual conception of the discipline.
Light and Cox (2009) stress that exams that focus on right and wrong answers may
trouble students who are in the process of understanding a discipline. They may not achieve the
right answer but they understand the steps and the procedures and may need time to get the right
answer. Assessing students on the right and wrong answers may shut down students; frustrate
them so that they give up their interest in a discipline. Light and Cox argue that students need to
feel that they had the opportunity to express their understanding of the new material and to be
monitored and guided to get it all right. The two theorists argue that this can be achieved through
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formative assessment while summative assessment will not ensure the opportunity of
constructing their own knowledge.
According to Light and Cox (2009), formative assessment helps students to adopt deep
learning approaches as students get feedback on their coursework, helping them to improve their
performance and truly learn what they mistakenly assume that they have learned. On the
contrary, summative exams come at the very end of coursework and do not build into students’
knowledge. Nevertheless, Light and Cox propose that summative and formative assessment can
both be used to foster deeply transformative ideas of learning or surface reproduction of ideas. In
other words, summative and formative assessment can trigger students’ surface or deep learning
depending on how the instructor will design them, give feedback and what would be accepted as
an appropriate answer.
Light and Cox (2009) make the criticism that traditional finals usually give students a
way to pass even if they ignore or do not understand some of the more serious deeper demands
of the course. Thus, the two theorists argue that assessment should go beyond asking students to
list information to demand higher intellectual levels of thinking. In this way, higher grades will
be associated with deeper, more enthusiastic and genuine thinking about the course. Carried out
in this way, undergraduate education would prepare students to think critically and
independently and to get into the habit of constructing knowledge, so that they can continue to
adopt this learning approach after graduation.
Light and Cox (2009) further contend that traditional finals do not tell students about the
quality of their thinking but rather about their status in relation to other students. On the contrary,
assessments that grade students against sets of criteria help students to understand how far their
thinking and their performance has progressed. In addition, formative assessment may point out
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 57
what students need to improve or work on to achieve what the course is designed to get students
to achieve. In this way, instructors guide students to seek and adopt deep learning approaches.
According to Light and Cox (2009), traditional assessment does not give an adequate
picture of the abilities students should develop in their undergraduate education. Most of the
time, traditional assessment does not resemble the sort of tasks and situations students will face
in their life or profession after graduation. For instance, traditional assessment emphasizes
memorization, speed of writing and thinking, and the ability to perform under very tight time
constraints that put students under a kind of stress they are not likely to face in their real or
professional lives. Students barely receive feedback, and a dependence on traditional exams
similarly denies instructors the chance to become familiar with the learning process that their
students go through, limiting their ability to help the students change their learning techniques or
understand their weaknesses to improve and strengths to build on. In general, the two theorists
think that traditional assessment is not effective in directing students’ efforts towards developing
a higher level of intellectual ability to be used in these areas. Rather, traditional exams encourage
low-levels of learning and foster the students’ dependency on instructors’ personal understanding
of the subject. In other words, Light and Cox conclude that traditional assessments lead students
to adhere to surface learning approaches.
Empirical Studies
In 1998, Scouller conducted a quantitative study about the influence of assessment
methods on students’ learning. In her study, Scouller tried to examine students’ preparation and
perceptions of two methods of assessment used in the same course. The first assessment method
was essay-writing and the second was a summative multiple-choice-question (MCQ)
examination. To collect data, the researcher sent questionnaires to 206 second-year Education
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students at the University of Sydney. In addition to the questionnaire, 164 students allowed the
researchers to have access to their exams and essay grades.
The questionnaire sent to students required a simultaneous response for each assessment.
Students were allowed 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire, which consisted of three parts.
The first part was adopted from Biggs’s (1987) Study Process Questionnaire and Scouller and
Prosser’s Questionnaire (1994). In this part, students were asked to indicate how strongly they
agreed or disagreed with 28 statements that depicted students’ learning approaches. The second
part of the questionnaire focused on students’ perceptions of the level of intellectual ability
assessed and the reasons they preferred one method over the other. The questions in this part
were also adopted from Scouller and Prosser’s questionnaire (1994). The second part consisted
of 12 statements and students were required to indicate how strongly they agreed or disagreed
with each statement on a five-point scale. The third part of the questionnaire focused on students’
preferences as to how their knowledge and understanding should be assessed. There were two
open-ended statements in this section and students were required to complete them and to give
reasons.
Four variables were investigated in this study: learning approaches, perceptions,
preference, and performance outcomes. The findings in Scouller’s study showed that students
were more likely to adopt surface learning approaches in the MCQ examination as they
associated MCQ with lower knowledge levels such as recollection, organization and clustering.
At the same time, the study confirmed a relationship between preparing essays and deep learning
approaches. Students associated essay assignments with higher levels of cognitive knowledge
such as analysis, application and comprehension. The last finding of the study was a correlation
between students’ adoption of the deep learning approach and their poor performance in MCQ.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 59
In contrast, the study suggested that employing surface preparation strategies may be predictive
of higher MCQ examination scores. These last two findings were inconsistent with the findings
of studies that had been conducted earlier which suggested that students who employed deep
learning approaches performed better in MCQ examination.
In 1998, Paivi Tynjala conducted a quasi-experimental study to investigate the
differences in students’ learning outcomes when instructors assign traditional examination versus
using constructive learning tasks. Tynjala (1998) studied students’ learning outcomes in a
second-year course in a school of education in Finland. Students were divided into two groups.
The first was the experimental group and consisted of 16 students. They were assigned
constructive assignments which asked them to study three textbooks, discuss their writing
assignments in groups each week, and then to write a long essay. The learning tasks were
designed so that students transform the new material in different ways. The second group was a
controlled group consisting of 23 students who were asked to read the same textbooks, attend
lectures and take a final examination. The first group was not required to take final exams, but
was asked to provide research material.
To answer the main research question, the researcher pursued three main lines of inquiry.
The first explored the students’ subjective learning experiences, and the researchers interviewed
most of the students one to three weeks after the course to get their input. The second asked how
the students’ conceptions of learning developed during the course, for which each student was
asked to write a short essay about their conceptions of learning before and after the course. The
third question pertained to the students’ learning outcomes, as assessed by traditional questions
in which students reproduce what they studied versus innovative assessment tools that assess
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higher levels of knowledge. Although both groups took the same final exam, the experimental
group took it only for research, as it was not part of their coursework.
In answering the first question concerning what students’ subjective learning was like,
the results showed that the two groups described their learning as knowledge acquisition.
However, 80% of the constructivist group emphasized that the course improved their thinking
skills. On the contrary, just 15% of the controlled group had the same feeling. In addition,
students in the experimental group mentioned that they improved their acquisition skills more
that students in the controlled group. Thus, most students in the experimental group emphasized
the application of knowledge, gaining a more critical perspective and changing their conceptions
about the topics they studied. In addition, some of the same group stressed that they had acquired
communication and cooperation skills. On the contrary, the students in the controlled group did
not mention any of these things, but rather emphasized that they improved their learning in terms
of accumulation and organization.
Students wrote essays to answer the second question about how the students’ conceptions
of learning developed during the course. The students’ essays revealed a big difference between
the two groups in the description of the role attributed to thinking activities. At the beginning of
the course, four students in each group mentioned thinking as an essential feature of the learning
process. At the end of the course, 79% of the constructive group emphasized the importance of
thinking while in the controlled group only 24% mentioned it.
There were also some differences between the two groups’ answers on the final exam,
which the constructive group took just to collect material for this study. The controlled group
focused on detailed reproductive comparison answers while the constructive group tended to
evaluate and generalize more. In addition, the classifications were the same in the answers of the
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two groups because most of the students did not classify the theories in any way during classes.
However, extended abstract answers appeared only in the constructivist group.
Tynjala’s study proved that different assessment methods produce different depictions of
student learning outcomes. Although the constructive group produced short answers and
included few descriptions, the quality of their answers reflected the highest levels of the SOLO
(Structure of the Observed Learning Outcomes) Taxonomy. On the contrary, students in the
controlled group produced long, detailed answers, but the answers were merely a reproduction of
what was in the texts they studied. The researcher concluded that a constructive learning
environment encourages students to produce higher-level learning outcomes more efficiently
than traditional teaching.
Gijbels and Dochy (2006) conducted a quantitative study to investigate the relationship
between instructors’ application of formative assessment and their impact on students’
assessment preferences and approaches to learning. The researchers used a revised two-factor
study process questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F: Biggs et al., 2001) and the Assessment preferences
inventory (API: Birenbaum, 1994). The two research tools were administrated to 108 first-year
students during regular classes at the beginning and end of the semester. The students were
enrolled in a compulsory course, “Research methods in Criminology, part 1.” During lectures,
students were introduced to theoretical concepts and received information about the assignments.
In this course, students needed to complete four cumulative group assignments. The group
assignments were used as a formative assessment and were considered essential preparation to
enable students to apply theory that would be assessed in the summative final written exam.
Regarding students’ preferences of assessment, the study found strong and significant
correlations between the students’ preference for respectively higher-order thinking assignments
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and their adoption of deep learning approaches. The findings did not support the theoretical
hypotheses that students who adopt surface approaches to learning prefer assignments that
support memorization and reproduction. Nevertheless, it was shown that they did not prefer
higher cognitive tasks. The study found that students prefer instructor-guided test preparation
before experiencing new assessment.
Before conducting this study, Gijbels and Dochy (2006) hypothesized that formative
assessment could be a powerful instrument in improving students’ learning approaches. On the
contrary, the study showed that students who used to adopt deep learning approaches adopted
surface approaches after their hands-on experience with formative assessment. The two
researchers found that instructors’ attempts to adopt a student-centered teaching approach to
construct students’ learning and deepen their learning approaches did not have positive results.
Adopting these positive teaching approaches reduced students’ self-monitoring. The researchers
suggested that these unexpected results might be due to a lack of clarity in the goals of the course
or the assignments, heavy workload, fragmented knowledge, insufficient feedback or because
students were not interested in the literature, among other factors that might have affected
students’ learning experience. The researchers concluded that, although it seemed relatively easy
in theory to influence students’ learning approaches, it was difficult to apply this in practice. In
addition, although it might be easy to get students to adopt a surface learning approach, it was
difficult to get them to adopt a deep one.
Instructors’ Reflection
In addition to the selection of the three main components of the curriculum, instructors’
reflections on their teaching plays a significant role in creating learning opportunities for their
students. According to Shulman (2004), instructors’ reflection is a crucial step in effective
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teaching as instructors look back at the teaching and learning that occurred and how their
teaching choices have played out in the classroom. Reflections guide instructors to avoid what
went wrong and enhance what worked well. In consistence with Shulman, Keely (2012) argues
that reflection offers instructors the opportunity to assess their teaching. Although students’
course evaluations and peer reviews are important in assessing teaching, Keely (2012) considers
these two tools as a kind of summative assessment that happens once or twice per semester,
whereas instructors’ reflection on their teaching is a formative assessment that can happen on a
regular basis. The reflection also allows instructors to assess their teaching independently as it is
not feasible to have other faculty present to provide feedback at all times.
Forsyth (2003) argues that depending completely on Student Evaluations of Teaching
(SET) might not be the best way to evaluate or improve teaching, as many faculty question the
meaning of the scores. Forsyth also wonders if student evaluation contributes to grade inflation.
Although Forsyth argues that SET is an important summative tool to evaluate whether instructors
live up to their job responsibilities, he adds that there is a need for more formative tools that
inform instructors about their teaching throughout their career so that they can reflect, track, and
improve their choices and practices regularly. Thus, although SET might be a good assessment
tool for the administration to find out about problems that students encounter in their courses,
SET is not the only objective tool that informs instructors about their teaching.
Forsyth (2003) suggests creating teaching a portfolio as a method that instructors can
follow in order to reflect and keep track of their practices. According to Forsyth (2003),
instructors get busy with their day-to-day duties of teaching, grading, preparing for classes,
conducting office hours, and participating in faculty and administrative meetings, so they may
get distracted from the overall reasons for their choices of curricula. The portfolio helps
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instructors to keep track of their practices over a course as well as over the years, giving
opportunities for instructors to discover any inconsistencies or weaknesses in their curriculum,
develop plans to modify the curriculum, and to identify and implement new goals.
In addition to being a tool that allows instructors to reflect on their practices, the portfolio
protects instructors, to some extent, from being disappointed if they receive negative evaluations
from their students. At the same time, portfolios become valuable representations of instructors’
work when they come to be evaluated by other faculty or the administration.
Keely (2012) argues that since getting instructors to develop the habit of reflecting on
their own teaching is complex and takes time, instructors should start early in their carrier in
order to successfully develop this habit. Thus, effective teaching requires instructors to revisit
their teaching choices and adjust them depending on how the class goes and how students react
to the instructors’ curriculum choices. Self-reflection, therefore, allows instructors to avoid
obstacles that have proven to hinder students’ learning opportunities and to create better
opportunities for students to achieve the course objectives.
To achieve effective teaching, according to Keely, instructors should reflect on their
choices of content, teaching approach and assessment. Instructors can reflect on their teaching
while grading students’ assignments, for example, because in moments when all or most students
show a fundamental misunderstanding of a part of an assignment, it reflects that something went
wrong on the instructor’s end. Reflection in this case helps the instructor to examine their
curriculum and to consider the different possibilities that prevented students from understanding
or directed them to misunderstand something. This process of revisiting and examining the
curriculum puts the instructor on the right track toward achieving effective teaching and
modifying their choices to create better learning opportunities for students.
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Similarly, Korn (2012) argues that reflecting on their teaching helps instructors to
improve not only their courses, but their teaching philosophy. According to Korn (2012), when
instructors take the time to evaluate and modify their curriculum choices, they revise their
philosophies, helping them to make better choices in the future. Thus, it is a cycle that keeps
instructors working on their practices and developing their philosophies. When instructors read
and research teaching in order to improve their practices, they turn to teaching scholars who
study not only how to teach their subject matter but how to teach in general. Korn’s (2012)
argument is consistent with Shulman’s assertion that effective teaching requires the instructor to
be knowledgeable not just about the content they teach but also about teaching, in general, in
addition to teaching within their discipline.
For Korn (2012), the process of reflection is a process of critical thinking, which
instructors need to practice if they require their students to be critical thinkers. In addition to
thinking critically and reading about teaching, instructors should discuss their reflections with
other instructors in the same or different disciplines so that their reflections do not devolve into
opinion, but are discussed at an academic and professional level. Korn (2012) explained that in
his teaching philosophy he used to focus on active learning, and on getting students to be
engaged and to discuss the content as independent learners, but when he reflected on his classes
he found that he lectured for a long time. He calls this process of finding out what went wrong
and subsequently examining it the “Scholarship of Teaching.”
Fink (1995) similarly argues that instructors who strive effective teaching should try to
identify the weak and strong aspects of their teaching in order to strengthen the former and build
on the latter. Fink proposes that if instructors want to continually enhance their teaching, they
themselves need to go through the process of reflecting on their teaching and that they “should
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take primary responsibility for the evaluation” (p.191). However, Fink argues that evaluating our
own teaching effectively takes time and effort. According to Fink, the main reason that some
instructors improve their teaching while others do not is that members of the first group analyze
their practices and intentionally invest time and effort to improve their practices.
Fink (1995) believes that reflection happens naturally while teaching, as instructors
monitor whether students follow, and if they are engaged or bored and so on. Hence, the
instructor develops a sense of what is happening in the class, and if something needs to change in
order to get students to achieve the course outcomes. Therefore, Fink thinks that reflection is a
self-monitoring process, which occurs continuously during the teaching process, and suggests
that instructors write down their reflection immediately after teaching, before they forget.
However, the limitation of self-monitoring, according to Fink, is the biases and
misinterpretations of what happens in class. Instructors’ blind spots might be another limitation if
they rely solely on their reflections or on self-monitoring to evaluate their teaching. Therefore,
Fink suggests adopting different teaching evaluation tools to validate instructors’ reflection on
their courses. Fink adds that instructors can make use of technology, using audio and video
recorders a few times each semester to help them reflect on their teaching. Using audio and video
records allows instructors to notice things they may not notice while they are teaching.
Conclusion
Ambrose et al. (2010) and Biggs (2012) argue that the alignment of course objects with
selected content, instructional strategies, and assessment is of utmost importance in every course
in higher education. This alignment is crucial to achieve the desired outcomes of the course. If
instructors successfully orchestrate these three components of a course, they give students a more
coherent picture of what will be expected from them. Consequently, students feel more confident
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and in control of their learning, and are thus most likely to adopt deep learning approaches. Yet,
despite the amount of empirical research on each of the three components and their influence on
student’s adoption of different learning approaches, the three components have barely been
studied together. Furthermore, the limitations in almost every one of the empirical studies I
consulted were based in the fact that each study focused on just one of the three components,
while the findings in these empirical studies were influenced by at least one of the components
that had not been investigated. Thus, in this study, I studied these three components together.
In addition, almost all the studies were conducted from the students’ end. In other words,
the empirical research in this field focuses on how students reflect on how one of the three
components influence their learning without paying attention to what instructors initially planned
to teach. Hence, there was a need to study the three components together and to give instructors a
chance to reflect on the reasons they made certain curriculum choices and if students’ outcomes
aligned with the course objectives they had planned.
Conceptual Framework
According to Maxwell (2013), the purpose of a conceptual framework is to explain the
main factors, concepts, assumptions, expectations and beliefs to be studied. In addition, a
conceptual framework shows the presumed relationships among the variables mentioned before.
Maxwell (2013) adds that a conceptual framework is “something that is constructed, not found. It
incorporates pieces that are borrowed from elsewhere, but the structure…is something that you
build, not something that exists ready-made” (p. 41). Therefore, although the concepts,
expectations and assumptions in the following conceptual framework are driven from the
literature I consulted earlier in this chapter, the framework shows how I, as a researcher, bring
these different variables together and put them in a new frame.
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The literature I have consulted in this chapter has led me to think that instructors’ choices
of curriculum have the capacity to facilitate or hinder students’ learning process. Thus,
instructors who think that it is their responsibility to create a learning experience that empowers
students and gives them the opportunity to be independent learners will create a curriculum that
leads students to adopt deep learning approach. On the contrary, instructors who think that their
job is to transfer knowledge to students, whose duty it is to reproduce the knowledge just as they
received it, will make curriculum choices that turn students into passive learners who adopt a
surface learning approach.
In addition, drawing on the literature I discussed earlier in this chapter, I argue that
instructors’ choices of the three components of the curriculum should work in harmony together
and be aligned with the course objectives in order to for them to be achieved. Thus, the course
objectives should form a road map that not only informs students of what they should be able to
achieve by the end of the course, but also guides instructors in their choices with regards to the
three components of the curriculum. Building on this, it follows that an inadequate choice of one
of the three components might create an obstacle that prevents students from becoming fully
engaged. Therefore, deficient choices in the curriculum may lead students to adopt a surface
learning approach or to switch between the two approaches and fail to fully achieve the course
objectives.
Maxwell (2013) explains that a conceptual framework can be designed as a graphical as
well as in narrative form. Therefore, I use the following graphic to present my conceptual
framework, in which I integrated the three components together. The graphic shows how
instructors’ curriculum choices and continual reflection on their teaching might create
opportunities for students to engage in different levels of thinking. Following the graphic, I
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discuss how I conceptualize the curriculum choices made by instructors that would most likely
facilitate students’ engagement in higher levels of thinking. Then, I discuss how I conceptualize
the instructor choices that would most likely lead students to adopt surface levels of learning.

Figure X. Conceptual Framework.
Instructors’ Choices That Create Opportunities for Students to Engage in Higher Levels of
Thinking
The first component that I believe creates opportunities for students to engage in higher
levels of thinking is the pairing of meaningful material with an appropriate workload. Drawing
o Meaningful
curriculum and
light workload
o Student-centered
approach
o Formative
assessment
o Reflection

Students engage in higher
levels of thinking
o Content based
curriculum and
heavy workload
o Instructor-
centered
approach
o Summative
assessment
o Lack of reflection
Reduce Students’ opportunities to
engage in higher levels of thinking
Alignment with course objectives
Instructors’ approaches to the curriculum
Misalignment with course
objectives
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 70
on Ramsden (2003) and Shulman (2004), I argue that, unlike K-12, instructors in higher
education have the freedom to choose the material they want to incorporate in their courses. Well
used, this freedom allows instructor to incorporate what students are interested in. Choosing
interesting material that presents an appropriate level of challenge will encourage students to be
more engaged and involved in their own learning. The freedom to select material requires
instructors to make decisions pertaining to the quality and the quantity of the material to be
covered, and these decisions are not necessarily easy as the instructor should select material that
has the most significance, while simultaneously considering students’ backgrounds, previous
knowledge, interest and how the material is aligned with the course objectives (Biggs, 2003;
Ramsden, 2003; Shulman, 2004). In addition, sufficient choices with regards to class material
will not be as effective if instructors do not choose an adequate instructional approach and
assessment tools that consider students’ autonomy and give students opportunities to adopt deep
learning approaches.
The second component is choosing a teaching approach that empowers students and gives
them the opportunity to acquire skills related to the material they will cover. Building on the
work of Kiraly (2014), Ramsden (2003) and Biggs (2003) on an instructor-centered teaching
approach, I argue that it is not enough to have a higher degree in a field in order to be able to
teach it. What I mean by this is that teaching at university level requires a knowledge about
teaching in general, as well as being familiar with the teaching approaches and practices that
facilitate students’ learning in a particular discipline. Thus, even if instructors make good choices
of material and assign their students an adequate workload, students still need to get involved in
a number of activities that require higher levels of thinking. In addition, students need guidance
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while navigating and interacting with new material. Thus, class time should be used to facilitate
students’ engagement with the new material.
In addition, drawing on Sorvali (1996), I argue that demonstrating a technique in front of
students or exposing them to a new material does not necessarily mean that students will apply
this technique or new knowledge successfully. Thus, it is the instructors’ job to give students
enough time to try things out, gain hands-on experience, negotiate new knowledge among
themselves, and to think on high cognitive levels to find solutions. Organizing activities that give
students these opportunities reflects the instructors’ choice of a student-centered approach to
teaching. In this approach, although instructors may seem to have less control or to be less
present, they create a learning environment that enables students to acquire strong learning
practices and makes students confident that they are capable of solving problems and handling
new materials. This teaching approach can easily be applied by instructors if they have a deep,
solid knowledge of the material as well as its pedagogy, allowing them to handle unexpected
questions from students. This student-centered approach also allows instructors to keep track of
students’ improvements in order to ensure that students will be able to achieve the course
objectives. In other words, applying the student-centered approach implies the use of formative
assessment, which takes place during class time.
Drawing on Biggs (2012), Light and Cox (2009), and Ramsden (2003), I argue that
making a meaningful selection of material and adopting a student-centered teaching approach
will not necessarily lead students to adopt a deep learning approach if instructors do not use
adequate assessment tools. Driven from their eagerness to get their school work done while
overwhelmed with many other things, students often focus on what will enable them to pass their
exams and obtain good grades. Students begin their studying by planning how they are going to
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 72
tackle the assignments. Assignments, therefore, are the road map that guides students as to how
to study. Assignments that ask students to use high cognitive skills such as creating, evaluating,
and applying theory in practice are signs that students need to apply deep learning approaches.
Furthermore, I argue that to handle assignments in which students will analyze, critique or apply
what they study, students need to be trained for a sufficient period of time and in a number of
different ways on how to meet the requirements of such high cognitive skills. Formative
assessment can function in this way as a tool to monitor and guide students so that they acquire
the necessary skills step by step. At the same time, formative assessment means that students
receive feedback in a timely manner to keep them on the right track. To sum up, instructors who
make thoughtful plans as to how to facilitate their students’ learning processes do not see
assignments as suppressive tools that put students under pressure, but rather as teaching tools
that reduce students’ anxiety and help them to adopt deep learning approaches.
Instructors’ Choices That Lead Students to Adopt Surface Levels of Learning
Drawing on Ambrose et al (2010), Biggs (2003; 2012), D’Andrea and Gosling (2005),
Entwistle (2009; 2012), Doyle (2011), Kiraly (2014), Ramsden (2003), Shulman (2004), Schiro
(2013) and Tyler (2013), I argue that instructors who adopt a “cover-the-ground,” instructor-
centered approach and use summative assessment hinder students and push them to adopt a
surface learning approach.
Instructors who adopt a cover-the-ground approach while selecting the material are more
concerned with the quantity of the information to be taught than its quality (Ramsden, 2003;
Shulman 2004). The cover-the-ground strategy overwhelms students with material that is not
necessary. Therefore, the freedom that higher education instructors have in selecting material can
be misused if instructors make choices that are not backed up with thoughtful reasons for their
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selections. Indeed, having this freedom might lead instructors to believe that they have the right
to overwhelm students with unnecessary material or to require material for no reason other than
that they were interested in it, while ignoring what the students are interested in. Such an
inadequate use of this freedom may shut down students’ interest not only in the course, but also
in the discipline. Imposing unreasonable and unnecessary workload forces students to scan the
material rather than thinking deeply about it. Thus, facing mountains of information, students
adopt learning approaches that enable them to scan the material at superficial level, focusing on
isolated pieces of information that they are unable to connect or to put in the right order due to
their lack of a strong foundation. The lack of a strong foundation is the result of not having
enough time to dig deep in order to understand the essence of the material, because the course
has forced them to study at a surface level. The heavy workload that students encounter in such
courses deprives them of the opportunity to build on their previous knowledge and hinders their
chances to build on what they were supposed to learn from this course. Consequently, the choice
of class material to be offered in such a course does not align with course objectives that would
require students to acquire high cognitive skills. Thus, the cover-the-ground strategy might make
it difficult for students to take higher-level courses in the same discipline, as they will have
developed shaky foundations.
Adopting an instructor-centered teaching approach is the second curriculum-based choice
that may lead students to adopt a surface learning approach (Kiraly, 2014; Sorvali, 1996). I argue
that, although this approach might be a good choice in certain contexts, instructors need to know
when and why to adopt it. Although the instructor-centered approach sometimes saves time and
helps students to develop a background in a discipline they have never studied before, it might
turn students into passive learners. In addition, adopting this approach might mean that
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 74
instructors impose their beliefs, attitudes and perspectives on students. In this case, instructors
become the only source of knowledge and do not give students opportunities to inquire, search,
or make meaning of the material independently. Thus, students’ learning opportunities are
reduced to taking notes in lectures and subsequently memorizing them in order to reproduce
them in exams. Instructors who depended solely on adopting this approach think that acquiring
knowledge is a linear process and that they can transmit their knowledge to their students
directly (Kiraly, 2014). In addition, they assume that all students will understand and absorb this
knowledge in the same way. The instructor-centered teaching approach denies students their
autonomy and treats knowledge as a static entity. This passive learning will hardly align with
course objectives that acquire students to develop high levels of cognition.
The third component of the curriculum that leads students to adopt a surface learning
approach is instructors’ choices of assessment tool (Biggs, 2012; Light and Cox, 2009). Drawing
on the literature discussed earlier in this chapter, instructors who select quantitative material to
cover the ground and also adopt an instructor-centered approach to teaching will most likely use
summative exams that ask students to retrieve memorized material. These types of assessment
tools send signals to students that they do not need to be thoughtful learners, but rather to adopt
rote and surface learning approaches. Even if the summative exams ask students to analyze,
critique, evaluate or apply the material, the students will most likely fail because they have not
gotten opportunities to practice them in class or received constructive and formative feedback to
guide them.
Finally, instructors’ reflection on their selections with regards to these different
components of the curriculum plays a significant role in enhancing the learning opportunities
that direct students to engage in higher levels of thinking.
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CHAPTER THREE: METHODS
In this chapter, I will describe the research method I employed to collect and analyze
data, and ensure the credibility and trustworthiness of my finding to answer my research
question. This chapter will also discuss the limitations and delimitations of the study and how I
as a researcher behaved ethically. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the
teacher’s choices of the curriculum on how students learn at the undergraduate level. As the aim
of this study was to focus on understanding the practice of teaching at the undergraduate level,
this study employed a qualitative data collection method (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam, 2009).
Qualitative research focusses on specific people and investigates their perspectives,
understanding, beliefs and interpretation of a particular experience (Maxwell, 2013). Maxwell
(2013) also argues that qualitative studies are flexible and can be modified during the research.
This flexibility is important as it provided me with the freedom to adjust some aspects of the
study to develop a better understanding of the phenomenon I investigated. Maxwell adds that
while quantitative researchers tend to be interested in studying outcomes, qualitative researchers
tend to focus on understanding connections, relationships and experiences. Thus, exploring the
relationship between the three components of curriculum and investigating how they shape
students’ learning experience required conducting a qualitative study.
This qualitative research gathered rich, informative and descriptive data. According to
Maxwell (2013), to get such data, the researcher should go to the field where the phenomenon
investigated takes place in order to get first-hand experience. Therefore, in this research,
interviews, observation, and documents were utilized as the primary means of data collection to
give the researcher a first-hand experience. These qualitative data collection tools were used to
answer the following research question: How do instructors’ approaches to curriculum shape
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undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels of thinking in the United
States?”
Research Design
In this research, a case study approach was employed to collect data as it was the best
research method to answer, “how and why” questions (Merriam, 2009). According to Merriam
(2009), a case study is a bounded system with in-depth description and analysis of one object or
entity. In addition, a case study includes many components and portrays their interaction.
Therefore, a case study allowed me, as the researcher, to accomplish my goal better than other
tools. However, this study was a multiple case study as two cases were used. The units of
analysis for this study were two teachers who taught undergraduate level courses at a American
private university that offered undergraduate degrees.
As this study investigated how core principles of good teaching shaped students’ learning
experience at the undergraduate level, I sought out two teachers at a post-secondary institution
who were willing to participate in this study. I interviewed the two teachers, observed their
classes for 6 to 9 hours each, collected their syllabi as documents, and conducted focus groups
with the students in the classes I observed. According to Merriam (2009), collecting different
data types allows the researcher to triangulate across the types during analysis. This triangulation
allowed me to have rich formative data about how the two teachers’ selection of the three
components of curricula shaped their students’ learning at the undergraduate level. Thus, while
the observations and documents allowed me to have access to visible and tangible information,
interviews provided the study with the teachers’ perspectives and interpretation of their curricula
choices.
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Sample and Population
To obtain the most meaningful data that could inform my study, I used purposeful sampling to
select the study site and participants. According to Merriam (2009), purposeful sampling allows
researchers to understand the research problem in a natural setting. Therefore, a set of criteria
was established to select both the site and the participants. As suggested by Merriam (2009),
these criteria were identified to align with the purpose of the study.
Site Selection
The site needed to be a college or university that offered 4-year undergraduate degree
programs. Therefore, community colleges and institutions that did not offer B.A. and B.S.
degrees were excluded from the study. I did not focus on studying how teaching a specific
demographic, social or economic level of students happens, so none of these factors played a role
in selecting the site. As my study focus was on the core principles of good teaching in any
discipline, the study took place in two different schools at a private university on the west coast.
In addition, it did not matter if the institution was teaching or research oriented because there is a
big percentage of teaching-track instructors at research universities, and I used this track as a
criterion in selecting the participants. However, I was constrained by geographical location, so I
conducted my study in California. I conducted my study at a private university at which I had a
network of colleagues to facilitate the recruitment of participants.
Participant Selection
As I investigated instructors’ pedagogies, I had difficulty finding instructors who agreed
to participate in my study. Therefore, I used purposeful network sampling (Merriam, 2009). I
contacted a small number of instructors at the university where the research took place who met
the following criteria and informed them about my study. I asked them if they were interested in
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participating and if they would recommend other instructors. In addition, I asked a few
colleagues who worked at this university for a very long time to put me in contact with
instructors who would be interested in participating. In addition, I contacted faculty fellows in a
center that helped faculty to improve their teaching at the university. I contacted the faculty who
worked with this center because they would be interested in improving the quality of teaching in
their institution and they had welcomed other instructors to observe their classes. To collect
meaningful, rich, and in-depth information, I used the following criteria to guide me in the
selection of the participant instructors.
Criterion 1. The first criterion in selecting each instructor was the number of years of
experience he/she had. As the study did not investigate how faculty develop their teaching
strategies or the problems they encounter when they first teach, the participant needed to have at
least 3 years of teaching experience at the undergraduate level. The reason that I excluded
instructors who had just 1 or 2 years of instructing was that they might still be in the process of
adjusting to the teaching responsibilities and had not yet developed teaching strategies to be able
to talk about and explain. In other words, I assumed that after teaching for 3 years, instructors
would likely be able to explain on their teaching strategies and inform me about the reasons
behind their choices of the curriculum. This criterion helped me to have rich information with
seasoned teachers who developed their own way of teaching. The teachers in my sample had X
number of years of experience teaching in higher education but not necessarily 3 years teaching
undergraduate students in particular.
Criterion 2. The second criterion was the teaching load. The participants were in the
non-tenure teaching or clinical track, not the tenure or research track. The teaching or clinical
track meant that 80% of this instructor’s time was devoted to teaching. Thus, the instructors’
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main focus and their time was focused on teaching rather than research. Therefore, I excluded
instructors who were primary researchers or tenure track as they spend 80% of their time on
research and just 20% of their time is spent on teaching. Both teachers in my sample were non-
tenure track faculty who spent a minimum of 80% of their time teaching.
Criterion 3. The third criterion in selecting a participant was to be a full-time faculty
rather than part time (e.g., adjunct or lecturer). The reason for applying this criterion was to
guarantee that the participants had typical faculty workloads, work hours and job responsibilities.
A part time or adjunct faculty might have had a different job that occupied their time that they
would not be devoted to developing teaching strategies. Both teachers who participated in this
study were full-time faculty at the time of the study.
Criterion 4. The fourth criterion was that the participant would agree to allow me to
interview him/her, grant me access to his/her class, syllabus and students. This criterion allowed
me as a researcher to have rich formative data because without this variety of tools, I would not
have been able to triangulate. Both teachers agreed to this criterion.
Criterion 5. The only criterion I employed to select the students who could participate in
the focus group was their willingness to devote 1 to 2 hours to participate in the focus group.
Instrumentation and Data Collection
In this study, I investigated instructors’ choices of the content and workload, the teaching
approach, and assessment tools, and how these choices shaped students’ learning approach. As I
conducted a qualitative study, I, as the researcher, was the main instrument in collecting the data
(Merriam, 2009). As explained above, I collected four types of data: interviews, classroom
observations, focus groups, and documents. The conceptual framework I presented in chapter
two informed the interview protocol, guided me to decide the points I observed in class, helped
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me to identify the documents that enriched the data I collected and gave me a richer corpus of
evidence from which answer my research question.
Data Collection Procedures
Interview
According to Patton (2002) and Meriam (2009), the interview is an instrument that
researchers use to collect data that cannot be observed. The covered data includes, but not
limited to the respondents’ opinions, perspectives, thoughts and interpretations. According to
Patton (2002) and Meriam (2009), interviews allow the researchers to understand how the
respondents make sense and meaning of the phenomena investigated in the study. In addition,
interviews are an essential tool to collect data when conducting a case study in particular as
interviews allow the researchers to get in-depth data that reflect participants’ perspectives and
attitudes regarding the phenomena being researched (Merriam, 2009).
For this study, I interviewed two teachers. Although I planned to interview each
instructor before observing their classes, they were not available. Thus, I interviewed each one of
them one time after I finished the observations. However, I was able to talk with them briefly
before or after each class observation. The interviews were voice recorded and transcribed for
analysis. The semi-structured interviews were guided by a list of questions or topics to be
explored with both participants (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam, 2009). As a novice researcher, I had a
set list of questions ready to be asked in order to get responses from the two participants, which
facilitated the analysis process. The questions were open ended to give the participant flexibility
to express their opinions, perspectives and attitudes. The semi-structured interviews allowed me
to probe in order to garner better understanding of interviewees’ responses. According to
Maxwell (2013) and Merriam (2009) probes give participants the chance to expand on their
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earlier responses, which gave me concrete examples of the participants’ perspectives and
attitudes about teaching. To be more specific, in the interviews, I asked the instructors about how
they aligned their choices of the content, teaching approaches, and assessment tools with the
course objectives and how they thought their choices played a role in forming their students’
learning experience.
The interviews allowed me also to follow-up after class observations and ask questions I
generated during the observations. The main interview with each instructor lasted for 75 minutes.
In addition, I had three short interviews with the first instructor before the class and each of them
was three to five minutes and two interviews with the second instructor. They also were three to
five minutes.
I started the interviews by reading the interview protocol, which included thanking the
instructors and acknowledging the importance of their participation. I explained the study as well
as the timeframe and the recording procedures. According to Merriam (2009), the researcher
may ask interpretive questions, ideal position, Devil’s advocate and hypothetical questions to
elicit answers from the participants. Therefore, I avoided multiple-choice questions, leading
questions, and yes or no questions. The language used in the questions were understood by the
respondents, and I avoided using jargon and terms that the two instructors might not be familiar
with (Merriam, 2009). While interviewing, I explored and inquired and did not share my
opinions (Merriam, 2009). However, I tried to build rapport with the participants as Weiss
(1994) recommends.
Observation
According to Merriam (2009), observation is one of the best data collection tools because
it gives researchers the opportunity to have firsthand experience of the phenomenon being
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investigated in its natural setting. To keep focus on the observation, the researcher should keep
the research question and the conceptual framework in mind to avoid getting distracted by
factors that are irrelevant to the study (Merriam, 2009). However, according to Merriam (2009),
a case study should be flexible in that the main focus of the study may change over the course of
collecting and analyzing data. Thus, the observer may notice things in the field that lead him or
her to make changes in the research question or the conceptual framework (Merriam, 2009).
I observed the first instructor for 6 hours and the second for 8 hours in Fall 2016. I
consulted my conceptual framework to keep myself focused on the main concepts I needed to
observe in the two classrooms. Therefore, I focused on how students were engaged and
interested in the material. In addition, I observed how students interacted with the new material
and to what extent the instructor helped students to build on their previous experience and to
construct new knowledge. In the observation, I recorded the instructional approach and the time
the instructors dedicated to lecturing in comparison to the time students were able to engage in
higher thinking activities. In addition, I observed how the instructors challenged and trusted their
students and how students reacted. While observing, I captured as much detail as possible
regarding the frequency and the quality of feedback the instructors provide to students. In
addition, I focused on how the two instructors used assignments as a teaching tool.
While observing, I tried to take verbatim quotations of what was being said in class as
well as observer’s comments. The observer’s comments were reflective ones that captured my
reactions, hunches, and speculations so I could use them during analysis. For the purpose of my
study, I did not plan to be a participant observer, so I maintained a strict observer stance to have
a more accurate observation of the class. With my limited experience conducting observations
for research purposes, it was difficult to be a participant observer because I did not want to miss
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important detail as I do not have a lot of experience in observing. In addition, it would have been
confusing for me to participate and observe at the same time particularly because I was not
familiar with the courses I observed.
I observed two different types of classes in social studies so I could compare them. Thus,
I observed classes in two different schools and the two courses were in two different disciplines.
The first was International Relations (IR) and they met for 50 minutes three times a week, while
the other course was in the School of Education and met for 2 hours and 40 minutes twice a
week. Thus, I observed the first one twice a week for 3 weeks and observed the other three times
in 2 weeks.
Documents
According to Merriam (2009), observing a class may impact the way teachers design
their lessons and how they manage their courses. Therefore, there is a need to use documents and
artifacts to enrich the data collection process. Thus, I asked the two teachers to give me access to
their courses websites, but they declined. However, they sent me their syllabus, which gave me
access to important data such as the number of readings assigned, the frequency of the
assignments and their topics, and how in-class and out-of-class activities were designed to
facilitate students’ learning experience. In addition, the IR instructor sent me a copy of the
written feedback she gave to students after their presentations.
Students Focus Group
To examine how teachers’ choices of the curriculum create learning opportunities for
students, I used another data collection method. I conducted student focus groups with some of
the students in each of the two courses I observed. I conducted two focus groups with students in
the IR course. There were three students in the first focus group and three in the second. The
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number of students enrolled in this class was 25. In addition, I conducted two focus groups with
students in the Education course. Four students participated in the first one and three students
participated in the second. Sixteen students were enrolled in this course. The number of students
who participated in the focus groups was lower than what I expected because the focus groups
were conducted in the last week of classes. Each of the IR focus groups lasted for 60 minutes
while the focus groups in the education course lasted for 40 and 45 minutes.
My questions in the focus groups were informed by my conceptual framework. Thus, I
asked students about how the teachers’ choices of the readings, content, and workload influenced
their learning opportunities. In addition, I asked students about their engagement in the course
and if there were in-class activities that enhanced their learning opportunities over other
activities. Then, I asked students if the assessment tools utilized by the instructors enhanced their
learning experience, and if the assessment and feedback guided them to study in any specific
way. Over all, I designed the questions to elicit answers that gave me rich data about how
students found their instructors’ choices of the curriculum, and if the choices facilitated or
hindered students’ learning experience.
I asked open-ended questions in a semi-structured interview to give students the
opportunity to talk as much as they wanted. Students’ answers in the focus groups enriched my
study and provided me with data related to my framework. I used a voice recorder and gave
students in the focus group consent forms with their rights as participants.
Data Analysis Procedures
The data analysis process started while I was collecting data. I analyzed typed transcripts
of interviews, class observation, student focus group transcripts, syllabus and analytic memos to
have a thick, rich and descriptive data. I started this process by writing reflective memos of my
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initial thoughts, reactions, attitudes and questions (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam, 2009). Then,
analyzing the data was a process of deconstructing and then reconstructing the data using codes
to give the data new meaning to answer my research question (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).
According to Corbin and Strauss (2008), the researcher may understand a word in a certain way
while interviewing or observing but while analyzing the data, the researcher may discover that a
word has many different connotations and may change the interpretation of the data. Thus, while
analyzing, the researcher needs to “consider all the possible meanings that might be contained in
a word or phrase” (Corbin & Strauss, 2008, p. 78). Merriam (2009) recommends starting the
analysis process while collecting data because, “without ongoing analysis, the data can be
unfocused, repetitious, and overwhelming in the sheer volume of material that needs to be
processed” (p. 171).
I started the coding process by making notations next to parts of the data that answered
my research question (Merriam, 2009). I started by labeling the data with a priori codes that
represented my conceptual framework such as selecting material, teaching approaches,
assessment tools, deep learning and surface learning. At the same time, I used open coding, as I
was open to any code that might emerge from the data as long as it helped me to answer my
research question. Thus, I labeled data with empirical codes. After this step, I used axial coding
to categorize the codes (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The two axial or umbrella codes were:
curriculum choices that helped students to engage in higher levels of thinking and curriculum
choices that led students to learn on a surface level. Driven by my conceptual framework, the
codes that came under the curriculum choices that helped students to adopt deep learning
approaches were: appropriate workload, significant selection of the material, interactive
activities, constant feedback, and instructors’ continual reflection. In contrast, the codes that
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came under the axial code of curriculum choices that led students to adopt surface learning
approaches were: heavy workload, cover the ground material, passive learner, lecturing,
summative assessment, and lack of reflection.
I worked on each case separately to develop clear analysis about the curriculum choices
of each instructor and how they shaped students’ learning opportunities. Then, I compared and
contrasted my findings of the two cases in order to deepen my understanding of each of them and
to enrich my study. I also compared and contrasted between my findings and those I consulted in
the literature review section in chapter two.
Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations
One of the limitations in this study, with qualitative study, is the trustworthiness of the
participants. The willingness of instructors to talk about their teaching choices, and how they
applied them, is a constraint that I was not able to control. Many instructors refused to participate
because they might have been worried about judgments and critique. In addition, there was no
guarantee that what instructors said in the interviews was true. Instructors might not have shared
all the details or told the truth, as they have full control of what they say. Thus, instructors said
some things in the interviews that they did not demonstrate in class.
The trustworthiness of the students in the focus group was another limitation as I could
not make students tell me something they might not want to share. In addition, students might
not have told the truth because they were worried about how other students in the group would
judge them. Another limitation was that the instructors and their students might have changed
their behavior when I observed the class.
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Time was another limitation, as I had limited time for field data collection. Scheduling
was also a constraint as I needed to find instructors who were interested in participating in the
study and who taught their courses in time slots that did not conflict with the courses I was
teaching.
Delimitations
One of the delimitations of my study was that I focused on teaching at the undergraduate
level as teaching graduate students might have needed different perspectives and choices.
Another delimitation was that I focused on courses taught in a language that I know. Thus, I did
not observe any language courses. Another delimitation was the location of the site as I
constrained myself to Southern California.
Another delimitation was that I am a novice researcher. I did not ask some questions that
I would have asked had I been seasoned. In addition, I did not probe when I had some
opportunities. I also might have missed things in my observations because I am novice.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
As this study was a qualitative one and I, as the researcher, was the main instrument of
collecting, analyzing and interpreting data, this might have raised a flag of issues of credibility
and trustworthiness as I have biases. Therefore, I used four different methods of collecting data
to show that my findings were supported by strong evidence from multiple sources (Creswell,
2009; Merriam, 2009). Although using different data collection methods and procedures did not
guarantee validity, they were nonetheless essential to the process of ruling out validity threats
and increasing the credibility of my study (Maxwell, 2013). In addition, asking the participants
themselves about what they thought regarding the study gave it more validity. I looked for
negative evidence that might contradicted my findings. As long as contradictions did not affect
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the validity of the finding, they opened the door for more research (Miles, Huberrman, &
Saldaña, 2014).
To support the trustworthiness of the study, I used the if-then strategy. My conceptual
framework guided me and kept me focused on what I needed to observe and what I needed to ask
about in the interviews. For example, I tried to find connections between what instructors said in
the interviews and what they did in their classes in regard to their choices of the content and
workload, how they applied their teaching approaches, and how they assessed students.
Therefore, if the instructor claimed something in the interview, I asked students if they
experienced it in the course. Thus, asking many questions, probing in the interviews, and having
focused observation helped me to rule out any chance of spurious relations (Corbin, & Strauss,
2008).
In addition, as I teach undergraduates, I utilized the notion of reflexivity to improve
integrity in my study. According to Merriam (2009), reflexivity is the researchers’ self-
awareness of when the data affects them emotionally or intellectually. Thus, I addressed my
biases by critically reflecting on them through analytic and reflective memos I wrote
immediately after each interview and observation. In addition, I was conscious about recording
everything without making judgments or allowing my own beliefs about teaching to influence
my data or my analysis. Writing down observer’s comments helped me to express my personal
opinions and attitudes, think critically about what I observed, and make the observation process
more than a recording machine. Recording everything and taking observer’s comments also
meant that I had rich description, and thick informative descriptive data. They were an asset to
the credibility and trustworthiness of my study (Creswell, 2013; Merriam, 2009).
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Ethics
According to Merriam (2009), ethical concerns usually rise while conducting qualitative
studies. One ethical concern was the potential violation of participants’ privacy and data
confidentiality. Therefore, I applied certain strategies to ensure that my study was conducted in
an ethical manner. Thus, I started by getting an Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to
conduct the study at the university where the research took place. Before conducting the
interviews, I gave each teacher a written consent form that showed their rights as research
participants. The form included where I worked, why I was conducting this study, and how I
would store the data. In the consent, I confirmed the confidentiality of the interviews and
observations and that I would not mention the name of the university where they worked. I
informed them that their identities would be anonymous as I used pseudonyms (Merriam, 2009).
In the consent, I also asked their permission to record the interviews. I answered their questions
so they had confidence in participating in my study. Then, I asked the two instructors to choose
the time and place for the interviews and the class they wanted me to observe. I thanked them for
doing me this favor to reduce any stress (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). In addition, after
concluding the study, I would contact the two instructors in the two case studies to thank them
and share my findings with them. I would also discuss the implications and recommendations of
my research with them, with the goal of a productive outcome.
Conclusion
I conducted this study to investigate how teachers’ choices of the curriculum shape
students’ opportunities at the undergraduate level. In this study, I focused on whether teachers’
choices of the content and workload, the teaching approach, and the assignments created learning
opportunities for students or hindered students’ learning process. To answer my research
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question, I interviewed two instructors, observed classes, collected documents and conducted
student focus groups. I used semi-structured interviews and the focus groups protocols in order
to collect rich and informative data that captured the perspectives, thoughts and attitudes of
instructors and students.
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CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS
The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate how instructors’ curriculum choices
can shape undergraduate students’ learning opportunities. These choices include the decisions
instructors make when selecting course content and class assignments, and when developing
their teaching approach. The first three chapters of this dissertation were grounded in literature
that has previously explored how instructors’ curriculum choices lead students to adopt either
surface or deep learning approaches. The literature shows that selecting overwhelming content,
adopting teacher-centered approaches and depending on summative assignments hinder learning
and lead students to adopt surface learning approaches. On the contrary, meaningful selection of
content, adoption of a student-centered approach, and use of formative assignments facilitate
learning and lead students to adopt deep learning approaches. In this chapter, I present the
findings of the study in which my central research question is this: How do instructors’
approaches to curriculum shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels
of thinking in the United States?”
This dissertation was a qualitative study in which I applied the multiple case study
method to compare and contrast two professors teaching different undergraduate courses in two
different schools at the same university. The first professor taught a course in the field of
Political Sciences and International Relations and the second was in field of Education. For both
courses, I interviewed the instructor, observed classes, conducted focus groups with students, and
collected artifacts such as syllabi, videos, and written feedback. I observed the first class for 7
hours and the second for 8 hours. Whenever it was possible, brief informal interviews were
conducted with the professor after the classroom observations. I conducted four focus groups
with students, two from each course. After a providing a brief description of each university
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where the study took place, I present the findings and analysis of each case study separately. I
then conclude the chapter with a cross-case analysis.
Description of the University of the South West
The study took place at the University of the South West (USW), situated in southern
California. The number of undergraduate students at the University of the South West in the
2016- 2017 academic year was approximately 19,000, of which 96% of undergraduate students
at the university were full-time students and 3.2% were part-time. At the time of the study, the
university offered associate, bachelor, certificate, and graduate degrees, in addition to providing
opportunities for undergraduates to conduct research. Numerous programs and fellowships were
offered to help support and fund student projects. The student to faculty ratio was 9:1, and the
average class size was 25 students. Less than one third of the faculty body was tenured; more
than two thirds were non-tenure track.
Case Study #1: Dr. Zahier
Professor Zahier was a member of the non-tenure track faculty. She had worked for more
than two years at the Political Science and International Relations at the University of the South
West. Fall 2016 was her last semester at the university before moving back to the East coast.
Professor Zahier had a Ph.D. in Government from one of the Ivy League universities where she
had also worked as an instructor and Teaching Fellow. While teaching at the Ivy League
university, she was a winner of the university Distinction in Teaching Award for three
consecutive years. At the Ivy League university, Dr. Zahier taught courses such as “Politics and
Authority,” “Police State,” “Political Psychology,” “Ethics of Statecraft” and “International
Law.”
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Dr. Zahier stated that many professors advised her not to focus on teaching and to invest
her time and effort in research to get tenure track positions if she planned on staying in academia.
However, Dr. Zahier said that she had a passion for teaching and her passion lead her to invest
her time in developing her teaching skills. Dr. Zahier’s passion for teaching started when she was
a graduate student and taught sections under the supervision of outstanding professors who
taught her how to teach. Dr. Zahier mentioned that her advisors used to give her detailed
descriptions of how she could lead a section while still giving her space for creativity. Dr.
Zahier’s advisors used to meet with her and the other teaching fellows weekly and give them
clear instructions on how to instruct students. Dr. Zahier described the way they guided her. She
recalled one might say:
“…Here’s how I think would be a good structuring for the section,” like a lot of times
professors are like, they give you the room to be creative, which is nice, but they’ll say,
“here’s what I want you to think about for this section.”
Dr. Zahier added that one of the main teaching skills she developed as a teaching fellow
was to be vocal about what she was doing in class and what she expected from students, so as to
avoid any confusion that might hinder students’ learning. She said:
…you should at the beginning of the class make sure that nobody feels lost, that you give
a strong sense of here’s what we did, here’s where we are, here’s where we’re going,
because I think just having that bird’s eye view helps the students, so I learned through
that.
Dr. Zahier went on to explain that her experience as an undergraduate student also
informed her teaching. Although she was an engaged student, she struggled to understand some
of the complicated ideas and she took this with her as an instructor:
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I have high expectations of [my students] but I also know that this is tough stuff. It took
me two years of grad school to master so I don’t expect students to understand
everything, I think it has managed my expectations.
Although Dr. Zahier had never attended a professional development workshop about teaching,
she followed journals about andragogy such as the American Political Science Association
Journal, which has a section for research about teaching Political Science. According to Dr.
Zahier, the firsthand experience she had as a teaching fellow and reading about teaching Political
Science and International Relations informed her teaching philosophy and enriched her teaching
skills.
Dr. Zahier argued that there should be integration between the courses offered in a
department and that students should be exposed to different teaching approaches in order to
develop different skills and learning approaches. She reported that she designed her courses
primarily in a way that got her students engaged. However, she expressed that some traditional
teaching approaches were also necessary for students and that students could learn a lot from
them. Dr. Zahier explained students need:
…professors who are more about like let’s learn these skills of critical thinking and
practicing critical thinking and making speeches and talking and interacting and
communicating and group work so you want the interactive classes and I think [they] also
need the boring classes.
She classified “boring classes” as classes where the professor talked for an hour or more
and she said even though these courses were boring students still could learn a lot from them. Dr.
Zahier explained that these traditional teaching courses were important for students as they might
develop skills such as paying attention, listening actively, taking notes and synthesizing them.
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When I observed Dr. Zahier’s class about “Global Challenges,” Dr. Zahier mentioned
that it was her first time she had offered this International Relations (IR) course. She decided to
offer this course because the IR department gave her space as a creative instructor to teach the
course the way she wanted. She said:
…with a course like this I can be very creative about deciding what challenges I think are
important in the world and really put more of my fingerprint on the course. So this course
really is a reflection of me more than, you know, other courses that are survey courses.
She added that she liked teaching this course because she could select topics that she felt
comfortable teaching as she was expert in them. Dr. Zahier explained, “I have expertise in
international security, repression, violence...that is broadly what I know the best.”
Dr. Zahier said that, while working at the University of the South West, no senior faculty
had reviewed her syllabus or given her feedback on the courses she designed. Therefore, she
reached out to her colleagues from the graduate school to discuss her syllabus with them.
Meanwhile, she used her advisor’s syllabus in one of the courses, explaining that, as her advisor
was an eminent scholar/-expert of the field, she just followed the syllabus and made some
changes to the readings.
The Global Challenges class met three times a week, each time for 50 minutes. Dr.
Zahier’s classroom was on the first floor of the Political Science and International Relations
building. The tables were set in a U shape facing the blackboard and a big screen. Three or four
students were sitting around each table and all students were facing forward. However, four of
the observations were debates or presentations conducted by students and they took place in a
big hall in a different building. The hall had a stage and two large screens facing the audience. In
the four observations in the big hall, there was a camera-man positioned at the back of the hall to
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video record students’ debates and presentations. Almost all of the students were white, two
students might have been Latino and one student was Asian.
For the remainder of this section, I offer the findings in response to my research question:
How do instructors’ approaches to the curriculum shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to
engage in higher levels of thinking in the United States?” There are six different findings. The
first finding is that the content Dr. Zahier selected created opportunities for students to learn. The
second finding to emerge from the data is that the teaching approaches that Dr. Zahier adopted
created opportunities for students to achieve deep learning. The third finding reflects how the
assessment tools Dr. Zahier utilized created opportunities for students to become independent
learners and to develop inquiry and group-work skills; and how the feedback she gave to
students directed them to organize their thoughts and to think on deeper levels. Finding number
four reveals how the different components of the curriculum were selected to align with the
course objectives. The fifth and final finding pertains to Dr. Zahier’s reflection on her selection
of the curriculum and how she might improve it in the future. The first four findings aligned with
the concepts in my conceptual framework. Although the fifth finding was not mentioned in the
conceptual framework, it was discussed within the five main concepts in the literature.
Content
In the following pages, I will discuss how the content Dr. Zahier selected created
opportunities for students to learn. This finding has five themes associated with it. First, Dr.
Zahier narrowed down the number of topics so she could discuss them on a deeper level. Second,
she selected topics about which she had expertise because she believed doing so enabled her to
effectively guide students’ learning. Third, she structured and organized the readings for each
topic with the goal of scaffolding students’ learning. Fourth, she picked interesting topics and
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current challenges to keep students interested and motivated. Fifth, she challenged students and
communicated with them about her expectations.
Narrowing down the content. Consistent with the literature on effective teaching, Dr.
Zahier was intentional about the number of the topics she covered in the course. Ramsden (2003)
and Biggs (2011) argue that effective teaching requires instructors to be able to narrow down the
content to what is necessary instead of adopting the “covering the ground” approach. According
to Ramsden (2003) the “covering the ground” approach is what instructors do when they try to
cover all of the material related to the course and touch on it on a surface level rather than going
into depth. What emerged from the interviews and observations is that Dr. Zahier deliberately
narrowed down the number of topics so that she and her students would engage with topics on a
deeper level. For example, the syllabus was structured so that the course covered one challenge
in a week or two, and six challenges in 15 weeks. The students spent three to six sessions on
each challenge, amounting to a total of 150 – 300 minutes of class time on each topic. Moreover,
in the first two to four sessions of each topic, students were required to do the reading that would
be discussed in class and the last session on each topic was reserved for students to debate the
challenge. Dr. Zahier believed that the assigned reading and searching for new material to
prepare for the debate gave the class a chance to investigate each topic, read about it from
different angles and to be exposed to how each challenge had been understood by the intellectual
community. She stated:
I think the way to do that is to not try to do too many challenges, right, of course like this
I could have done 20 global challenges and done a challenge a class and I didn’t do that. I
opted…we covered conflict in great depth and whether or not intrastate, new wars, rise of
terrorism. And then we focus on climate, we focus on food security, we focused on cyber
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war cyber terrorism, development and global inequality. And others, that’s kind of in
some ways this course was, like, narrow given the subject matter it was pretty narrow but
that was my personal preference to do that…because the other part of challenging is
understanding the global challenge and there’s no way I could teach 20 challenges in
every class, go over how scholars have understood it and then try to explain how policy
makers have managed it so I think that was the other part of it was I wanted to be kind of
narrow and pick and choose and not try to cover every single [one], to try to cover the
major global challenges as I understood them.
Here, Dr. Zahier recognized that it would have been possible to require the students to
examine “20 global challenges” with “a challenge a class” but that doing so would not have been
pedagogically feasible. She said she would not have been able to teach 20 challenges in such a
way that she and the students would have been able to examine the way that scholars have
understood each challenge and how policy makers have responded to each challenge. Thus, she
opted to select less content, allowing her and the students to investigate each one in greater
depth. Dr. Zahiers’s decision to narrow down the number of topics allowed her to strike a
balance between the amount of new material she wanted her students to learn and the amount of
new material she believed they could study in depth. This approach aligns with effective
teaching practices that promote students’ opportunities to engage in the content provided, rather
than merely scratch the surface (Biggs, 2011).
Expertise. Dr. Zahier mostly relied on her expertise to guide her selection and use of the
content. In the majority of instances, Dr. Zahier selected and used content in which she believed
she was an expert. For Shulman (2004) argues that, for instructors to be effective, they must be
masters of the discipline they teach, in addition to the andragogy related to the discipline and
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andragogy more generally speaking. Dr. Zahier believed herself to be an expert in International
Relations and used this expertise to create opportunities for her students to engage in the content
in a substantive way. For example, she said, “I could really use my expertise in teaching the
course to keep it interesting and to delve into a great deal of depth.” She believed her expertise
allowed her to cultivate interest and promote deep investigation.
Students in Dr. Zahier’s class saw her as knowledgeable about the subject matter in the
way she taught them. For example, one student in the focus group mentioned, “whatever we
struggled with Professor Zahier would break it down here so it was always good to have her help
with PowerPoint and explanations on the lectures.” This student believed that Dr. Zahier was
able to explain the content in a way that allowed him to understand it. Similarly, another student
said: “I knew that she’s going to break it down for us whatever I didn’t understand I didn’t really
like focus on it too much and then she always got our back.” Here again, Dr. Zahier was able to
bring her knowledge of the subject in order for her students to gain a better understanding of it.
In contrast, there were instances where Dr. Zahier’s lack of knowledge on a subject
interfered with her ability to select and use content effectively. Dr. Zahier mentioned that she
made bad decisions while selecting the readings she offered on the global inequality topic
because she lacked expertise in this challenge, having chosen to cover it because she felt it was
important or because it was the kind of topic that undergraduate students would be interested in,
and therefore self-motivated to study. However, lacking expertise in the topic impeded her
ability to select appropriate readings. Dr. Zahier mentioned that her inadequate selection of the
readings for this topic notably hindered students’ understanding.
In the interview, Dr. Zahier commented on this session:
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I think the global inequality lecture just I didn’t feel strong on it, I thought the reading
was a bad reading I didn’t think the students, I thought the students were interested in the
topic and I think many students care about development like they want to know, at that
age they have their heart in the right place they want the world to be a fairer place and
they’re all about redistribution and I think I really I failed that class just yeah I didn’t feel
good about that I didn’t feel like an expert.
What Dr. Zahier said was reflected in the class, as she read from her notes for a long time
and was disconnected from students who were listening passively. After she finished reading
from her notes she asked: “Does globalization make global inequality worse?” The students
remained silent. A student asked, “How to measure inequality?” Dr. Zahier asked students if they
would like to answer the question. The students were silent. She said, “I know the reading was
very technical,” and then she started to explain why it is difficult to measure inequality using
PowerPoint.
What emerged from the interview, focus groups, and observation is that Dr. Zahier was
better positioned to select adequate readings and provide an appropriate learning environment
when she was knowledgeable about the topic. Thus, when Dr. Zahier had a high level of mastery
over a topic she was able to guide students and challenge them to create with the topic. However,
when she lacked the appropriate level of mastery, she selected readings that puzzled the students,
tried to force what she knew on them, and was not able to create learning opportunities that make
an understanding of the topic accessible to students. This finding aligns with Shulman’s (2004)
argument that mastering pedagogy of content is not enough to facilitate students’ learning, if
instructors lack deep knowledge of the content itself.
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Selecting interesting content. Dr. Zahier was intentional about selecting interesting
content that keeps students eager and willing to get engaged in the class. Inconsistent with the
literature on effective teaching, Ramsden (2003) argues that for students to enjoy a course and be
willing to exert effort and put time into studying, instructors need to make the content of the
course genuinely interesting. The syllabus showed that Dr. Zahier picked current and significant
global challenges such as terrorism, conflict, civil wars, and climate change. Dr. Zahier
explained that one of the main criteria she considers when she selects the content is its interest to
students. In the interview, Dr. Zahier said, “I wanted them to be engaged as well, so I wanted it
to be something that they felt interested in”. Dr. Zahier believed that to keep the students
interested and engaged in the course, the content should be interesting and attract their attention.
The students in the focus groups confirmed their interest in the topics. One of the students
commented on the readings, stating that “they were interesting and built a foundation. It is what
you expect from IR class. The readings about terrorism were interesting because I liked us
connecting what we study in class to what is going on out in the world”. Another student added,
“she does just interesting readings and she does have like a really cool like tie in with the
readings to the course material so I feel like she does a good job motivating you.” The students’
comments show that Dr. Zahier’s selection of “interesting readings” successfully stimulated their
interest and motivation to learn.
To keep students interested, Dr. Zahier used academic and nonacademic sources that
covered each topic from different perspectives to connect the course not just with academia but
also with real life. The syllabus showed that Dr. Zahier used websites, links, and articles from
professional magazines to keep up with current events. Dr. Zahier explained that using these
variety of non-academic sources allows her to better keep up with the speed of the current events
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related to the content: “they constantly evolving before our very eyes as we actually speak so if
it’s a course that’s situated in the past that’s really not going to be beneficial.” She added:
If it is more policy you know I like to link to a website that’s a one that kind of goes
through the current debate or the current issues in that area so I do like those, it doesn’t
always have to be an academic article. It is important to have news events as well so
news articles when we were talking about some weeks I would just say look here’s the
most recent article that has been written in the economist about what’s going on in Syria,
let’s read that let us have a discussion about current news events
Dr. Zahier explained that selecting dated topics or readings that are “situated in the past”
would not have been advantageous for students and would not achieve the course objectives that
require students to be able to discuss current events. The syllabus showed that Dr. Zahier used
varied articles and videos from diverse news channels and websites. For example, in the session
about the war in Syria, she used a variety of websites such as the BBC, Russian TV, Amazon
News, the New York Times, and the Council on Foreign Relations to introduce students to the
most recent commentary about the topic.
Students appreciated that Dr. Zahier engaged the class in discussion about interesting
topics related to current events, which met their expectations from IR course. They explained
that discussing current events motivated them to get engaged in the class. One student said, “it is
IR and there are so many issues that international relations is working on like actual people are
doing these things and these are challenges that are happening now.” Here, the student
acknowledged that Dr. Zahier’s selection of the content kept them interested in the course by
covering “challenges that are happening now.” The students’ comments align with Ramsden
(2003), who argues that if students feel disconnected from the content, they lose their interest in
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the course. This finding is also aligned with Biggs’ (2012) arguments that when instructors
ignore or fail to connect course content with real life situations, students feel frustrated and lose
interest in the subject area.
Organizing and structuring the readings. Dr. Zahier said that she tried to select
readings that she perceived would fit well together. Dr. Zahier’s conviction that the readings
should be organized and fit well together is consistent with Ramsden’s arguments that well-
organized curricula, that build on what students studied before and organize new material in
appropriate order, are vitally important elements for an effective educational experience. Dr.
Zahier mentioned that “I was trying to organize and structure the readings…I’ll see if it is
something that would fit well with that week.” She also added “that’s how I basically build a
literature review, I build a course is to kind of get a sense of the network of citing and what
people consider is important.” Thus, she picked the reading she believed that those who
specialize in the field would consider “important” and essential to develop students’
understanding of each topic.
The syllabus showed that in each topic that Dr. Zahier offered, she started by introducing
a foundational reading that gives students background knowledge about the problem. Then, she
zoomed in and focused on the impact or the results of the problem using case studies. In
addition, she used case studies that were more concrete. Hence, it seemed that she wanted
students to have a base that they would be able to build on in the following sessions. for
example, in the week about climate, Dr. Zahier focused in the first session on the rapid growth in
CO2 emissions after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, which is a foundational reading about
global warming. In the same session, she assigned a reading about the technologies they would
need to meet a 1.5C goal, which offered suggestions for how to tackle the problem and avoid it
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from expanding. In the second session about climate, Dr. Zahier focused on the impact of climate
change on food insecurity. Thus, she selected two readings that built on the first session: the first
was about global food security under climate change and the second was about climate change
impacts on global food security. In the session about food security, students made connections
and built on what they had studied in the first session.
Dr. Zahier: Great! but if the food insecurity is limited to some regions why do we
consider it a global challenge?
S5: Because with limited financial capacity in the developing countries for example, their
trade and dependence on their production to cover food requirement will decrease and
their need for food aid will increase.
S6: It seems that developing countries will be less able to deal with climate change,
which means that they will be more vulnerable.
S7: The reading talked about how dietary deficiencies and related health effects will
impair physical and mental capacities [students cited from the reading but I did not hear]
Thus, after discussing global warming and its impact on different regions in the first
session, students were able to talk about how the impact of global warming leads to the problem
of food insecurity and how food insecurity would affect people’s capacities in developing
countries.
The syllabus showed that Dr. Zahier assigned theories, articles and case studies on each
topic which students praised in the focus groups. A student said:
I think it’s a combination… they weren’t necessarily so theory based like I mean I guess
they kind of were like the Fearon ones were a little bit more like oh this is a theory but
it’s the way that she like, she took those theories but then she applied it to a case so you
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can see how you would break down those theories and apply them to real world situations
which I think is helpful because even if we don’t remember what the theory is called we
can apply it to other situations in the future.
This student appreciated that the course offered different types of literature to help them
understand the content. The student liked that the readings were a “combination” of theories,
practices and case studies. The “combination” helped students to use the case study to
understand the theories that they experienced difficulty understanding. Similarly, another student
said:
This course has really been like my introduction to what IR courses look like and I
definitely have gotten to understand IR theory a lot better from like the readings that
she’s had, even though that wasn’t the focus of this course like it wasn’t a theory class it
was about how we apply theory to the problems in the world today
The student here appreciated that Dr. Zahier introduced them to IR theories so they could
have a better understanding and a foundation to build on. Another student commented on the
content, saying that:
I think if you’re managing global challenges the theories should be like at the base level
so I thought that she did that in a good way because I think sometimes if you present it as
a theory people are like, ugh I don’t want to read this or like it like seems kind of
overwhelming but she like did it well so that you got the basic understanding of where
things were coming from
The student here appreciated that the content did not just focus on the abstract but rather
consisted of different types of reading to introduce students to IR theories and guide them to
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make connections between theories and real world challenges, so that the students would
understand “where things are coming from.”
The students appreciated that they may not “remember what the theory is called,” but
understood what it was about and believed that they knew how to apply IR theories to real life
problems. What the students said in these last quotations reflected that Dr. Zahier did not
structure the content in a way that forced students to adopt surface or rote learning, but rather
organized the content in a way that created learning opportunities for students that guided them
to understand the relationships between IR theories and practice.
Biggs (2003), Entwistle (2003), and Ramsden (2003) argue that when students find a
relationship between the different components of the content, they are able to create new maps of
knowledge. Here, organizing the readings to build on each other seemed to help students to
expand their maps of knowledge and to build an understanding of the new material using the
foundation they had established. Thus, organizing and structuring the reading helped students to
understand the content on a deep level. Dr. Zahier’s strategy in selecting content that constructed
students’ knowledge was consistent with Shulman’s (2004) explanation of effective teaching, in
which instructors structure the content so that it makes sense to them first so they can help
students to make sense of it. Therefore, the approach that Dr. Zahier adopted in organizing and
integrating the content gave students opportunities to make connections to and build upon what
they studied before.
Level of challenge. Although Dr. Zahier challenged the students while selecting the
content, she adjusted her expectations as to what they could get out of it as novices in the field.
According to Ramsden (2003), one of the instructor’s jobs is to make the challenge interesting
rather than dull by clarifying for students what must be learned in order to achieve understanding
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and what can be left out for the time being. Dr. Zahier explained that IR topics are tough and
complicated and that it took her two years to fully understand her topic when she was a graduate
student. However, she expected students to put in effort and try to understand what was
appropriate for their level. She explained that:
My expectations are that they will be challenged by it and they may not understand it
completely so that’s how I always kind of approach a class when I’m preparing is that
hopefully those students took aim and they tried, but even as an undergraduate when I
would come across these articles there were many, I would try to read them but I
wouldn’t understand what they were on about, so my expectation is that they make an
attempt
Dr. Zahier said that some of the readings’ level of challenge was an obstacle that might
have prevented students from deep learning. She added that some of the IR topics were difficult
and that she did not expect students to understand them in depth until they discussed the reading
in class. However, her expectations were that students would try and make an effort to
understand as much as they could and that class time would help them to understand more in
depth.
Although students in the focus groups agreed that the readings were sometimes dense,
heavy, hard and could be overwhelming, they did not mind the challenge as they were interested
in the topics and found them important, and foundational for IR courses. They also said that the
in-class discussion helped them to understand what they did not get from the reading. A student
said, “I feel like a lot of the papers were heavy and harder to read but they’re also the foundation
for a lot of what we know now about IR.” The students did not mind the challenge because they
felt that they developed a foundation for IR. Another student said:
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Professor Zahier did an excellent job in explaining the difficult concepts and guided us to
apply the theories on current events related to the topics we study. I mean I sometimes
did not understand the readings but I got it after the discussion.
The students explained that the readings were challenging, however the instructor used
class time to work on what they did not understand. Similarly, another student said, “I think the
readings were cool, yeah sometimes they could be overwhelming but it was important stuff it
was like a lot of good information.” The students accepted the challenge because they felt that
they acquired new knowledge.
Teaching Approaches
In this section, I will discuss how the teaching approaches that Dr. Zahier adopted created
opportunities for students to achieve deep learning. Dr. Zahier developed activities that
motivated students to adopt deep learning approaches. This finding includes two key elements.
First, Although Dr. Zahier lectured in class, she gave students opportunities to discuss the
content. Second, Dr. Zahier developed simulation activities to give students opportunities to
negotiate, make decisions, solve problems, and work in teams. The simulations were also
opportunities for students to collaborate, interact, and work independently of the instructor.
Class discussion. Although Dr. Zahier lectured to emphasize the important points that all
students should have understood from the readings, she engaged students in discussions to check
what they understood. Ramsden (2003) argued that giving lectures might be a successful
approach if it secures an understanding of fundamentals that students might not get through
discussion alone, and if the lecturers imagine themselves as students, using language that appeals
to students and gets them to listen actively. In her syllabus, Dr. Zahier wrote: “This is a
lecture/discussion course with not only a significant amount of interaction between you and me,
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but also between you and your colleagues.” Dr. Zahier explained in her syllabus that her plan for
the class was to integrate both lectures and discussion. When she was asked about that in the
interview, Dr. Zahier remarked:
So my expectation is that they make an attempt and then when they come to class what
I’m hopefully able to do for them is to highlight what was important about what the
author was saying and what they should have picked up and what the puzzle was and
what the kind of important take-aways were from the readings. The most important thing
is really an attempt, that you like sit down and you try to understand it to how you can
and then when I go over it hopefully that attempt and then me going over it will come
together to have it click for them in their head.
Dr. Zahier recognized that some of the content was tough, so she expected students to do
the readings and “attempt” to understand. However, she thought that there was a need for her to
help students to focus on what was important and to recognize what could be ignored for the
time being. She gave lectures with a mind to “highlight what was important about what the
author was saying and what they should have picked up and what the puzzle was and what the
kind of important take-aways were from the readings.” In other words, she expected students to
do the readings even if they were complicated, and she thought she could play a role in making
the content less confusing. Her plan was that, providing students do their job – making an
“attempt” to understand the readings, attend class, and listen carefully – they would understand
what she expected them to get from the course and it would “click for them in their heads.”
Although Dr. Zahier lectured in class, she also asked students questions in the middle of
the lecture in order to get them engaged and to make sure that they were active listeners.
Dr. Zahier: So now how do you think intellectual property are protected?
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Student #1. One of the major ways is through TRIPS, which is the World Trade
Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights in
1994, which sought to set a standard of intellectual property rights on an international
scale.
Student #2. For example, it attempts to create a balance between private and public
interests, but this balance is difficult because naturally these countries and companies are
inclined to interpret the laws in their best interests, and constraining intellectual property
rights can hinder economic development in developing counties, which can result in
unfair gains in developed countries.
Dr. Zahier: Why do you think the result is unfair in developed countries?
Student #3: The American government policymakers were very concerned about their
country’s trade deficit, and thus, of competitiveness, so basically pushed for protection
instead of competition and diffusion while developing countries had very little input.
Student #4. But on a more global scale this limits the global access to the newest
innovations, developments, and creations in medicine.
Hence, although Dr. Zahier gave lectures to make sure that students were clear about
what they should understand from the content, she gave space for students to share what they
understood. When she was asked about what she thought about her teaching approaches, she
commented:
I think that when I’m lecturing even my lectures are nontraditional because I like use
slides and I like in the middle of lecture I will ask questions and I will have a little
discussion so I don’t think they’re like traditional lectures the way I’ve been used to
lectures like going to school in England and New York where it was very much like the
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person would just come up on the podium and lecture and you have to just be really good
at like staying in tune. So, I think that I do like a mix of things but in many ways, I think
I’m just very non-traditional in how I go about it.
Although she lectured, Dr. Zahier did not follow the typical structure of lectures she
experienced when she was a student. She explained that she does not simply lecture all the time
while students listen passively. She said that even when she lectures she “will ask questions and
will have a little discussion.” Thus, she tried to mix lecturing and discussion to get students to
understand in one way or another. What Dr. Zahier said aligned with what the students
experienced in her class. One student said, “she does a good job of explaining them and making
sure we take away the key concepts.” The student praised Dr. Zahier’s use of lecturing to explain
what was difficult in the reading and what they struggled with. The student liked that Dr. Zahier
helped them to focus and “take away the key concepts.” Similarly, another student said:
Professor Zahier did an excellent job in explaining the difficult concepts and guided us to
apply the theories on current events related to the topics we study. I mean I sometimes
did not understand the readings but I got it after the discussion.
The student appreciated that Dr. Zahier enabled her to understand the content, whether by
explaining it through lectures or by facilitating discussions that focused on creating opportunities
for students to apply and relate the content to current events. Thus, Dr. Zahier adopted different
approaches in class in order to help students understand the fundamentals, enabling them to
incorporate them in discussions that required higher levels of thinking.
Simulations. Consistent with the literature on the kind of effective teaching that leads
students to adopt deep learning approaches, Dr. Zahier created opportunities for students to make
decisions and solve problems. Biggs (2012) argues that effective teaching leads students to
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acquire functional knowledge that informs decision-making and conditional knowledge that
helps students to know when, where, and why to apply knowledge. Sorvali (1996) and Kiraly
(2014) argue that effective teaching gives students enough time to try things, get hands-on
experience, negotiate knowledge among themselves, and think on high cognation levels in order
to find solutions. What emerged from the interviews, focus groups, and syllabus is that Dr.
Zahier included simulation activities to give students opportunities to gain hands-on experience,
negotiate, make decisions, and solve problems. For example, the syllabus showed that Dr. Zahier
organized two simulations: one of them was after they studied conflicts, and the second was after
covering civil wars. Dr. Zahier believed that creating such opportunities for students would
position students to think on high cognition levels and to apply the content they had covered to
situations close to what they may experience in the field of International Relations (IR). She was
thoughtful about the activities she created to get students engaged and to push them to apply
what they had studied in an environment that simulated what they may experience in the real
world of IR. She said that “[she] really tr[ied] to tailor the activities to the subject area; to the
particular class itself,” and gave a detailed description of one of the simulation activities:
The conference was over two days full days, and the US Army War College came to us, I
just coordinated and the simulation was over a territory dispute in Kashmir, between
India and Pakistan and students were divided up into delegations that represented states
so like India, Pakistan, China, UK, US, Great Britain, and over the course of two days
they would meet. The forum was the UN so there was like a UN special representative
who was there to try to help them solve the crisis and then they came to an agreement at
the end but the agreement it was not realistic. It didn’t solve the dispute they agreed to
meet again to solve the dispute, so that was incredible experience and when they did
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those when the class did the intervention simulation in class I knew exactly the students
who had done the conference were like so with it. They were so good.
Dr. Zahier explained that she coordinated a conference with the US Army War College to
simulate negotiations between different countries over a conflict. The conference took place over
two full days to bring students as close as possible to a realistic experience. Dr. Zahier
coordinated this simulation and described it as an “incredible experience,” because it gave
students opportunities to collaborate, work in groups, play roles, negotiate, and try to solve
problems. This student-centered approach allows students to be independent learners who do not
wait for the instructor to transfer knowledge to them, but rather enjoy their autonomy as
individuals and take responsibility of their learning (Biggs, 2011; Light and Cox, 2009;
Deresiewicz 2015; Kiraly, 2014). Dr. Zahier added that:
…they have learned how to speak and how to negotiate and that really became evident
during the simulation that they just had that other one that was really intensive and so I
was just really impressed by how they applied what they learned from the conference in
the intervention simulation.
Here, Dr. Zahier explained that the simulation was an opportunity for students to acquire
some of the skills they need to develop in the field of IR. She said that the simulation was a
chance for students to “learn how to speak and how to negotiate.” Dr. Zahier also claimed that
students who participated in US Army War College conference were able to apply what they
learned from the conference in another simulation. Negotiation is a skill that does not require the
students to adopt rote or surface learning, but more than that, applying what they had learned in a
different situation encouraged the students to make use of the learning opportunities they were
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offered and to adopt deep learning approaches of their own accord (Ramsden, 2003; Entwistle,
2009; Biggs, 2012; Kiraly,2014).
Students in Dr. Zahier’s class appreciated her teaching approaches and praised the
simulation opportunities she created for them. Students expressed how the simulations stimulated
their interest in the course, their ability to apply what they had learned, and to gain hands-on
experience. One student said:
I love the simulations I feel like that’s what gets me most involved and engaged in the
readings and the course work and that’s the kind of thing that’s more applicable to our
careers too, those are the skills we’ll need in the future, I feel like her style of teaching in
IR is really important.
The student explained that the simulation was the learning opportunity that got her “most
involved and engaged.” The simulations gave the student the chance to apply what she had
learned and to develop the skills she might need when she pursues her career after graduation.
Similarly, another student commented:
Yeah I definitely think it gives a unique form of appreciation for what actually happens in
the world like just how diplomacy works beyond just learning about what’s actually
happening if you have to simulate it it’s really unique.
The student argues that the simulation conference was a “unique” experience that allowed
her to understand and appreciate “how diplomacy works.” It was a firsthand experience of what
is “actually happening” in the field of diplomacy. Another student explained:
…before I would think before oh why can’t two states agree on this one issue or dispute
it you know why is it so hard to come up with a solution? And then being for example in
ISNE you got to like experience it from the other side and like when you were into it like
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let’s say there’s a section being scheduled but you would have said on the other hand
Russia wants to meet with you or like China, or the side whom you would go and meet
with, who you would council, who are allies and that had to be I’m not even joking that
had to be decided within a matter of seconds keep in mind that you have also like to
delegate inside your team so you have to agree with them, disagree with them, convince
them.
The student claimed that the simulation conference gave her the chance to develop
different skills that are required for diplomacy work. She explained that she developed the skill
of making decisions “within a matter of a seconds,” and to cooperate with other members of the
team in order to start a talk or to negotiate with other teams or delegations. Another student said,
“I felt like it was not only about me and my judgment, it was…enemies, and allies, we had to
talk to everyone and make sure we all were on the same page as far as teamwork went…it was
the best negotiation exercise that I’ve ever done hands down. It was awesome.” The student liked
the idea that the simulation got her to think beyond her own opinion or judgement and to think as
a team member who needed to co-ordinate with the group so that they could plan how to
negotiate as a team. According to Johnson and Johnson (2005), students are more active and
productive, and use higher levels of thinking and strategizing, when they interact in a positive
and interdependent environment. Similarly, a student explained:
…it was partially because we didn’t really know what to expect going in like we didn’t
really get a lot of details we got this long packet, like 8 pages or something like that, it
was on the materials of the issue of the Kashmir region, and then that’s really all you
knew that you were going to be doing. But really quickly you had to learn how to
strategize as a team and then like he said they were already kind of set alliances because I
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was representing US so then I was gonna work closely with Britain and other countries
and he was Pakistan so there was like kind of already set roles and Professor Zahier
always says that having to fulfill the role or role-play a scenario kind of helps you
understand them a lot better and I felt like that was very true.
The simulation was a chance for students to “learn how to strategize as a team.” Dr.
Zahier created a learning environment that required students to be active participants who take
responsibility for their learning. The simulation was an opportunity for students to practice
teamwork, group thinking, planning, decision-making, and to negotiate; and these are skills that
push students to learn on a deep level rather than simply memorizing. Working as a team gives
students the chance also to experience sub-tasks and choose what suits them. Thus, Dr. Zahier
adopted the student-centered approach and created activities that encouraged students to get
engaged and take responsibility for their learning. She also gave them the opportunity to learn
how to learn, and how to develop skills they can carry with them after graduation. According to
Kiraly (2014), one of the main characteristics of the student-centered approach is the students’
interaction and independence from the instructor. In this setting, the passive and silent student
becomes an active participant in classes where group work is carried out.
The students also appreciated the Libya simulation, of which one student gives an account:
We separated into states and then she gave us, she separated us into groups and then she
gave us like roles so like there were two states, and then like one group was the military
the other group was the civilians. Yeah that was kind of cool too because she brought up
it was not only like lecture based sort of like learning process but enabled our
participation as well so we got to sort of like visualize a topic that we were talking about.
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This simulation allowed students to “visualize a topic,” giving students a chance to
“textualize” ([sic] Perhaps: contextualize) the reading they had studied about war and conflict
before the simulation. The students appreciated that they got a chance to participate, rather than
listening passively to a lecture. Similarly, another student said:
…I liked the simulation because it forces you to get really familiar with the general
situation so we did the Libyan Intervention Simulation which I thought was extremely
interesting because we looked at it from our own State’s perspective but we also had to
be pretty aware of what other states wanted to come from it. We also had to be aware of
what the situation was that culminated in that meeting.
Creating activities that forced students to think out of the box and consider different
perspectives that they may disagree with encouraged students to be involved in discussions or
negotiations that did not force them to adopt rote learning. The students agreed that the
simulation activities were a unique experience that they learned from more than they learned
from most other IR classes. While students frequently remain passive learners in other IR
courses, they enjoyed seizing the chance that they were given to be active participants. One
student explained:
…not a lot of other IR professors do simulations and make sure that you have the
understanding of the material while making you kind of apply it all the time I feel like it’s
very different from a lot of like basic IR courses where they just make you do readings
and just like sit through lectures.
Thus, Dr. Zahier created opportunities for students to create teams, play roles, and
collaborate to represent delegations. In addition, the simulations helped students to develop skills
such as giving speeches and negotiating. The simulations were designed in a way that respected
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students’ autonomy and created a learning opportunity in which students could be active and
become engaged in higher levels of thinking. The simulations were learning opportunities that
students appreciated a great deal and considered unique as they were required to play an active
role, which does not happen in most of the IR courses they have taken. This finding aligned with
Miller et al’s (2013) argument that most undergraduate education forces students to be passive
learners and overwhelms them with unengaging PowerPoint presentations and lectures, while
active teaching should be encouraged in order to respect students’ autonomy. The findings were
also consistent with Roksa, Arum and Cook’s (2016) argument that the value of higher education
is in question because the majority doubts if there is a return on the money invested in it. The
scholars question whether higher education can prepare students and prepare them for the work
environment after graduation. The authors claim that most employers complain that higher
education does not prepare students for teamwork and taking responsibility, and does not provide
them with the skills they need to be an effective member of a team.
Assessment
There are two main themes in this finding. The first theme reflects the assignments Dr. Zahier
developed and how they created opportunities for students to develop new maps of knowledge
and become independent learners. The second theme pertains to how the formative feedback Dr.
Zahier gave to students directed them to organize their thoughts and to apply deeper levels of
thinking.
Assignments. In the following pages, I will discuss how Dr. Zahier’s assignments
created opportunities for students to be independent learners, develop inquiry skills, and develop
group work skills. Dr. Zahier utilized debates and final projects as assessment tools. She used
debates as a tool for students to discuss the content they covered. In the final group project, Dr.
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Zahier asked students to pick global challenges they were interested in and work together to
research the challenge they selected. Giving students the freedom to study and investigate what
they were interested in is consistent with Light and Cox’s (2009) argument that to improve the
quality of teaching in higher education, instructors should give students the space to forge the
habit of constructing knowledge they can continue to mobilize after graduation.
Debates. Consistent with the literature on the student-centered learning approach, Dr.
Zahier created learning opportunities in which her students could discuss and debate the content
and participate as active learners. Trigwell et al. (1999) noted that instructors who encouraged
students’ autonomy, gave students enough time to interact and discuss what they understand, and
provoked debate and challenged students’ ideas, had students who were less likely to adopt a
surface approach. This finding aligned also with Ramsden’s (2003) argument that high quality
teaching necessitates a recognition that students must be engaged with the content in a way that
is likely to enable them to practice the art of inquiry, learn how to cooperate, search, negotiate
knowledge, and to use imagination.
In the syllabus, Dr. Zahier gave students a guideline of what she expected them to
achieve in the debate:
o Specificity–to what extent did you bring up specific information or data that
demonstrated your point or rebutted the other side’s?
o Cohesiveness–to what extent did it seem like your team had worked together to
come up with an organized and well-structured performance/explication of your
side?
o Style–how well did the team perform and present information?
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o Counter-points–to what extent did you anticipate counters or points made by the
other team/side and try to muster up information that directly addressed them?
The guideline showed that Dr. Zahier developed an assignment that encourages students
to be independent learners and to adopt deep learning approaches. First, she asked students to
inquire about the topic they would be debating and to collect data to support their argument.
Second, she provided them with opportunities and encouraged them to develop their teamwork
skills to show that they were “organized and well-structured in presenting their argument.”
Third, she asked them to consider ahead of time what the counterarguments would be and to
“muster up” data to rebut the other group. This assignment showed that Dr. Zahier utilized the
assessment tool to direct students to think on sophisticated levels and to develop several skills.
Dr. Zahier explained that she used debates as a tool to get students engaged and to guide
them to adopt high levels of thinking. She explained:
…I want them to push back, I love it when they’re amped up and they’re like professor I
don’t buy this or like I think that this is this. I’m probably more of an expert than they are
on these things but in academia a lot of things are an argument, you have an argument
and you use evidence to try to show you’re right but there’s no laws, there are now laws
of nature that like any given argument is definitely the only truth in the world, so they
need to learn how to be analytical and be critical and disagree in debate in a respectful
political right way with each other and with me so I, that’s what I expect of the
interactions is polite, debate, and push back with me and with each other.
Dr. Zahier wanted students to be active and to “push back” and forth to prove their
opinions. She concluded some global challenges with debates in order to teach students how to
develop their arguments and support them with “evidence.” She opened the door for them to
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develop debating skills such as “disagree[ing] in debate in a respectful political right way.” She
also considered the debate as an opportunity for students to be engaged and “to be analytical and
be critical,” which requires them to adopt high levels of thinking. The debate also provided a safe
learning environment for students to interact “and push back...with each other” in an academic
way, which helped students to understand what they did not get from the lectures.
The syllabus showed that Dr. Zahier concluded four global challenges with debates. Each
debate was 50 minutes, amounting to a total of 200 minutes of debate. Dr. Zahier assigned
students groups and assigned each group the topic they would debate for or against. The groups
that were in the audience were required to vote for the team that convinced them. In addition, Dr.
Zahier thought that debates are great learning experiences in which students could develop more
group work skills. She reflected in interview on these sessions:
…the debates went better than I thought they were going to go. The debates did, they
were just very, they really engaged with each other and they became clear that they had
put a lot of work into the debates. I saw notes and I saw all the research they had done
and many of the groups met multiple times with each other which was just incredible so
that really impressed me.
Dr. Zahier explained that debates were significant learning opportunities for students to
work together in groups to organize their thoughts, decide how to collect evidence, and search
for different sources. Dr. Zahier appreciated that students seized the opportunity and invested
effort and time. What Dr. Zahier said aligned with what the students said in the focus groups.
One student commented:
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…I feel like we got still a good understanding of where the conflict lies with those issues
and that was like what the class was about like looking at major challenges so I think that
it helped us look at both sides of the issue a lot better than just the lecture could.
Similarly, another student said,
…she really helped us focus on not only thinking about our own points but thinking
about points that the other group would bring up and coming up with counterfactuals and
just be a better debater by not only being able to prove our points but disprove their
points, so be anticipating what the other side would say was a very difficult and trying
task. It’s not easy, you never know what direction a debate is going to go in but I think
that she did a really good job of like helping us not only like think about it from our own
perspective like from our side of the debate but also look at the other side and I think
that’s like such a different level of analysis.
Thus, the debates helped students to build on what they understood from the lectures and
to develop “good understanding.” The student appreciated that the debates exposed students to
“both sides of the issue,” which is something that lectures may not cover appropriately. The
students liked that Dr. Zahier pushed students to think out of the box and not to think in one
direction but rather to consider the “counterfactuals,” so they might build their debating skills
and develop a substantial understanding of the topic. Dr. Zahier got students to the point where
they were able to organize their thoughts so that they not only proved their points but also
managed to disprove the other group’s points. What the students mentioned in the focus group
reveals that Dr. Zahier created learning opportunities for students by adopting a student-centered
approach, which led students to adopt deep learning approaches as they were required to apply
high cognition levels in order to win the debate. Another student added:
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…I think it was interesting to be on the opposite side as well because you had to listen
and you had to validate them and it was like a different aspect of it. Something that was
needed if it was lecture or debate or just being in the audience.
The student appreciated how the debates were designed because they were not just a
learning opportunity for the performing teams, but they exposed students in the audience to
several opinions and opened their minds to consider different viewpoints and to “validate them.”
The student thought that evaluating the other teams’ debate presented a “different aspect” that
helped students to think about the debate from different perspectives. Another student said:
Yeah I think that it kind of led to more fluid debate because I feel like if both sides had
just what she wanted us to have then it wouldn’t have been like as challenging as it was
in some ways because like we would have been able to disagree with what they’re going
to say if all we had to know was on our power point that she gave us or whatever I think
that it was helpful for us to kind of go on our own and try to anticipate things without
having limited number of resources.
The student liked that the debates were “fluid” because Dr. Zahier did not limit each
group to specific sources or to a specific number of references. On the contrary, she encouraged
students to be independent in their inquiry. To raise the challenge, each group did not know what
shape the opposite group’s research would take, which pushed each group to try to “anticipate”
what the other group might come up with. Another student talked about how Dr. Zahier
challenged them by assigning them which team they would be with and not giving them the
chance to choose. The student said:
I think I had a deeper understanding coming from the opposite side like looking at
something that I didn’t agree with because I had to kind of prove it to myself before I was
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proving it to anyone else and I also could anticipate better what the other side was
thinking if I agreed with the other side more so it kind of lends itself to their
understanding of just like why I could also look at why I didn’t agree with the points that
I had to make so I could like look at potentially what the other side could be saying and
then try to find reasons to go against them so I think it’s especially helpful to be on the
opposite side and I think I probably debated better because of it.
The student also appreciated that they did not get to choose which side they took in the
debate. Dr. Zahier assigned them the topic and their stance on it (for or against), which pushed
them out of their comfort zone and got them sometimes to debate against what they believed in.
The student thought that Dr. Zahier challenged them and got them to challenge themselves,
which helped them to achieve a “deeper understanding.” Another student commented on the
same point, adding:
Being the opposite side, I think that sort of makes the game more interesting because you
have to research so first you have to argue with yourself and your opinion and then you
have to sort of try to pursue the others or like convince them of your points
Another student elaborated:
You could come into it thinking one way like for example like our own topic I didn’t
think that counterterrorism has been doing well the last 10 years internationally but I had
to debate yes for it so it is just really interesting to be able to look at the different topics in
a very unique way like through these debates instead of through just a basic lecture and I
think that really helped solidify our knowledge of the topics.
The students felt that the way Dr. Zahier organized the debates made them think deeply
and asked them to “argue with yourself,” then to think how to convince the audience with their
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argument. Thus, Dr. Zahier succeeded in getting the students to dig deep, think for themselves
and then find a way to argue their points so as to convince other students. Pushing students to
think in counterintuitive ways created opportunities for students to think deeply and not to stop at
the superficial level of cognition. Another student raised a different point about how the group
work played out in students’ performance:
I think that like the team that looked more cohesive and like they looked like they were
working more like a unit even if their arguments might not have been as strong as the
other team they came off as more effective and I think that was a really interesting
phenomenon cause like these people’s points are better but like you know what I mean so
that was interesting I think for us it was like okay we have to have good points but we
also need to work well as a unit to be able to get our point across because there is like an
element of presentation and like the theatrics that you can’t like ignore when it’s being
presented to you in that way.
The student said the task attracted her attention to the fact that a potential factor in debate
is how the group coordinates together and how they perform on stage. The student concluded
that a strong debate was not just limited to “good points” but more how the group “need[s] to
work as a unit” in order to be more effective and organized and to “get our point across.” The
student mentioned how the groups that cooperated more were “more cohesive.”
What Dr. Zahier and the students said about the debate was clearly reflected in the
following extract from the students’ debate about whether WikiLeaks is a force of good or evil
Speaker 1 (WikiLeaks as a force for evil):
Our debate today revolves around the notion that WikiLeaks exists either as a force for
good or for evil within the world. It feels imperative to understand that the existence of
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WikiLeaks is completely legal. The website is hosted in Sweden, where the laws are the
strongest in the world to protect information disclosures of this sort. But this is not a
debate about the legality. It is a question of why WikiLeaks exists now as a force for evil
within the world, and I feel it would be unjust for our group to ignore the fact that
WikiLeaks was first started with the intention of crusading for the public’s wellbeing. But
this is not the case of WikiLeaks today. We can safely assume that our opponents will
spout grand gestures regarding the importance of transparency, the weight of the freedom
of information, and the dire need to hold governments accountable to their actions. But I
want to disarm these points as categories of contention between us. We support these
previous ideas fully. The quest for transparency is unquestionably good. Governments
should not be allowed to run rampant, free from scrutinization [sic]. But the personal
means by which WikiLeaks employs this pursuit is undeniably reckless, biased, and
egregiously negligent. One does no need to search for many examples that highlight these
points. So first, regarding WikiLeaks purported unbiased nature, specifically Julian
Assange, WikiLeaks’s creator, has been very public about his distaste for Hillary Clinton.
Even prior to the presidential election. As a result, the world is now subject to multiple,
recent leaks directed exclusively at Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. This is
textbook bias, completely contrary to what WikiLeaks claims to stand for. There has not
been any information released regarding Trump or his political party, even though
WikiLeaks claims to own documents from them both. Assange has simply weaponized
WikiLeaks to execute his personal preferences over the United States’ election.
Therefore, the arguments for WikiLeaks’ unbiased nature do not hold up any longer.
Secondly, WikiLeaks has prided itself on releasing unedited documents in their entirety.
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First impressions would state that this stance is completely respectable and is actually the
defining nature for what WikiLeaks is: pure, unedited information for public viewing.
But recent leaks display the negligent nature in which WikiLeaks operates. We sought the
definition of what good journalism means, wholesome journalism, the journalism that
WikiLeaks claims to employ within its work every day. The society of professional
journalists, which serves as the preeminent authority, I would say, on journalism globally,
defines in their code of ethics that every true journalist should “balance the public’s need
for information against potential for harm or discomfort. The pursuit of news is not a
license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness.” WikiLeaks has broken this cardinal rule,
time and time again. They know all the dangers that they place innocent people in by
releasing their private information. One, just one, of many recent leaks regarding Saudi
Arabian civilians. Their information included names, addresses, phone numbers, passport
numbers, political affiliations, and more. What more? Marriage certificates that reveal
whether the bride was a virgin upon marriage, divorce certificates, custody battles, and
the most haunting of which involve people’s medical records in this region, citing
civilians battling HIV, Hepatitis C, and other sexually transmitted diseases; records of
men being raped by other men, and women who are also sexually abused. All including
their full names. This is all public information that you and I can search right now as can
they. This is completely unacceptable. Releasing personal information of this type leads
to a very dangerous reality, especially for civilians living in this conservative region. So I
want to pose a question to the audience that I hope will be considered throughout the
entirety of this debate: Will you feel safe professionally, personally, having every text or
email you ever sent, every social media post you’ve ever created, and every medical
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document you have ever been included in being released? It’s just incredible to me that
the argument can be made in favor of those who release this type of information. Privacy
is being forgotten as one of the freedoms that we need to continue fighting for, because
WikiLeaks does not care about the innocent people that they involve in these documents.
I implore you to consider these reasons proving why WikiLeaks is now being used as a
force for evil in the world. What effect could it have on your life, with your involvement?
Speaker 2 (WikiLeaks as a force for good):
Good afternoon colleagues, and Professor Zahier. On behalf of my team, I’d like to thank
you all for attending. We’re here to prove that WikiLeaks is a force for good in this
world. I would like to begin by detailing the recent history of investigative journalism.
Since the 1980s, media conglomerates have grown, and accompanying this growth,
massive cuts in the budgets for investigative journalism. In 2002, a study concluded that
investigative journalism has all but disappeared from the nation’s airwaves due to the
conflict of interest between the revenue sources of the media conglomerates, and the
methodology of an unbiased, dispassionate media, dubbed “accountability reporting.”
This form of journalism aims to investigate serious crimes, political corruption, or
corporate wrongdoing. Now, our biased media is infiltrated with numerous politically
correct opinion pieces lacking grit and transparency. Due to this decrease in real news
stories, it begs the question: How much do we really know? In 2006, a new platform was
founded called WikiLeaks. As you all know, since its release date to now, hundreds of
thousands of poignant stories, and information about governments, international relations,
military acts, corporations, and more, have been published. WikiLeaks aims to hold
people accountable for their actions, which reiterated that the government is not in
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control, and provides power to the people. In the words of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian
Assange, “Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better
society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption, and a stronger
democracy in all of society’s institutions, including government, corporations, and other
organizations. A healthy, vibrant, and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital role in
achieving these goals. We have the right to know what is happening within our worlds,
and if traditional media is not going to provide us with this information, then we must
access it somewhere else. On July 12, 2007, news outlets reported the deaths of
insurgents along with two Iraqi journalists due to an airstrike in Baghdad. In 2009
WikiLeaks released video footage of that event, and behind me is that footage…
In this transcript taken from my classroom observation students were very involved and
engaged in the debate. They showed a deep understanding of the topic as they covered it from
different angles and used evidences to support their positions. The group that argued that
WikiLeaks is force for evil gave an example of the leaks of “people’s medical records in [Saudi
Arabia], citing civilians battling HIV, Hepatitis C, and other sexually transmitted diseases;
records of men being raped by other men, and women who are also sexually abused. All
including their full names.” The students used the example of leaking private information and
medical records to support that WikiLeaks is a force of evil as they do not respect people’s
privacy.
At the same time, the group arguing for WikiLeaks as a force for good gave the following
example as evidence of how WikiLeaks revealed facts to expose governments’ corruption
because the media is biased and trustworthy:
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The data collected from the interview, the focus group, the syllabus, and the observation
show that Dr. Zahier adopted the student-centered approach in order to create learning
opportunities which facilitate students’ deep learning. This finding aligned with the literature
about the student-centered approach and how it creates opportunities for students to transform
their knowledge. Kiraly (1995) explains that the student-centered approach depends on the
transformative concept of knowledge. This concept emphasizes the autonomy and the
empowerment of the learners. Thus, every student is treated as an individual who has his/her way
of thinking, getting knowledge and finding relationships between means and results. In this way,
instructors do not impose their knowledge on students, but can facilitate the process of acquiring
the subject matter.
Project. The syllabus showed that the final project consisted of a presentation about the
topic each group would investigate followed by a written report about the project. When she was
asked about how she developed the assignments for this course, Dr. Zahier said:
The presentation was about their final paper which was the independent group research
project. It was my way of saying look, I can only pick a few challenges to go over in this
class but what this gives you a chance to do is go and pick a specific global challenge and
investigate it so we had people talking about Syria, we had people focusing on refugees,
so I want them to kind of like this gives them a chance to get more specific and learn, so
it really is an independent, it really is an independent research project and not tied to any
of the challenges we covered in class. Unlike the debates which had to do with applying
with they studied the week before.
The way in which Dr. Zahier designed the final paper offered students the opportunity to
work on an “independent research project.” Thus, Dr. Zahier created space for students to study
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what they wanted, and not just the global challenges she had selected for them. Although she
“picked a few challenges to go over in the class,” the final projects were not tied to any of the
topics they studied before. She gave students the freedom to inquire about any global challenge
in which they were interested and to investigate it as a group. Hence, Dr. Zahier gave students a
chance to (1) study a challenge they are invested in, (2) to work independently and develop
research skills, and (3) to enhance their group work skills.
In the focus group students agreed that they appreciated that the assignments in this
course were different than the assignments in most of the IR courses. As one student remarked,
…a lot of IR courses they’re just like, you get one term paper and you have a midterm
and a final and that’s it and it’s all based on the readings or case studies and it’s just like I
feel like her class is so much less pressure because she’s kind of like holding your hand
…a lot of people do reading quizzes and stuff which I don’t really think ever helps
anyone.
The student liked that the final project was not “based on the readings,” unlike most of
the other IR courses in which exams and papers were assigned based on the readings without
giving students the freedom to study what they were interested in. The student also appreciated
that while exams and other papers put her under stress, she felt that the final project in this
course created “much less pressure.” What the student said was consistent with Light and Cox’s
(2009) argument that traditional assessment emphasizes memorization, speed of writing and
thinking, and being tested under very tight time constraints that put students under stresses they
will not face in real or professional life. Another student explained why they preferred the final
project in this course over traditional assignments as follows:
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Our group presentations were all based on puzzles we chose as a group so that was like
kind of free reign anyone can choose a current problem in the world and like kind of
theorize why it’s happening which I thought was really interesting and like again we’ve
been working with the same group all semester so we kind of had a good idea of who is
interested in what areas and we have a good cohesion at this point so the presentation and
our final paper is with our group too so it’s just like all of it is within our group but it has
been like a really good formative process I think.
The student liked that the final project gave “free reign,” allowing “anyone [to] choose a
current problem.” The student appreciated that she got the freedom to “theorize” or investigate a
challenge she and her colleagues were interested in. Students appreciated working in “the same
group all semester” and it seemed that they developed a “cohesion” that enabled them to enjoy a
“formative process.” Another student explained why they considered working on the final
project a “formative process”:
The other thing that’s been really challenging in a good way is like our research paper
which is she presented the very beginning of the course this puzzle and how that’s a
really effective method of trying to look at an issue and see where the issue comes from,
maybe how to best analyze it or understand it and I think that’s kind of it’s kind of
something where I know I get a lot of papers sometimes where it’s like what do you think
about this issue and what would you do to fix it? And I have no idea where to start so it’s
been really helpful because she kind of like sets up a framework for us to work with like
make it a puzzle and then she’s helped us identify different areas that we should really
look at. What exactly is the puzzle and then what are the different variables that you’re
looking at? So, she gives you the framework to analyze the issue in a very critical way
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but that’s like it’s forcing us to think about it at a different level than like than you
usually have to so I think that her research paper it’s been I think one of the most difficult
things outside of the debate.
What the student said reflected that the traditional assignments that students experience in
IR classes confused them by presenting them with problems where they “have no idea where to
start.” On the contrary, the student thought that the way Dr. Zahier developed this assignment
guided them toward an understanding of what they were doing. Dr. Zahier helped students to
think of a framework and to consider the assignment a “puzzle.” Dr. Zahier fostered students’
learning process, but she did not do the work for them. She did not try to transmit her knowledge
to students but rather tried to guide them to transform their own knowledge, opening the doors
for them to “identify different areas that we should really look at.” In addition, students
explained that being walked through “the puzzle” allowed students to “analyze the issue in a
very critical way.” Critical analysis is a sophisticated level of thinking that Dr. Zahier’s selection
of this assignment allowed students to achieve. In other words, the way Dr. Zahier selected the
assessment tool pushed students to adopt higher levels of thinking. Students valued the fact that
the way Dr. Zahier developed this assignment forced them “to think about it at a different level.”
The students liked that Dr. Zahier created ways for them to think in an organized fashion and to
explore new levels of thinking. What the students said aligned with Ramsden’s (2003) argument
that instructors’ main challenge while designing a course is to create learning opportunities for
students to allow their intellect to be stretched to its utmost while studying the material they need
to tackle in order to understand the subject matter.
Similarly, another student said of the assessment:
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It feels like a unique approach sort of giving you the material that you need and you have
to be out there and pick it up and be sort of active and productive instead of like I said
worrying about the tests and the deadlines you have to worry about your research and like
seek for help form your friends and your group mates and made sure that you’re like on
top of the things so you could ask her for advice and guidance.
The student considered the assignment a “unique approach” because, although Dr. Zahier
guided the students, she did not force her understanding on them and did not do the work for
them. Instead, she created learning opportunities and opened doors for them, but they still needed
to “pick it up and be sort of active and productive.” The students appreciated the chance they got
to be “productive” rather than stressed by final papers and exams in other courses. Johnson and
Johnson (2008) and Ramsden (2003) argued that when students are given a chance to work in
groups and interact together, they are more productive. In addition, the students felt that working
in groups reduced their stress because they could “seek help from your friend and your group
mates.” Here, also, what the students experienced aligned with Johnson and Johnson’s (2008)
argument that students’ productivity increases as they adopt a collaborative approach in which
their positive interdependence enhances their learning opportunities.
Students also appreciated that Dr. Zahier did not limit them to specific sources. On the
contrary, she recommended them a book or source as a starting point and let them do their
research and inquire about the problem they wanted to investigate freely. A student said, “[s]he
was like I have this book or like get this book on library and we were like okay let’s do it so she
gave you a starting point to launch off of.” Similarly, another student said, “she gave us a site or
two that would help us find papers and research topics.” This point aligned with the literature
previously discussed that argues that high quality teaching implies a recognition that students
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must be engaged with the content in a way that is likely to enable them to practice the art of
inquiry (Ramsden, 2003).
In addition to the final project, students were required to write reflective papers about
what they learned from the simulations experience. In the syllabus, Dr. Zahier wrote, “You must
submit a synopsis of your experience during the simulation in the class…immediately following
the simulation. What did you learn? What did you like? What did you dislike?” To reflect on
their learning experiences, students said they got a chance to watch how they performed. A
student said that:
She has the point of like recording yourself and then like listening to or re-watching it
which I personally haven’t done on like any occasion so this was one of those rare times
because I just had listening to my voice. But, after watching the videos oh my god that
was horrible and I think I could I was thinking that maybe I should have talked more,
maybe I should not have done this, or should have said this instead of this, and it was
more about not more but it was also about talking for like extended periods of time where
you could crack the tension of the audience.
Thus, one of the other things that students appreciated about the assignments in this
course was that she forced them to “listen or re-watch” themselves and to assess their
performance so they would learn from their mistakes and enhance their delivery and presentation
skills.
However, Dr. Zahier said that she thought that students did not really seize the learning
opportunity she created for them. Although she said that she was impressed by the students’
engagement and investment in the debates and simulations, she was disappointed by the
presentation. She said:
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I thought the presentations were a little bit disorganized at times and signaled to me that
maybe they weren’t working with each other, some of the groups were better about this
but I think they did what I kept telling them not to do which was spend a lot of time on
background in a way that didn’t show well here’s how we’re using evidence to support
the argument in a structured way. I want to see that they’re prepared and I want to see
that they practiced and if you’ve been doing that you shouldn’t be going over the amount
of time that you’re given which happened many times with the presentations.
Here, Dr. Zahier was not satisfied with students’ performance in the presentations which
came a step before they wrote their final project. Dr. Zahier thought that some groups were not
organized because they were not working closely together. She did not like that students focused
on backgrounds and did not have a structured argument supported by evidence. However, when
she was asked why she thought that they were not well organized, she explained that the groups
were larger than they should have been and that they might have been more organized if they
were in groups of two or three. She said:
I actually don’t think groups should be bigger than 2-3 people. So, my other class had the
groups were two people for the most part, there was one group that had three people,
really good presentations, they were excellent. I think a smaller group size is more
conducive to that, … because when you have more people it’s harder to coordinate with
all five of you in the group or all six of you in the group to like be somewhere to practice,
so I cut them some slack there with the problems with coordination given larger group
size and I hope they will do a better job after the feedback I gave them.
Although Dr. Zahier was not impressed by the students’ presentations, she referred the
problem to the difficulty of coordinating between a big group and reflected that if she had asked
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students to work in small groups of two or three, they would have done a better job. She also
explained that the presentations were students’ first investigation of the challenges they picked,
and as such she hoped that the feedback she gave them would put them in a better position to get
more organized when they worked on the final project.
The way Dr. Zahier aligned these assessment tools with the course objectives was
consistent with the work of Entwistle and Entwistle (1997), who argue that a poor alignment
between course objectives and assessments leads students to develop surface learning habits such
as reproducing isolated pieces of knowledge, imitating the structure of content developed by the
instructor, developing distorted maps, and structuring content to generate answers to anticipated
questions. On the contrary, students who are guided to be independent learners, expand their
maps of knowledge, and think at high cognition levels are more likely to develop an individual
conception of the discipline by adopting deep learning approaches.
Feedback. In the following pages, I will discuss how the feedback that Dr. Zahier gave to
students directed them to adopt deep learning approaches. Dr. Zahier’s feedback was formative,
helping students to build their knowledge and to think at deeper levels. Biggs (2003) argues that
effective teaching provides students with frequent formative feedback. In addition, Light and
Cox (2009) argue that, when students get formative feedback on their coursework, it helps them
to improve their performance and truly learn what they mistakenly assume that they have already
learned. When she was asked about how she graded students and what kind of feedback she gave
to students, Dr. Zahier said:
…a big chunk of what they’re graded on is not did you memorize and learn and know all
of that content, a big part of how they’re graded on is how do you take what you’ve
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learned and apply it? How do you think through a different issue area? How do you do
research? And I think that’s actually the toughest part in a way.
The way Dr. Zahier graded students and gave them feedback did not focus on whether
students memorized or recalled all of the content. Dr. Zahier thus discouraged students from
adopting rote or surface learning. Rather, students were graded on how they “took what [they]
learned and appl[ied] it[.] How did [they] think through a different issue area? And how do
[they] do research?” Therefore, the way she graded student worked to get them to apply what
they had studied, connect it to different issues, and to inquire about the challenges they discussed
in class. Thus, grades were utilized to encourage students to apply high levels of thinking and to
adopt deep levels of thinking.
When she was asked about how she gave students feedback, Dr. Zahier said:
After the presentations when I give them feedback I really, my philosophy with teaching
is they can learn when they see how it should be done, right so when I give them
feedback I really sit there and I write down and I think through how can they be
persuasive, what kinds of information do they need, how should they structure their
thinking, and so to me the way I encourage them to think deeper and to become better
thinkers is to show them how I would think about something.
Dr. Zahier gave students feedback on their presentations so that they could incorporate
the feedback into their final paper. The feedback Dr. Zahier gave to students was constructive
and formative, as she gave them ideas how to be more “persuasive, what kind of information do
they need, how should they structure their thinking?” Thus, Dr. Zahier did not try to fill in the
gaps in their knowledge, but to give them keys so that they could think for themselves, organize
their thoughts, plan their arguments, and find ways to better present them. Therefore, Dr. Zahier
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tried to “encourage them to think deeper and to become better thinkers” which reflects that she
tried to boost their thinking process and to engage them in deep levels of cognition. The way Dr.
Zahier thought that she could push students to be “better thinkers” was to give them a model and
“show them how I would think about something.” Dr. Zahier’s ideas about how to give students
formative and constructive feedback to boost students’ thinking skills were consistent with
Trigwell, Prosser and Waterhouse (1999), who argued that good teaching involves making an
effort to understand the difficulties students encounter and giving them clearly illustrated
explanations. Dr. Zahier gave the following feedback to a group who made a presentation about
the similarities between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and The Irish
Republican Army:
FARC vs IRA Comments
Great start on the rough draft—there is a lot of background information, and I’m not sure
if all of it is relevant. You’ll need to dig through that and pull out parts you think are
relevant and insert them into the relevant sections/places.
I think you lacked a clear argument and framework/organization. I think clarifying the
puzzle will help with this. Let’s start there.
Puzzle: Based on X, Y, and Z being similar between the two cases, scholars might have
expected FARC to have de-radicalized by now, much like the IRA did in (1994? 96?).
However, what we observe is the opposite—the continued radicalization of the
organization.
 Show timeline/graphs of IRA de-radicalization
 Show timeline/graphs of FARC continued radicalization (deaths, attacks, incidents for
example)
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Argument: It comes down to funding and corruption (I think this is your argument,
correct?)
I think you should organize your project like this:
Intro
Puzzle
Argument Framework (I would make a table here, with checks/marks)
Testing (subheadings = variables)
Policy/Conclusion
Let’s be really clear about which variables you are going to test. Remember, you want to
highlight what has been different between the TWO CASES as the cause, and what has
been the SAME as “alternatives” (i.e., the X, Y, Z).
o Government strategies of fighting
o Foreign intervention and influence (COLD WAR!)
o Good place to think of a similar Marxist guerrilla group that also
had U.S. fighting against it
o Environment (permitted hiding)
o This is a good place to think of a similar Marxist guerrilla group
that also had access to jungles/remote areas but did get destroyed
o Ideology (similar amount of fervor)
o Support from population
o Government indicators (differences in governance? Corruption?)
o Source of $
o Others?
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In the feedback on the presentation, Dr. Zahier gave to the FARC versus IRA group
different keys to improving their work – their argument, process of inquiry, and the way they can
organize their final paper. For example, she told them to narrow down the background
information and zoom in to find more evidence of similarities between the two entities and that
funding and corruption played the same roles in establishing them. Thus, instead of listing
background facts, she asked them to “dig through” that and support their claim with solid
evidence. This feedback directed students to think deeper and decide what they want to prove
and how to prove it. In other words, the feedback guided students to be “better thinkers.”
Dr. Zahier also gave students a key of how to organize and structure their thoughts by
forming a “puzzle,” so that they are clear about what exactly they are searching for and what
they should search for to prove their argument. She also directed them to compare timeline
graphs of the two entities. Then, she asked them to think about the different variables they were
testing. She suggested some variables that students might investigate to strengthen their final
work. Then, she gave them some suggestions as to how to organize their project. The feedback
she gave to students aligned with what Light and Cox (2009) argued regarding giving students
constructive feedback in order for them to think deeper. Light and Cox argued that when students
get formative feedback on their coursework, it helps them to improve their performance and to
truly learn what they mistakenly assume that they have learned; they are guided to correct
themselves and to think deeper or in a different way.
The students echoed what Dr. Zahier said about the feedback. Students agreed that the
feedback they got on the presentation was formative and helped them to think deeper while
working on the final paper. One student reported, “she gave us a lot of feedback on the
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presentation and then we’ll incorporate that into what we’ll actually write.” Similarly, another
student said:
It was like to get her feedback on it and to be able to like taking that going into the final
paper because the final paper is worth a lot more than the presentation and kind of helped
us get our ideas organized and figure out what we need to get done before the final paper
is done
The students appreciated the guidance the feedback offered them and thought that the
feedback was formative so they would “incorporate” it into their final paper. They believed that
the feedback “helped [them] get [their] ideas organized and figure out what [they] need to get
done.” Thus, the students liked that the feedback they got on the presentation guided them and
helped them to organize their thoughts. The students liked that the feedback was constructive.
Another student added: “…and she gives you the feedback so that you know whether or not
you’re going in the right direction”. This student felt that the feedback helped her to know if she
was on the right track or if she needed to rethink how she was studying for the course. Another
student commented on the feedback they got on the presentations as follows:
Paper after our presentation she was meeting with each group and talking with them and
she ran out of time to talk to us but she set up a Skype conference to be able to give us all
this information and she talked to us for like 17 minutes about what she thinks that we
can do so that’s just another example of her going above and beyond she also typed up on
a piece of paper the things that she thought we should do but she thought it was important
to talk with us and it’s like so not it is really clear to me what like her expectation of what
we should be doing is, it’s like it’s helpful.
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The student appreciated that she did not only give them written feedback on the
presentation, but also assigned a class session to talk with each group about the feedback she
gave them. Students liked the fact that she met with each group to clarify why she gave them this
feedback, discuss the presentation, and communicate with them about her “expectations of what
[they] should be doing.”
Alignment with The Course Objectives
In the following pages, I will discuss the ways in which the content, teaching approaches,
assessment, and feedback were selected to align with the course objectives. Dr. Zahier’s
selection of the curriculum guided students to fulfil the course objectives. In consistence with the
literature on effective teaching, Dr. Zahier selected her content, teaching approach, assessment
tools and feedback aligned with the course objectives: to construct students’ learning and to push
them to think deeply. Ambrose et al. (2010) and Biggs (2012) argue that this alignment is crucial
to achieve a courses’ desired outcomes. The scholars explain that if instructors successfully
orchestrate the different components of a curriculum, they give students a more coherent picture
of what is to be expected from them. Thus, students feel more confident and in control of their
learning, and they will most likely adopt deep learning approaches.
In the syllabus, Dr. Zahier wrote:
The primary purpose of this course is to identify and understand some of the major
challenges the global community faces and begin to sort through ideas for how to solve
them. We’ll tackle a multitude of questions together this semester. What are the major
reasons for conflict? What are the solutions? How can we understand and tackle climate
change? How can we make the world fairer? What is the future of the Internet? Is it a
force for good or evil? These are just some of the questions that will come up, but we
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won’t have a chance to address everything. A major goal of this course is to inform you
about current events relating to international security. You are required to stay updated on
what is going on in the world that relates broadly to the major themes of this course. form
some opinions, make connections to what we are studying, and be creative. It’s okay to
be wrong or have some questions, but it’s wrong not to make an effort.
In the syllabus, Dr. Zahier stated that she wanted students to be able to “identify and
understand…and sort through ideas for how to solve problems.” Hence, the objectives informed
students that they would need to think and decide if a topic can be considered a global challenge
or not, then to dig deeper to suggest solutions. Findings two and three revealed that Dr. Zahier
selected class activities and assessment tools to guide students to achieve this part of the course
objectives. Another segment in the course objectives was to “stay updated on what is going on in
the world that relates broadly to the major themes of this course.” Finding one showed that Dr.
Zahier selected current global challenges and used sources that opened the doors for students to
connect the topics they were study with what was happening in the world. The course objectives
also required students to “form some opinions, make connections and be creative,” which shows
that students were required to think, develop new maps of knowledge, and create with what they
learned. Thus, students were expected to adopt deep levels of thinking and to think in a
sophisticated way, and were not required to memorize or simply recall the information that was
transmitted to them in class.
When Dr. Zahier was asked about how she developed the course objectives, she said:
Managing global challenges to me meant leadership, meant managing in the sense of
actually practicing how to solve and so to that extent we did the ISNE simulation and that
was a simulation of negotiation. We did the Libya Simulation. There were various
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activities in class that were designed to encourage theses students to really hone those
skills of communication, convincing, persuading, critical thinking, so the other part of the
course objectives, just going beyond the content of the course is to learn how individuals
and groups and organizations manage, really manage in a practical way global challenges
Dr. Zahier said that one of the objectives of the course was to get students “actually
practicing how to solve” global problems. Therefore, she developed activities such as the
simulations so that students would get to practice how to negotiate and resolve disputes that are
taking place in the real world. She added that another course objective was to “hone those skills
of communication,” which was discussed in finding two, as Dr. Zahier organized simulations and
debates in order for students to learn how to follow negotiation protocols and how to
demonstrate their ideas and rebut others’ in a professional way in debates. Moreover, she utilized
class activities and assessment tools to push students to improve their skills in “convincing,
persuading, [and] critical thinking,” which are all higher levels of thinking that require students
to adopt a deep learning approach. All in all, the syllabus, class observations, and the interview
reflected that Dr. Zahier developed course objectives to get students to adopt deep levels of
thinking and designed activities and assignments that created learning opportunities for students
to think deeper and in sophisticated ways. In other words, the data showed that the course was
designed in a way that discouraged students for adopting surface learning approaches.
In the interview, Dr. Zahier added the course objectives were,
…obviously to have the students learn the content, to make sense of what are these
challenges, how can we work together to begin to solve them and a big part of that
involved critical thinking about international organizations.
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Thus, getting students to “make sense” of the content was one of the course objectives.
According to Dr. Zahier it was important to discuss the topics in a way that got students to
understand the content and “make sense” of it so they could think critically and “begin to solve
problems” related to the global challenges they tackled in class. What Dr. Zahier said aligned
with Biggs (2003), Entwistle (2003), and Ramsden (2003), among other scholars, who define the
deep learning approach as students’ deep level of engagement with the learning tasks so they
make sense of them.
In the focus groups, when students were asked if they think they achieved the course
objectives by the end of the semester, a student said:
I think I got skills that I’ve never gotten to practice in any other kind of class setting.
Working as a team to a final goal and like being the debates being able to like to think
critically really fast on things that we’ve prepped a lot like we knew a lot about it but we
don’t really know what the other side’s going to bring to the table.
The student appreciated that Dr. Zahier created learning opportunities more varied than
what they had experienced in any other class. The student praised that she got to “practice” in
class rather than being passive learner. The student also appreciated the chance she got to
enhance her group work skills while “working as a team to a final goal.” The students thought
that these opportunities enabled her to get engaged in the course and to “think critically.”
Similarly, another student commented:
Like the skills and the basic understanding of IR theory and I think that she’s done a great
job of laying out the most important aspects of it… and laying out the basic framework
that we need to apply to other things
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Here also, the student appreciated that Dr. Zahier exposed them to IR theories and got
them to develop a “basic understanding of IR theories” to establish a foundation on which they
could build a “framework” for “apply[ing]” what they learned. What this student said showed
that Dr. Zahier aligned the different components of the course to help students achieve the course
objectives. Structuring and organizing the course to construct students’ knowledge helps them to
apply what they learned rather than memorizing scattered pieces of information and developing a
distorted map of concepts which they forget once they finish the course (Ramsden, 2003).
According to another student,
…[s]he just worked on so many things that didn’t even realize are skills that you could
get out of a class so I just the way that she set it up it just kind of happened naturally and
cohesively and I think these are things that I’ve already taken into other classes and I
know I’m going to use in the future.
The student appreciated that she developed “skills” that other courses had never offered
her. Although the student was not specific as to whether she meant thinking skills, group
working, or skills of inquiry, the student appreciated that the course was “naturally and
cohesively” structured to create learning opportunities for students to enhance their skills. The
student’s report was consistent with Roksa, Arum and Cook’s (2016) argument that there are
increasing concerns about the accountability of higher education because students graduate
without developing the skills they need in the 21
st
century, including critical thinking, solving
problems and group work.
Reflection
In consistence with the literature on effective teaching, Dr. Zahier developed the habit of
reflecting on her teaching to create better learning opportunities for her students. Shulman (2004)
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argues that one of the steps an instructor must go through to achieve effective teaching is
reflecting on the teaching and learning that occurred in class in order to avoid what went wrong
and enhance what worked well. When asked if there were things she could have done differently
to improve the course, she said:
When I’m creating a syllabus, and I noticed it more this class than the other ones that
were more in my expertise area like this class really was pushing me like at the borders of
what I know so in a class like that I think learning to be kind of more spending more time
in the beginning to create a good syllabus and showing it. I didn’t go through my normal
process of like showing the syllabus to like a lot of people, I sent it to a friend so if it’s
something that I don’t know as well I think sending it out to people and being like, what
am I missing, is this a good reading, what do you think. So that would be one thing I
think is just inform my teaching of like how much time I spent on something I don’t
know before it starts.
Unlike her other courses, Dr. Zahier thought that this class covered topics in which she
was not an expert and which she ultimately thought she could have handled in a different way.
Dr. Zahier thought that the course might have been better if she spent more time selecting the
readings in the topics that were out of her areas of expertise. In addition, she thought that
consulting other instructors who were more experienced in the topics in which she lacked
expertise would have improved the course. Moreover, she thought that spending more time on
selecting and reviewing the readings would be an element that she would consider in the future.
In the interview, Dr. Zahier said that although that this course was not about memorizing
and recalling, she might consider including some “reading quizzes and response papers”:
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I could do like reading quizzes and response papers and that might be something I’ll do in
the future, because I get the sense that sometimes not everybody’s reading as much as
they should be reading and that’s a shame and I’m still kind of stuck on like what to do
there to make sure that they read right it’s an obstacle I think for me a weakness.
Dr. Zahier explained that getting students to do all the reading the way she expected them
to was a struggle that she would try to work on in the future. She added that adopting other
techniques to force students to do the reading is a “weakness” and an “obstacle” she would try to
find ways to overcome. In addition, Dr. Zahier commented on students’ performance in the first
step of the final project and explained that students might have done better if she had given them
feedback earlier in the process, rather than waiting until after the presentations:
I don’t know if there’s a way for me to be more involved. So that would be one thing I
would look into changing, I might encourage a meeting with me before the presentations.
For them to go over what they’re thinking of doing like a week before so like a rough
draft, so that I can then step in and say no no no, you need to first of all it’s going to run
over, second of all too much background, organize it like this, this is not like structured
well.
Giving students feedback while they were preparing for the presentation, such as: “It is
going to go over, …too much background” would have guided students and put them on the right
track. Thus, Dr. Zahier thought that she would get more involved in the future and organize
meetings with students before the presentation and review their rough draft before they present.
Dr. Zahier added that reflecting on her classes and her students’ evaluations had guided her in
the past as to how to improve her teaching. She reflected:
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I think I’ve just kind of been improving and trying to improve based on feedback being
more comfortable in my classroom, that’s certainly that has helped a lot, my first
semester I was really reliant on my notes and I would just sit there and have my notes
there and make sure that I was constantly looking at them, and then by my second
semester I once had felt like okay I think I know what I’m doing, I relied less on notes
and I just let the classroom become lively and engaged and I was fully immersed in what
was happening in the moment and not like relying on my preparation so much.
Case Study #2: Professor Ford
Professor Ford was non-tenure track faculty and she worked for seven years at the School
of Education at the University of the South West. Her areas of interest were sociology of
education and critical pedagogy. At the University of the South West, she participated in
developing several courses for undergraduate minors and it was her first time to offer the course
I observed. The course was about social change, difference and access to schooling and quality
education in international contexts.
Dr. Ford said that she gained experience in teaching when she was a Teaching Assistant
(TA) in her graduate school. As a TA, she taught courses and wrote their syllabi. Dr. Ford was a
TA in courses about international education, critical pedagogy and social education; courses that
were somewhat similar to the courses she offered at the University of the South West. She said,
“I was essentially in charge of writing the syllabus and teaching the course so I had a great deal
of autonomy when I was doing it with one of my advisors so that was for several years.” She
added that, although her advisor supervised her, he gave her a lot of freedom and helped her to
gain experience.
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She said that her advisor was a stellar teacher who won some awards for undergrad
teaching and she considered him a model whom she tried to follow in her teaching. She added
that he specialized in sociocultural and critical pedagogy and taught social foundation courses,
critical pedagogy courses, and ethnic studies, race and education courses. She explained that she
had developed her interest in these topics so she offered them to her students.
Dr. Ford said that, although she had taught graduate courses at the University of South
West for seven years, Fall 2016 was only her second semester in a row to teach undergraduate
courses. Dr. Ford said that the school of education decided to offer an on the ground program for
undergraduates and she got involved in developing curriculum for the new undergraduate
courses. She explained that she worked with two faculty members to develop courses for two
new undergraduate minors: the first was Education and Society, and the second was in the field
of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
Dr. Ford’s experience in teaching English as a Second language was deepened when she
got opportunities to gain first-hand experience teaching ESL in an elementary school context in
Latin America; in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Brazil. She also got an opportunity to teach English
in a bilingual, bicultural, project-based learning experiment in a high school in Mexico, where
she was given the opportunity to connect with local communities that implemented an Agrarian
model of education and pedagogical practice. Dr. Ford believed that she gained valuable
experience teaching in these different settings and to students in different countries. She
commented, “I have a lot of teaching, I’ve been teaching for you know like almost 20 years, well
15 years.” She added that working in diverse settings in different countries gave her the chance
to work with “extraordinary educators” and to gain experiences that polished her teaching skills
and gave her insights into the sociology of education.
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Dr. Ford went on to say that one of the experiences she appreciated most was a project on
multiple pathways, which was called linked learning. In Dr. Ford’s opinion, the program was
special because it gave her a chance to visit 15 different schools over the course of a few weeks.
While visiting these schools she observed good teaching that helped her to improve her own.
This program helped her to make connections between pedagogical theories and the teaching
practices she observed.
Another experience that Dr. Ford considered a turning point in her teaching career was
the experience she had as an adjunct instructor at the University of the South West. She
explained that that she learned a lot about curriculum and instructional design while working
with senior faculty there. She felt that, after she worked at South West, she started to build her
instructional skills
I felt like I have a very strong background in like social context education, social theory,
and pedagogy and learning, but the instructional design piece I think I might have had
taken one class, and it was not practical at all. So that I have learned kind of on the job,
like working with folks whose courses I really admire.
Dr. Ford’s experience was built over the course of several years, and what she did not get
from her education, she was able to acquire from the teaching and learning practices she
observed in diverse settings.
In the following pages, I will present the six findings that emerged from the data. The
first finding was that, although Dr. Ford intended to select readings in order to create
opportunities for students to learn, some of the readings selected did not work as she had
intended. The second finding was that Dr. Ford developed in-class activities that got students
engaged most of the time, but not all of the time. The third finding pertained to Dr. Ford’s
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selection of assessment tools. Dr. Ford developed assignments that created opportunities for
students to become independent learners, and to apply what they had learned. However, a lack of
guidance reduced students’ feelings of comfort and might have resulted in reducing their
learning opportunities. In particular, a lack of formal written feedback minimized students’
chances to improve their work. The fourth finding was that, although many of the decisions Dr.
Ford made while selecting the different components of the curriculum aligned with the course
objectives, which aimed to create learning opportunities for students to adopt higher levels of
thinking, some choices did not align, which detracted from some of the opportunities provided.
The fifth and final finding was that Dr. Ford considered instructors’ reflection an important
component of effective teaching, therefore she reflected on her teaching and how she could
utilize that reflection to create more integrated learning opportunities for her undergraduate
students.
Content
Although Dr. Ford selected readings with the intention of creating opportunities for
students to learn, some readings did not work as she intended. Dr. Ford selected readings that
helped students in most cases to connect the topics they were studying to the real world.
Ramsden (2003) argues that selecting content that connects the course with real world problems
encourages students to think about, test out, and discuss the relationships between them with one
another. In the syllabus she created, Dr. Ford wrote:
In the course, we will consider various cases of individual students, schools, nation states
and regions as they negotiate inequity in access and quality. We will also explore several
examples of individuals, schools and nation-states that have made tremendous advances
towards equity of access and quality across student difference.
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The language utilized demonstrated that the course was designed to expose students to
content that discusses cases from the real world, such as “cases of individual students, schools,
nation states” that tackle the problem of inequity to access. When discussing how she selected
the content, Dr. Ford remarked:
I have these sort of core foundational theories and then the way I was progressing it… I
really tried to scaffold it and it was really helpful looking at case studies right talking
about different agencies and how they’re trying to achieve greater access…we did a lot of
reading of some of the UNESCO reports, some of the Dime studies, they watched A Girl
Rising.
Dr. Ford tried to “scaffold” the content utilizing both theoretical readings, to establish
“core foundational theories, and non-academic readings such as “UNESCO reports [and] some
of the Dime studies,” in addition to documentaries, to expose students to the literature related to
the content in real life. She added that “we actually started the course off with establishing that
we do have some crisis in equity.” This was reflected in the syllabus, as the first four weeks
introduced the students to reports and cases that represented “some crisis in equity.” For
example, in week two students were asked to study the following:
View: Time for School 3: A 12-year project on Global Education (2014)
• Interview: Gene Sperling
• Interview: Amartya Sen
• Interview: Angelique Kidjo
Article: Who's Being Left Behind?
Also, for week four, students were asked to read “UNESCO (2014) Supporting Teachers
to End the Learning Crisis, Part 3 in Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2013/4
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Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All. p.186-305.” Dr. Ford explained that she
wanted it to be clear for students why the topics they would cover were important. Ramsden
(2003) argues that one of the factors of effective teaching is explaining to students why a topic or
fact has to be learned, so as to increase students’ enthusiasm and engagement. However, Dr.
Ford students got engaged with the different sources she used at different levels:
I think the case studies go well, .. ‘cause it touches on one of the areas, all the education
for all and the UNESCO and the DME and all those sort of reports, and the
documentaries those worked pretty well, the social foundation social theories worked
pretty well
Dr. Ford said that she introduced students to a variety of sources, which were
“intentionally woven throughout the courses.” The different sources covered the content from
various perspectives, helping students to understand the content. What is more, Dr. Ford’s
observations aligned with how students experienced the content. Students in the focus group
agreed that the readings were relevant to the course and that some of the theories gave the course
some depth. One student reported:
So, when they’re like straight forward pieces that still have the philosophical
underpinnings I feel like I get more out of those readings and …a more real-world
experience like with the case studies you see the application.
The student appreciated that some of the readings introduced the theories in a “straight
forward” way that helped them to understand the “philosophical underpinning” while connecting
the theory with “more real-world experience” through case studies, which helped students to “get
more out” of the readings. Similarly, another student commented, “I think they are interesting
and relevant to the contents of the course. They add an important theoretical dimension to the
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class that allows us to approach topics more in depth.” The student thought that the theories
added a “dimension” that helped her to get engaged with the content in “depth.” Another student
added, “I think the readings are very academic, in terms of educational and social theory, as a
good foundation for specific global examples.” Here, the student considered the “educational and
social theory” as a “foundation” that introduced the student to the academic literature related to
the course.
Another student commented on the use of different topics with enthusiasm: “I really
enjoy them! they provide a diverse set of perspectives that, while on widely varied subjects, all in
some way or another relate back to the theme of the course.” The student appreciated how the
topics were “diverse” and provided students with a variety of perspectives, all of which helped
students to understand the content from different angles. Similarly, as one student said, “we
jumped back and forth like which is good that we’re jumping back to topics that we learned at
the beginning of class cause like its tying it all together it’s not like you learn a section of
information then move on and never talk about it again.” The student liked the idea that,
although the course covered different topics, they got a chance to “t[ie] it all together” and to
connect the new material to what they studied before. What this student said was consistent with
the findings of Trigwell and Prosser (2004), who argue that good teaching consists of helping
students to build on their previous knowledge and to construct and transform their own
knowledge.
However, not all of the readings that Dr. Ford selected presented the appropriate level of
challenge. Dr. Ford explained that some of the readings she selected were too challenging, so
students did not sufficiently understand them. Dr. Ford’s reflections aligned with Postareff,
Parpala and Lindblom-Ylanne (2015) and Trigwell and Prosser (2004), who argue that too many
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challenges or setting an inappropriate level of challenge decreases students’ engagement and the
chances that they will adopt a deep learning approach. She said that she selected some theories
she was interested in but they were too difficult or abstract for students to understand. For
example, she recalled in interview:
…we were talking about like conflict versus post theory which is fascinating and super
interesting to me, but yeah, I can get that there isn’t a direct line to what does that mean
as a teacher in the classroom initially.
Dr. Ford picked some theories because she found them “fascinating and super
interesting,” however she did not consider that their level of challenge was higher than what the
students could handle. She explained that students did not understand these theories because they
were not applicable and there was no “direct line to what does that mean as a teacher in the
classroom initially.” She added, “I tried but really getting to the nitty gritty of like consensus
versus conflict versus constructive theories wasn’t as exciting.” Again, she introduced different
theories to students, but students did not get engaged or did not show that the theories were
“exciting.” What is more, she added, students had problems understanding contemporary
theories as well:
…what happened was once we got into the real contemporary, like I’m not sure that they
have them for example read Apple and talking about neoliberal and the markets and I
don’t know that they totally got it or had them read like? … I just don’t know if the real
contemporary stuff they got, and I don’t quite know why. I don’t know if it was the
readings.
Again, Dr. Ford thought that students did not get some of the topics and the readings such
as the contemporary ones and she assumed that this was because of the readings. The seven
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students in the focus groups agreed with Dr. Ford that the readings were too dense and
theoretical to be comprehended. In the words of one student, they were:
…really dense…the reading that we do have is so thick and the language is so academic
and I think beyond what at least I’m used to that it’s hard to get through… it’s like the
content makes it difficult.
The student claimed that the content was difficult and “hard to get through.” Similarly,
another student commented:
I think especially at the beginning of the class I was so put off by the readings because
the first couple of weeks we had four chapters from our book and I think the book, ..it felt
like Doctor Ford was still transitioning between like teaching graduate classes to like
undergraduate class so a lot of the work I felt was a little too dense, and I wish we did a
little bit more like real world application readings too.
Here, the student explained that she was “put off” because of different aspects related to
the readings. The student thought that the readings were too challenging and too complicated for
the undergraduate students to understand. The student assigned Dr. Ford’s setting an inadequate
level of challenge and assigning complicated readings to the fact that she used to teach graduate
courses and “was still transitioning” to undergraduate-level teaching. The student also argued
that the course was too theoretical and did not give a lot of space for “application.” Similarly,
another student said:
We read some very big names in theory, like Marx, Dewey, and Durkheim. The readings
are very dense, however, and I think that sometimes it is difficult to take the vague
theories and apply it to real and practical circumstances.
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The student argued that the theories were “vague” and difficult to “apply…to real and
practical circumstances.” Another student echoed her sentiments:
I mean they’re interesting when I can understand them, but a lot of it is very
philosophical interpretations of educational thought which to me just isn’t as intriguing as
things that are concrete or case studies, things like that. Yeah, I honestly, I think they’re
kind of boring the ones that are about philosophy.
This student explained that she could not comprehend some of the readings because they
were “philosophical interpretations of educational thought.” Perhaps more importantly, she did
not find the theories interesting because she could not understand them. She was not the only
student to claim to be uninterested by the theoretical texts:
I often get lost in the readings if they’re very theoretical because I feel like I don’t know I
feel like academia has this tendency to make everything sound very like fancy and
convoluted for no reason, just like to make it seem more academic, feel like our readings
can be super dry like theory-based.
This student agreed with her colleagues that the “theory-based” readings were “super
dry” and overly complicated, so it consumed a lot of time and caused her to “get lost in the
readings.” What Dr. Ford and the students said was consistent with the literature about the
education problems at undergraduate level. Ramsden (2003) argues that, to improve the quality
of education at undergraduate level, students should be exposed to learning opportunities that
enable them to make connections between theory and practice.
Another of Dr. Ford’s students said, “[a]s much as I liked the statistics-based readings,
most are very repetitive and require too much parsing to really be directly useful in the course.”
The student here found the statistics-based readings “repetitive” and difficult to navigate to the
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point that they did not add to the course. Postareff et al. (2015) argue that students who are
satisfied with a course’s quality and find it interesting are more likely to employ a deep approach
to learning than students who are less satisfied and do not find the course interesting. Ramsden
(2003) and Shulman (2004) also argue that choosing interesting material that presents an
appropriate level of challenge will get students more engaged and involved in their own learning.
Thus, it seemed that Dr. Ford did not always succeed in selecting interesting readings with an
appropriate level of challenge, which made it difficult for the students to understand the content
on a deep level.
When she was asked if she was satisfied with the way she organized the course, Dr. Ford
remarked:
So, there’s some conversation there around like how do we reorganize what fits in to each
of the different courses. Which is a persistent problem and we need to figure that out.
Yeah so there are some readings in the middle, some of the contemporary social theories,
…they read Apple or Billings or Tate, those are I want them to read those but I might
need to reorganize them. I think it’s the main issue, and I think I might reorganize them
around like a contemporary educational theory around race, contemporary educational
theories around, ‘cause I ended up I organized them by like by okay comfort theorists and
like that didn’t work that well.
Dr. Ford proposed that there were two more factors that might have made it difficult for
students to understand the content. The first factor is that it might have been better to not offer
some of the topics or the readings she covered in this course because they were not “what fits” in
this course. She explained that organizing what topic fits best in each course is a “persistent
problem” in developing the courses for the new minors. Another problem that might have
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hindered the students from understanding the content, according to Dr. Ford, was that the topics
or the readings were not well organized. Dr. Ford said that she might consider “reorganiz[ing]
them” because the way she organized them “didn’t work that well.” What the students said in the
focus group aligned with Dr. Ford’s comments about reorganizing the content of the course. One
student mentioned that there was “so much information and so many like different issues
presented at one time that’s like you don’t really know how to process that information
unfortunately.” Similarly, another student said:
I think it would have been helpful if the course was organized in like units, if we had
looked at, if there had been units where we looked at gender or like rural vs. urban or like
things that were at the bottom of the pyramid like water access and food, I feel like we
were just doing a lot of stuff all the time and that’s kind of why it was overwhelming.
The students explained that the content was not organized in a way that makes it easy for
them to follow and connect between the readings. On the contrary, the students argued that the
way the content was organized was “overwhelming” because “so many like different issues
[were] presented at one time.” The way the content was organized made it difficult for students
to “know how to process the information”. Ramsden (2003) argues that when students have
difficulty following or making sense of the content, they develop distorted maps of concepts that
they easily forget once they finish the course. He adds that when they develop distorted maps of
knowledge, they feel overwhelmed by the quantity of information while having no time to make
sense of it, which produces frustration and a lack of interest.
Teaching Approach
Dr. Ford developed in-class activities that got students engaged most of the time. Dr.
Ford believed that this course gave her room to adopt student-centered approaches: “because of
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the type of this course I was able to have a little bit more of a learner-centered syllabus.”
Consequently, she set out to create opportunities for students to participate and engage in the
class. She said:
I can find the sweet spot between discussing and interrogating the readings in a sort of a
multiple levels of, multiple orders of thinking, and partner that with something that
they’re applying it to something a relevant educational problem or current event, those
are easily, that sweet spot, is usually what’s been working with them particularly.
Dr. ford said that students got involved in the class when she provided them with the
space and created activities in which they could participate as active learners. Students became
engaged in the class when provided opportunities to discuss and investigate the content. She said
that students seized the learning opportunities she offered to examine the readings at different
levels of thinking. According to her, students were most interested in connecting what they
studied with the real world, thus they were attentive to apply what they studied in class to an
“educational problem or current event.” What Dr. Ford said was consistent the literature focusing
on the student-centered approach. According to Shulman (2004), the student-centered approach
aims at getting students to be engaged mentally in order to achieve deep understanding, enabling
students to paraphrase what they have studied in their own words, differentiate between
paraphrasing and plagiarism, achieve higher levels of thinking such as discussing and
interrogating,” and subsequently applying their newfound knowledge.
Dr. Ford noted that she limited lecturing in this class to 20 – 30 minutes and aimed rather
to plan activities that challenged students and pushed them into deep thinking. She said:
I usually try to do some sort of like game or activity with them, you know like with their
concept circle, or sorting, or something where they have to talk to each other to kind of
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figure out like the bigger idea, then I usually have some sort of application activity where
they have to both talk in small, where they have to think about it individually and they
have to talk about it in small groups, and then they have to talk about it in the whole
group. So yeah, so, a lot of like socially mediated learning. Very active participation. And
then a lot of also trying to ask, I don’t know if I take it this far as like a Socratic seminar,
but trying to ask them questions to engage higher order thinking, and sort of really
interrogating the way, not just like oh we’re applying this, but really interrogating the
way they’re applying it. In terms of okay like so you think that this would work but what,
let’s take a step back, what are some of the assumptions you’re making? Or you know so
trying to do that or trying to have the students engage in those kinds of hard questions to
each other, so to set, it’s a little more on auto pilot now because I feel like they’ve gotten
it.
Dr. Ford intentionally created activities to get students engaged and involved in their
learning. The activities varied from individual activities to small groups and whole group
activities to enrich the discussions in different ways and bring diverse perspectives. In addition,
she explained that she did not usually stop at asking students to apply what they learned, but
rather took a step further and tried to challenge students’ intellectual capacities by asking them to
“interrogate the way they ‘re applying’ what they learn.” She argued that she tried to push the
class to the level of a “Socratic seminar,” in which she purposefully asked them questions that
required “higher order thinking.” As Shulman (2012) notes, to achieve effective teaching,
instructors may create activities that vary from a controlled lecture, to collaborative or discovery
learning, and Socratic teaching.
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While observing the class, Dr. Ford illicited a sorting activity by showing a PowerPoint
slide listing the following items and asking students to sort them into conflict or consensus
theory:
o Educational Opportunities
o Individual achievement
o Social Democracy
o Neoliberal
o Integration
o Choice
o Social good
o Individual mobility
Dr. ford gave students 10 minutes to sort the items and give reasons. She did not specify
if they should work in groups, so some students worked individually and some students worked
in pairs. Some students pulled out old readings from their folders or on their computers about the
two theories, which they had covered earlier in the week. Dr. Ford stopped by different groups
and listened to their discussions. Dr. ford started the class discussion by asking, “who wants to
share their thinking about the list? I am interested to know why you placed these in either
category.” It was clear that Dr. Ford wanted students to rationalize the two categories and to
explain their reasons. The students embarked on a discussion in which some of them supported
their sorting with evidence from the readings. Dr. Ford asked students who did not give evidence
to “explain why it make sense to put it in this category.” Dr. Ford was pushing students to
explain the logic behind their decisions. While discussing their sorting, students negotiated their
reasoning and tried to persuade each other. There were 13 students in the class and each one or
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each pair of them participated in the discussion. After the discussion one of the students
conceded, “I thought that this item should be in the other category but now the discussion made
me change my mind and think in a different way.” Then, Dr. Ford shared her sorting and
explained the reason behind it by quoting from a textbook.
Another activity was about inquiry and collecting data in order to decide if there was an
open school in LA county. She asked students to google California Schools Guide or to access
the following site: http://schools.latimes.com. Dr. Ford told students to search in any other county
they were interested in. One student searched for schools in Pasadena, while another student
searched for schools in a county in Ohio where she grew up. Dr. Ford asked the students, “what
is the best school you found and how it is close to being an open integrated school?” Students
discussed some of the schools they found with the rest of the class and they were supporting their
choices with facts about the schools’ racial representation, demography, languages, and APA.
The students were very engaged in the activity and discussed the schools they found together.
After discussing their findings as a class, students concluded that it was difficult to find an open
integrated school.
Dr. Ford added that she planned new activities that connected the content with the
political situation:
I was also trying to pull in some of this particular kind of political moment that we’re in
today, this you know election day, and there was a lot around prop 58 and prop 55
working that in, I had them analyze the RNC and DNC, education platforms using the
social theories and ... They were really into applying those theories to critique the
different, like all the, which actually I hadn’t planned before but to critique or support the
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different education related California propositions that are on the ballot today or the
different RNC DNC platforms.
Dr. Ford created activities to give students opportunities to think on a higher level. She
wanted the students to “analyze the RNC and the DNC platforms” and to rationalize or explain
why they were with or against certain California propositions. She got students to “critique and
support” propositions on the ballot while drawing on the readings and the theories they had
studied. Such activities reflected that Dr. Ford did not encourage students to adopt surface
learning approaches in which they memorize the readings, but rather encouraged them to adopt
deep learning approaches as she required them to apply what they understood from the content to
a discussion, fostering their ability to think on a sophisticated level.
In the focus group, students explained that they learned from the activities that Dr. Ford
facilitated more than they did from other courses. One student said:
Having a three-hour class block is hard. I have another three-hour long class and the
professor just reads off the slides and that is so boring so Dr. Ford is great because I
actually am interested in what she has to say and she’s actually engaging.
The student appreciated that Dr. Ford did not lecture them for three hours like other
instructors who bore students and “just read off the slides,” but rather creates learning
opportunities for students to engage in actively. All the students in the focus groups agreed that
they liked the variety of activities they experienced in class – especially when it came to discuss
the content in “small groups,” as is reflected in the comments made by this student:
The activities we do in small groups that connect to a thematic or contemporary issue
keep me interested and engaged because they allow me to critically think about the
readings and discuss them rather than just absorbing information.
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The student appreciated getting the opportunity to be an active learner and to discuss the
content with her colleagues. She said that the discussion gave her the chance to “connect to a
thematic or contemporary issue,” which kept her involved in the class because the discussions
were interesting and exposed her to viewpoints that opened the way for her to think “critically.”
In other words, the discussion allowed her to transform her thinking rather, than getting the
information transmitted to her as a passive learner. Her sentiments were echoed by another
student:
We do a lot of activities where we break into small groups, discuss, and then come back
to discuss as a class. It's nice to be able to sort through your thoughts with your peers and
then have the additional guidance of formulating ideas as a class. It also helps that this
class is small and discussions are lively.
The student liked getting the opportunity to “sort through” her thoughts with her peers in
small groups, which also granted her access to her classmates’ opinions and ideas. She liked that
the small group discussions were followed by a conversation with the other groups so they could
have a chance to “formulate ideas as a class.” What the student said also revealed that Dr. Ford
led the discussion in a supportive way and offered them an “additional guidance,” so the student
found the whole experience “lively.” Similarly, another student commented:
Group work is very helpful because it allows us to interact with other students and
discuss the course content. Also, the activities in these small groups are often very
thematic and allow us to apply the readings to contemporary issues.
The student backed her peers’ opinions that the group activities created learning
opportunities for them to “interact,” “discuss,” and “apply” the content while working in
thematic groups. Another student noted that:
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…the activities in small groups are often very thematic and allow us to apply the readings
to contemporary issues, such as the 2016 presidential election, the educational realities of
many countries, and we discussed the education-related CA ballot propositions in class,
so that connected with real life situations…
This student appreciated that the group discussion did not just give students the chance to
discuss the content together in isolation of the real-world condition but rather to connect what
they learned in class the with current events such as “the 2016 presidential election,” “the
educational-related CA Ballot,” and “the educational realities of many countries.”
Giving more insight as to the kind of activities she created in class in order to get students
invested in the course, Dr. Ford said:
I’ll have them do this thing where they had to do like, it was over two classes where they
had to do a mock grant competition, it was like a UN grant access and then I put them in
groups and they had to choose the region and they came up with a group name and I had
another group who was like executive council who had to make a rubric for what would
win and they had to present it and the council had to ask some questions and counteract,
anyways so like some of the things were more than, took over two or three classes.
This activity created opportunities for students to get engaged, organize their thoughts,
debate, and negotiate in order to solve a problem. In three groups, students were asked to play
roles representing either a country or the UN executive council in a “mock grant competition.”
Students in the two groups that played countries debated and prepared to “counteract” while the
third group made “a rubric” for the criteria they would follow to select the winner. Thus, the two
competing groups needed to strategize their thoughts to win the grant, and the third group needed
to be thoughtful and follow some kind of logic to design a rubric.
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The students in the focus groups agreed that one of the activities they favored was the UN
mock grant competition because they thought that they learned the most from problem-solving
activities. As one student commented, “[Dr. Ford] focuses on kind of like solution-based work as
opposed to answer-based work so the question [is] like how would you address this? So, it’s not
just like spewing back what the literature says.” The student favored being asked questions that
challenged her and pushed her to think deeply, rather than being asked questions that forced her
to memorize and “spew back what the literature says.” Students also appreciated that the
problem-solving activities helped them to connect between the content and the real world and to
build bridges between theory and practice. One student commenting on the activity said:
My favorite activity was the mock pitch for the UN grant thing, we split the class into
two groups and then based on information from the UNESCO report we had to write a
pitch like the UN council about some project in educational access, and one group picked
access to clean water and the other group did something educating teacher and
community involvement in Botswana? It was in the documentary…
Here, the students seized the learning opportunity to be active learners and to work in
groups. In this activity, students developed different skills including pitching and debating while
using an actual report from UNESCO and connecting their debate to what they had learned from
the documentary earlier in the semester. Another student agreed with this idea, citing “the mini
situation simulations in which we use the readings and other class material to discuss or solve
issues presented to us.” Another student mentioned:
…she’ll have us come up with a solution like I know we had one day where we each had
to come up with like a mock pitch for a grant for some UN thing. I think that’s been
helpful because it helps us understand the transition between like practice and theory and
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like praxis which I think a lot of our other classes haven’t done, I think she views us as
being very competent which is nice.
This student liked that the UN simulation gave her an opportunity to comprehend and
activate “the transition between…practice and theory.” The student appreciated that Dr. Ford
offered her a learning opportunity she was not presented with in other courses. The student also
mentioned that she liked the confidence Dr. Ford showed in her students.
The students’ feedback aligned with Dr. Ford’s belief that she adopted student-centered
approaches that gave students opportunities to participate as active learners. Dr. Ford was
respectful of her students’ autonomy and provided them with opportunities to exchange their
ideas, get involved in discussion, cooperate to solve problems, and negotiate their knowledge
while working in groups. Kiraly (2014) argues that to get students involved in deep thinking,
instructors should organize students in different groups consistently, so as to create interactive
classes that benefit from a positive and cooperative learning atmosphere. Such a learning
environment enhances students’ ability to discuss and negotiate their decisions, and to adopt
deep learning approaches.
In addition to problem-solving activities, Dr. Ford asked students questions to help them
to dig deep and connect what they were studying with their experiences in education, as students
or as part-time teachers. She reflected on one such activity as follows:
I had the different theorists and then I had them identify like what group of theorists they
were, what are their underlying assumptions, like I had these different things like what is
the relationship between the state and the school what is the relationship between the
teacher and the school, you know they all have been in some sort of school setting so I’m
encouraging them to sort of reflect on that as well sort of what were the recommendations
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from this particular thing, so that went really well. Like really understand that these
theories actually matter and have like implications for what is the ideal school system
what is the ideal educational policy what is the ideal teaching practice?
Dr. Ford tried to push students to find the relationship between theories and the education
issues in the school system. Her goal was to get students to “understand that these theories
actually matter and have implications.” She wanted to help students to see the connections
between the content they covered in class and the educational experiences they had developed as
individuals, as most of them were working or volunteering to work part-time in schools. She
gave students the opportunity to “reflect” and talk about the school settings they had
experienced. Students appreciated that she gave them these opportunities and asked them
questions that helped them to see how theories play themselves out in real educational settings.
The students expressed how they found class activities helpful in the sense that they allowed
students to think deeply, to “take ownership of the readings,” and to reflect on their educational
practices on an academic level. One of them said, “discussions and like jigsaw activities really
help us to kind of take ownership of the readings and like you know combine our experiences.”
Another student added:
They kind of I think make you notice more like your own educational experience and just
like the differences of like things you’ve heard from the news, and we’ve been able to
kind of look more deeply into that like those experiences but I mean like at least for this
semester I feel like a lot of what we’re learning in class has a lot to do like focusing on
like globalization and stuff I think that has a lot to do with what we’re talking about.
The student said that getting them involved in discussions that helped them to connect or
“notice… the differences” between the news, their personal and educational experiences, then to
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compare between the education system in the states and other countries while “focusing on
globalization” was helpful to expand students’ knowledge. The triangulation between different
sources might have helped students to create new maps of knowledge. Students felt that raising
the challenge got them involved and interested in the class. As one student commented,
…we come up with some pretty good stuff, it feels kind of strangely empowering to like
oh I actually like am maybe a competent person, but I mean yeah these are questions that
aren’t asked of undergrads, I think it kind of shows how much Dr. Ford like she thinks
really highly of us as a group, so that’s nice.
The student liked both being challenged and empowered. She thought that Dr. Ford asked
them challenging questions they did not encounter in other undergraduate courses. The student
thought that the challenge “empowered” the class and pushed them to be productive or creative
so that they “come up with some pretty good stuff.” Similarly, another student said,
…like I feel like a more intellectual person after being in this class and I feel like there’s
a lot of, like I’ve gained a greater appreciation just for the field of education and like for
the work that I want to do because I’ve seen like all of the different philosophies behind it
and, yeah, I feel like this is kind of like what like how you’re supposed to expand your
mind in college like I feel like we’re really getting critical and going on this intellectual
journey.
The student believed that class discussion made her a “more intellectual person” because
the course helped her to develop background and allowed her to “see all of the different
philosophies behind [her subject].” The student appreciated the educational experience she had
in class and felt that she was trained to apply “critical” thinking, which is one of the skills that
students in college should be provided opportunities to develop.
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Dr. Ford explained that she invited guest speakers who had hands-on experience to talk to
students about educational issues in different settings and regions. She said:
I brought in my doctoral students, so I almost had a guest lecture, .. I asked them to do a
15-20 minute talk and then 20 minutes for questions and usually in the 15 or 20 minutes I
asked them to spend at least 5 minutes on talking about their own educational trajectory,
in terms of like what in their professional experience what brought them to what they do
now and then talk about their research. I was able to have Nancy come in from UAE and
I was able to have Kristel come in from Atlanta, and Philine come in from Cerritos
talking about higher and university, ’cause I know not all of them are interested in K12,
some of them are interested in higher education, some policy.
Dr. Ford explained that she assigned 30-40 minutes in many sessions to guest speakers.
She invited guest speakers from K-12 and higher education in order to meet her students’
different interests. The guest speakers talked to students about their “professional experiences”
and answered their questions. Some of the guest speakers who had first-hand experience in other
states or countries were also invited to expose students to different experiences and educational
viewpoints. Students in the focus groups explained that they liked having guest speakers for
various reasons. One student said:
I do really enjoy like having speakers and guest lecturers come in because I think that
one, like makes the time go by a little faster, the three-hour block, I think it diversifies the
things that we do and it kind of shows us what is beyond, how our learning is
implemented in the real world or where education can kind of take us.
Having guest speakers made it easier for students to get through the class time. It allowed
students to listen to accounts of diverse educational experiences and to learn how those who
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specialize in the field connect theory and practice, implementing what the students were studying
in real-world contexts. Other students, too, were enthusiastic about this opportunity:
I love our guest lecturers. They've been super kind and engaging and given us windows
into several sides of education in the US and abroad. They share how their research is
based on real life situations or problems in their communities so these insights really help
me connect discussions with reality.
Another reported:
I also like the guest lectures. They are a perfect example--we get to see graduate students
or other professionals in the field of education using the material we're learning about or
something similar to create solutions to issues surrounding education in all parts of the
world, from LA to East Coast to South America to the Middle East.
The students got insight from the guest speakers on how to apply educational theories in
practice in order to solve problems in diverse educational settings. Students valued the
experiences that the guest speakers shared with them.
Dr. Ford created a variety of learning opportunities with the intention of getting students
engaged and fostering their deep learning. However, there were certain instances where class
discussion resulted in students feeling disconnected or in hindering students’ ability to construct
their knowledge. She said “it’s been like a persistent challenge I’m still trying to figure it out. I
have three hours with them right you’d think I’d be able to, and I seem to always run out of
time”. One student commented that they thought it was “sometimes hard for her to
manage…time wisely in the class.” Another student said:
I think it is sometimes hard for her to manage our time wisely in the class… even though
it is like a three-hour class, we always end up not being able to do things or spending
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more time on other things, sometimes it is like kind of disorganized and I don’t think that
it’s her fault I think it’s more like the way that things go, and the things that the students
are more interested in, but yeah it is kind of difficult sometimes to follow her, sometimes
I get really lost or by the end of class I’m completely shut down.
The student said that, although Dr. Ford got students to talk about their experiences and
gave them space to discuss what they “are most interested in,” it was not managed in a way that
kept students on track. Discussing different things not related to the reading and what should be
covered in class made the student confused as they struggled to follow. The student expressed
that she would “get really lost” and, in some instances, ended up “completely shut[ting] down.”
Other students reiterated this experience. One mentioned that they felt “the discussion in class
was helpful just gotten so out of line with our readings that we haven’t been able to like
effectively do that,” while yet another expressed concern over time management:
Oftentimes we’re like running out of time so we have like 10 minutes to like figure
something out and like if we had like a dedicated amount of time and like the assignment
were clear and we could have like real discussion I think that would be more helpful
Not organizing class time sufficiently led to the professor frequently “running out of
time.” Consequently, students got rushed to finish an activity without enough time to facilitate a
sufficient explanation or for students to think the subject matter through. Misuse of class time
seemed to reduce students’ ability to develop their learning skills.
Assessment
This finding shows that Dr. Ford’s choices of assignment and the feedback she gave to
students played a significant role in how students studied for her class. There are two principal
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themes in this finding: the first is Dr. Ford’s choices with regards to the assignments, and the
second is her feedback.
Assignments. The assignments Dr. Ford designed created opportunities for students to be
independent learners, and to apply what they had learned. However, a lack of sufficient guidance
reduced students’ feeling of comfort and might have reduced their learning opportunities. Dr.
Ford created assignments that gave students the freedom to pick educational problems they were
interested in to discuss, and to suggest appropriate solutions. The assignments asked students to
integrate what they had learned in class and to apply class material to the problem they chose to
discuss in their projects. The assignments showed that Dr. Ford developed assignments that gave
students opportunities to search, discuss, apply, and to develop problem-solving skills rather than
assignments that would have pushed students to recall or reproduce the content. In other words,
Dr. Ford selected assessment tools that forced students to adopt deep learning approaches.
However, not giving students enough guidance might have resulted in a reduction in students’
ability to work on the assignments. The assessment tools Dr. Ford developed aligned with the
literature written about how instructors’ choices of the assignments shape students’ learning
approaches. For example, Biggs (2003), who argues that assessments are the main factor in
determining what and how students study, asserts that the majority of summative assignments
signals to students that they will be asked to reproduce the information that the instructor
delivers in lectures. Formative assignments, on the contrary, give students signals that they will
be asked to create with the content and to demonstrate how they can apply what they have
learned. Biggs (2003) naturally concludes that the assignments outlined in each syllabus direct
students to adopt either a surface or a deep learning approach. The syllabus for this course shows
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that Dr. Ford developed assignments that encouraged students to adopt the latter, as can be seen
in the extract that follows:
Mid-Term 2: Identifying, Interrogating and Analyzing Educational Trends in Access -
(20%) Create a 5-minute movie that is grounded in your case study of access to schooling
and quality education and identifies, interrogates and analyzes key trends for your
selected region or country in access to schooling and high-quality education by either
race, class or gender.
• STEP 1: Explore eGoogle Public Data
• Begin by watching this introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM6w_tUlIn4
and this tutorial on how to use Google Public Data: http://youtu.be/z9wYQwRX_A4
• Visit the Google Public Data site: http://www.google.com/publicdata
• Explore multiple Data Sets by clicking on the directory option and selecting different
data providers. Consider looking at the UN Human Development Index, the World Bank
• Consider multiple variables connected to educational access and quality in your case
study student’s country.
Once you have found meaningful data, experiment with the four types of charts: line, bar,
map and bubble charts. Also experiment with showing these trends historically using the
play button under the bubble chart format.
• The purpose of this part of the activity is to identify trends in educational access and to
develop powerful charts that represent these trends.
• STEP 2: Interrogate the key trends you identify
• Ask 1-3 questions about equity, difference and educational access in international
contexts.
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• These questions should be grounded in the readings from this course and others when
appropriate.
STEP 3: Analyze the trends and the questions raised in Step 2.
• Explain the trends using the readings in this class and beyond.
• Begin to answer 1 or more of the questions that you raise profile of ONE country using
these tools and be ready to report out during Class Time. The aim of this step is to gain a
deeper insight into how educational opportunities vary by various dimensions and to
identify who the most vulnerable students are in the country.
• STEP 4: Create a video, screencast or wide that incorporates the information from Steps
1-3. This 5-minute video should identify, Interrogate and Analyze Educational Trends in
Access.
The Second mid-term showed that Dr. Ford asked students to present work that “identifies,
interrogates and analyzes key trends” of access to education in the case study they worked on in
the first mid-term. In the second mid-term, Dr. Ford asked the students to explore the variables
related to access and equity in their case study, collect data about the trends in the case, and
“interrogate the key trends [they] identify.” In addition, students were required to ask questions
related to the case and to analyze and explain the trends in a way that reflected that they “gain a
deeper insight into how educational opportunities vary by various dimensions.” The assignments
demonstrated that Dr. Ford had considered her students’ autonomy and created a learning
opportunity for them to identify a problem, acquire data as a step to analyze the problem, then to
suggest solutions by applying what they discussed in class and what they understood from the
content in their analysis.
When Dr. Ford was asked about the assessment tools she used in this course, she said:
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With a word press site, they’ve created a blog, they form small groups and they have
regions of interest. One region is like the MENA region, one region is, we have actually
three groups doing Latin America but they’re kind of taking different focus, one is
looking at South America and indigenous education issues, one has more of a Latin
American Caribbean focus. Initially they were supposed to write every week and what
they were supposed to do was connect current events around issues of educational issues
and quality opportunities for learning in that region to the readings that they were doing
and make some short post around that. Something that they refer both to the readings or
concepts as well as some sort of current event or something that came out or some
organization. One week they comment and respond thoughtfully to the blog posts and one
week they make the blog posts.
Dr. Ford explained that one of the assignments was to make blog posts. In this assignment,
students worked in groups to pick a region of interest and attempt to “connect current events
around issues of educational issues and quality opportunities for learning in that region to the
readings.” The goal of this assignment was to encourage students to research current events
related to education in their region of interest and to connect them to the readings. Each group
was supposed to add a post every other week and to comment on other groups’ posts during the
weeks that they did not post. Thus, students got involved in discussions about education in
different regions in the world every week. This assignment showed that Dr. Ford created learning
opportunities for students to be independent learners and to enhance their skills of inquiry while
connecting what they studied to current educational events in different regions in the world.
Thus, Dr. Ford created an assignment that directed students to adopt deep learning approaches.
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In addition, the first and second mid-term projects asked students to build on what they learned
from their blog posts. Dr. Ford said:
So they have to go through those data sets and analyze them and with the infographic that
they did which is the first mid-term that was to talk about okay what are the predominant
trends in terms of access and quality for their region or one of the nations within that
region and they could choose to focus on a particular issue like some of them focus
generally more on access and equity in the entire region and one student focused more for
example on, she went really specific, she looked at the impact and timeline of bolsa
familia, which is a school feeding program and wealth redistribution program where poor
parents get a stipend for their children attending K12 schools. Anyways so she did her
whole thing about that, so it could be very specific, or some of the students looked
particularly at the BIE program in Peru. The Bilingual Indigenous Education program, so
they were allowed to look at a particular policy or more generally so they had to do the
infographic so like there’s a series of data sets they had to go through and analyze, and
then synthesize and represent the trends that they thought were most important within in
info graphic and the idea was that they would respond to one of the case studies that the
documentaries were about so some of the issues that came up within that.
Dr. Ford explained that the assignments were designed to create learning opportunities for
students to be independent learners as they had the freedom to pick any educational problem
related to access and equity in any region that they chose. Thus, students got the chance to
investigate what they were interested in; while some students were interested in “access and
equity in the entire region,” some zoomed in and focused on a specific problem or educational
issue such as “a school feeding program and wealth redistribution program,” or “the Bilingual
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Indigenous Education program.” While investigating a problem and region they were interested
in, they were required to analyze and synthesize their findings. Thus, Dr. Ford did not force her
interests on her students, but rather created opportunities for them to practice the freedom they
should experience in their undergraduate education. Dr. Ford’s selection of this assessment tool
was consistent with Ramsden (2003) and Shulman (2004), who argue that while instructors who
adopt the teacher-centered approach select curriculum items for no other reason than that they
are interested in them, instructors who adopt the student-centered approach design curricula that
respect and incorporate what students are interested in to get students engaged and invested in
the course. Dr. Ford emphasized, in her words, “this intention of impact,”
… and sort of practice, in terms of not just understanding the theories and the imperial
data but that they would also feel like they could have some sort of voice in this
conversation, that we would kind of position them as public intellectuals, but position
them to have entered this public conversation around issues of access and equity.
According to Dr. Ford, she developed assessment tools that do not just reflect students’
understanding of the content, but their ability to think of the content on an “intellectual” level
that requires deep learning, so that they “practice” what they learn. Thus, the assessment tools
did not direct students to adopt a surface learning approach, but rather a deep learning approach
to “position them as public intellectuals.”
What Dr. Ford said about the assessment tool aligned with what the students reported.
The students liked how the assignments were designed in a way that gave them space for
creativity. One student said:
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Professor assigns creative projects which challenge us to communicate the information
we read through visuals and animated projects. These assignments allow me to critically
think about the readings and discuss them rather than just absorbing information.
The student appreciated that the assignments did not resemble traditional exams and papers in
which students need to memorize the content and reproduce it. On the contrary, according to
them, the assignments challenged students and allowed them to “communicate” what they
understood after thinking critically. Similarly, another student said of Dr. Ford’s assessments that
they “aren’t just traditional essays or typical assignments like doing things for the blog post and
she’s really kind of doing a thing where you move from theory to practice and maybe that’s what
makes it challenge but it’s also really engaging.” This student also appreciated that Dr. Ford
created assignments that empowered students to create with the content and to apply what they
had studied to real problems in a way that engaged students in deep thinking “where you move
from theory to practice.” Another student said:
I feel like taking tests though would almost be like, like not good, like I just don’t think it
would go with the purpose of the course because I feel like the course is so much about
like application and like you know like these projects and solutions and so I feel like the
way that I’ve assessed my success in the course is more like I’ve realized like I make
more connections now to like outside experiences than I did like before, like I didn’t
know anything about like philosophical underpinnings of education but like now I can
like look at my own educational experience and go to different schools that I’ve worked
at and volunteered at and see like how their educational philosophy guides them, so I
think that’s a good assessment and then being able to talk about like in the blog posts or
like I don’t know in the projects, the projects even though they’re like kind of very all-
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 183
encompassing like they don’t, they’re not as difficult as I think they would be, and like
because I feel like now I have things that I can see.
The student thought that traditional exams were not the right way to assess what students
learned in this course because the course was not designed to force students to recall the readings
but rather to apply what they had learned. Thus, the student though that the assignments were
developed in a way that aligned with the course as the assignments required students to focus on
“application.” The student added that she felt that she learned more from this course than from
courses that utilized traditional exams because she assumed that after taking this course she
could relate what she experienced in different school settings to what she had studied in this
course. The student explained that although the projects in this course seemed challenging, she
was not worried because she felt that she learned at a deep level and would be able to create with
the content and produce something new. Another student built on these observations:
Professor Ford often will put up activities presenting a variety of problems, and then has
us form groups to discuss and come up with solutions for these problems. Also in
discussion, she will often present problems and ask for input on how to go about solving
them. Often, our discussions include implicit but what can we do about it ideas. And in
working up to our final paper or project, we've had to start thinking about how we would
attempt to solve the problems we're presented with in class.
This student believed that the assignments aligned with what she did in class. She
clarified that they spent most of the time in class discussing actual educational problems and
were challenged to “come up with solutions for these problems,” connecting the content to
current educational issues. Hence, she believed that it was sensical for the assignments to ask
them to discuss educational problems and “attempt to solve” them. Similarly, another student
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said, “as it progresses forward as I’m understanding more and we have these kinds of
assignments where it is proposing real world solutions it has been more empowering so that’s
kind of been the motivation.” The student explained that as the assignments asked her to discuss
real educational problems and propose “real world solutions” she felt motivated and more
interested in exploring the assignments. Similarly, another student said, “She facilitates class
discussions and assigns projects in which we are asked to critically think about the material and
offer input either on what it's saying or how it could be put into practice.” The students’
comments reflected that they appreciated that Dr. Ford designed assignments that “empowered”
and “motivated” the students and asked them to apply what they learned to real educational
problems rather than asking them to merely reproduce what the instructor recited. The same
could not be said for her feedback on the assignments, however.
Dr. Ford developed the assignments in an organized way and included the following
rubric in the syllabus, yet six of the seven students found the assignments vague and lacking in
guidance, which troubled them. They expressed that this made it difficult for them to navigate
the assignments.
Excellent Acceptable Unsatisfactory
Depth of
thought
Shows evidence of
depth of thought in
preparation,
organization, and
clarity

Evidence of depth
of thought could be
increased in some
areas.

Lacks overall depth
of thought, clarity, or
preparation.

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Connection
and reference
to course
readings and
other relevant
literature
Assignment shows
engagement with
course readings and
other relevant
literature and
integrates this in an
appropriate manner.

Some parts lack
connection to course
readings or other
sources, or they are
not integrated in an
appropriate way.

Fails to relate to
course materials and
other relevant
literature

Completeness,
adherence to
guideline
All parts of the
assignment are done
completely and
according to
guidelines.

All parts of the
assignments or
presentation are done
completely, however,
lacks adherence to
guidelines in some
areas.

Assignment is not
entirely complete,
and/or shows
marked lack of
adherence to
guidelines.

The students appreciated that the assignments opened doors for them to be creative and to
apply what they learned in class. However, as one student said: “Like all of our assignments
they’re super vague, and like what you see on the syllabus is what we get, there is no like more
detail explanations later.” The student explained that the assignments were not clear enough for
them to know what they had to work on, how they will be graded, or what exactly Dr. Ford
would expect them to produce in the assignments. Similarly, another student said, “She didn’t
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 186
really give us any guidelines for it. She was just like ‘start a blog.’ It is not very direct either
yeah so I struggle with that aspect of it.” The student here also said that the lack of guidance was
a problem that the student struggled with. Another student said:
She doesn’t really give us guidelines, we didn’t know we were supposed to do
differently. when I get more detailed rubrics I know what I’m supposed to be doing more,
and I think like I said Dr. Ford loves us and thinks highly of us I think she trusts us so
much that she doesn’t give us guidelines ‘cause she doesn’t want to like restrict us, but I
think more guidance or more specificity or what connections to the readings she wants us
to make.
The student thought that Dr. Ford did not give them enough guidance to open the doors for their
creativity as she did not want to “restrict” them. The student also thought that Dr. Ford thought
“highly” of the students and “trusted” them, so she might have thought that they knew what they
needed to do, but they did not really know how to work on the assignments. Another student
commented:
But I am not particularly fond of rubrics in other classes I think it is just having more
guidelines of like what she wants, like it would be a lot more comfortable the next time
the course is offered to have samples of like the assignments, so I think that just having
like more direction of what she wants.
The student explained that she would have been more comfortable if there was a guideline or
models to follow so they knew what she wanted them to do and what she expected them to focus
on. The lack of guidance was a source of confusion for students. Using a rubric might have
reduced students’ confusion and feeling of discomfort.
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Feedback. Although the constructive feedback Dr. Ford gave to students in the
classroom got them invested in the class, the lack of written formal feedback minimized their
chances to improve their work. In the following pages, I will discuss how Dr. Ford’s constructive
verbal feedback in the class encouraged students to participate, while the lack of formal written
feedback on their assignments might have reduced their learning opportunities and left them
confused (see Light and Cox, 2009). In addition, formative assessment and feedback may
highlight what students did not understand or what they struggled with and direct students to
rethink and work on how to achieve the course requirements. In this way, instructors guide
students to seek and adopt deep learning approaches.
When asked about the feedback she gave to students, Dr. Ford explained that she listened
to students’ group discussions in class and directed them where necessary. For example, she said,
“So I’d go around and like oh but you forgot that step.” Dr. Ford reported that students were
usually engaged and used to participating in class, so she gave them positive and constructive
verbal feedback. One student noted:
I think feedback in class is useful because it allows for a greater conversation between the
professor and students instead of just having the professor tell us the information. The
feedback is always positive and if it’s constructive, it remains encouraging for students to
continue to contribute.
The student explained that Dr. Ford encouraged students to participate in class by giving
them positive feedback. They felt that the feedback enriched the discussions that Dr. Ford
facilitated in class, which was preferable to the instructor giving lectures without listening to
students’ thoughts. Similarly, another student said of the feedback provided:
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It’s beneficial! It is often validation, which builds confidence to speak more even if the
comment is not specifically useful, but it also often connects points I'm trying to make
back to the material we are reading and discussing, which is certainly very beneficial to
my understanding of the course.
The student noticed that Dr. Ford did not shut students down even if their comments were
not very well considered. Rather, in class discussion she “connects points” back to the content,
which encourages the students and “builds confidence” in their participation. Students would
keep trying because they knew that their opinions would be validated. Another student said:
She’ll give like verbal affirmation like say things in class or she’ll like kind of redirect it
to like point in class or not like fix what we’re saying but kind of give her perspective
which is nice and helpful.
The student appreciated that the feedback in class gave “affirmation,” as Dr. Ford would
not put students down even if their input was not the best. Rather, Dr. Ford would “redirect”
students’ ideas and give her perspective on the topic at hand. The student thought that giving the
class space and time to think and rethink, and to be exposed to other opinions, was helpful.
On the written feedback, too, Dr. Ford explained that she tried to give them constructive
feedback on their assignments. Her she describes the process:
…. trying to make sure that on every assignment I’m giving them what I think was the
particular strength and what was an area for improvement and then some suggestions for
the next assignment because all the assignments kind of link up.
The feedback she gave to students on written assignments included reinforcement of what
they did right, explanations of what went wrong, and suggestions as to how to enhance their
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 189
work on future assignments. She thought that the feedback was important because all the
assignments in the course “kind of link up.” She said:
I gave them feedback around their assignments, and I can see how they’re getting a little
bit more focused, pulling in the readings a little bit more, not feeling they just have to site
so many, cause their info graphics some of them are just lots of statistics right and like
not a lot of analytic claims so I could see how they’re making that move to more clear
and focused analytic claims that are a little bit more grounded in theory. So, yeah, I can
see that they’re improving.
The Feedback Dr. Ford gave to students aimed at grounding them more in theory. She explained
that she tried to direct students to be more analytical and to connect to the readings. She directed
students to focus more on explaining what the statistics revealed or why the statistics were
important rather than listing a number of them in isolation. Hence, she tried to get them engaged
in deep thinking rather than to simply list facts. Dr. Ford’s reflection aligned with some of the
students’ observations, insofar as the feedback pushed them to incorporate more of the theory
covered in class. For example, one student said:
I don’t remember when I got my feedback but like one of them was like oh you could
include like some of these theories and stuff so then in future assignments like with blog
posts I’ve been trying to like think of how they approach theories.
The student reported that she received constructive feedback on this assignment. In the
feedback, Dr. Ford guided the student how to improve the assignment by connecting it to the
theories they covered in class. However, six of the seven students in the focus groups said that
the feedback they received on their assignments was either untimely or unconstructive. One
student complained:
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We do not often receive feedback. In fact, I have received no feedback on any work I
have done throughout the semester, just a grade on my first midterm…I was initially very
excited about the assignments I was doing, and I wanted feedback on how to improve my
blog post writing.
The student explained that although she was excited to receive feedback on the assignments
because she wanted to know how to improve her work, she received just a grade with no
feedback on assignment. Similarly, another student noted:
[Dr. Ford] gave me back the grade for midterm [one] on the day that midterm two was
due, like the morning it was due so I couldn’t, you know it wasn’t an option so I ended up
I was able to compensate and I made more connections to the readings when I had like
my blog post than my midterm video but because my grade was so late I couldn’t make it
useful later.
The student recalled that she received feedback on the first midterm assignment but she
received it on the day the second midterm was due so she did not have time to incorporate it into
the second midterm. However, the feedback did guide the student to improve the blog post, as
she started to connect her posts more to the readings. Dr. Ford said that grading the assignments
in this course was a challenge because she had not utilized the same kinds of assignments in any
course before and she did not have a rubric against which to grade students. She said:
…the challenge is the nature of those modalities is so different right so there’s some
underlying habits of mind and underlying objectives, but an info graphic is a lot different
than a video which is a lot different than a blog post, and it’s going to be a lot different
than a traditional final paper. It has been a challenge like I feel like I am just giving them
all high grades and…but I think it’s a weakness of mine like I think, yeah, they’re
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meeting it but if all of them are meeting it then maybe my standards aren’t high enough
or maybe I don’t know I can’t figure it out like cause I yeah I don’t have well developed
rubrics. I don’t have rubrics period. I have really extensive guidelines for all the
assignments but I haven’t created rubrics yet. So that might be part of it like I think if I
created rubrics that would help a lot.
Although Dr. Ford developed extensive guidelines for each assignment, she thought that
not having standardized rubrics made it difficult for her to grade the students adequately. Dr.
Ford considered the fact that she gave all the students high grades a sign that she might not have
set her bar at the right level in terms of her expectations and the degree of challenge presented to
the students. She explained, also, that using different “modalities” of assignment was a challenge
because grading each model required a different kind of rubric.
Alignment with The Course Objectives
Although many of the decisions Dr. Ford made while selecting the different components
of her curriculum aligned with the course objectives, which were designed with an aim to create
learning opportunities for students to adopt higher levels of thinking, some choices did not align,
which resulted in reducing some of the opportunities provided. In the following pages, I will
discuss how some aspects of Dr. Ford’s curriculum selection might have hindered students in
achieving some of the course’s learning objectives. Ambrose et al. (2010) and Biggs (2012)
argue that aligning the content, the teaching approach, and assessment and feedback with the
course objectives is essential to direct students to achieve the course objectives. The scholars
purport that deficient alignment between the different components of a curriculum confuses
students and prevents them from constructing knowledge. When students get confused, they do
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not know how to study, which might make it difficult for students to adopt deep learning
approaches.
While developing the content, Dr. Ford mentioned that she considered two main factors, namely
to have the course:
…touch on the foundation issues of education so really how is this sociology of education
perspective, but be of interest to students who have multiple undergraduate majors and
who might be able to go into multiple of our graduate programs, anything from the
teacher programs to the sort of higher education stuff or the technology program, so
partly I was thinking about audience and pathways.
The two main factors that Dr. Ford considered while developing the curriculum to this
course were: (1) introducing students to foundational issues that students should study in order to
establish a base knowledge of the field and develop a background with which to understand
global problems in school access and equity. At the same time, she considered content that
would be “of interest to students” who might take diverse different “pathways” in their future
educational careers. Dr. Ford designed the curriculum with a view to recruit students and attract
them to the discipline so that they might continue in graduate programs related to education.
Therefore, she collaborated with a colleague to make the course attractive to students. However,
she said, “we had a short amount of time to do these, I want to say we had like maybe a month or
six weeks from start to finish,” and as such she explained that they might not have had enough
time to think the curriculum through thoroughly.
There was disagreement between students as to whether the course objectives played out
in a reasonable and effective way. One student said:
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I’ve never thought about like being a teacher or like I kind of like always expected to go
more towards like law and policy and I still intend to do that but like this class and
probably my other education class too has made me like consider teaching as a profession
like after college and like part of it has to do with like having all those guest lecturers
telling us all the different things that they’ve done but I think it also has to do with like
just here like learning about different philosophies and pedagogies and like how that can
really impact and like with the global context thing, too, I think yeah that’s just opened
my eyes to like all of the possibilities in the field of education.
The student expressed that the course was well-designed, in that it not only made her
interested in education but also prompted her to “consider teaching as a profession.” She
appreciated how the class content and activities enabled her to examine different perspectives in
the field of education and to consider “all of the possibilities in the field of education. Similarly,
another student remarked:
I always wanted to go into education I agree this has made me, it has been very beneficial
cause I wanted to study, I wanted to teach abroad for a while, and just kind of learn about
different education systems and I think this was a great like introductory way.
The language here reflected that the student appreciated that the course was “beneficial”
and kept her interested in studying and working in the field of education. The course was “a
great…introductory way” to develop her plans as an educator in general and to teach abroad in
particular as it focused on global educational problems. Thus, the course introduced her in an
academic way to what might be her lifelong career, which aligned with what Dr. Ford’s
intentions as she developed the course. The course objectives were also achieved according to
the following student:
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…it’s I mean education has always been something that’s interested me but I think I felt
like there was I didn’t really have like a huge role outside of just being a student, and
now I see that there are places for people who just want to think critically and try to solve
these problems.
The language the student used showed that the course augmented her interest and
prompted her to think more deeply and from different perspectives about education. She thought
that the course got her to “think critically” about the problems related to the field of global
education and to think that she had the capacity to “solve these problems.” This student’s
observations aligned with Dr. Ford’s reflections, and with the literature about teaching in higher
education. For example, Biggs (2012) argues that there is a gap between the knowledge that
students acquire in their undergraduate studies and what they need in the real world after
graduation, and that effective teaching is teaching that aims toward closing this gap.
In the syllabus, Dr. Ford outlined the course’s learning objectives:
At the conclusion of this course students will be able to describe key educational theories
on the role of education in society, social change and difference and have practice
applying these theories to issues of educational access and equity. Students will be able to
qualitatively and quantitatively describe and analyze students’, schools’, nation states’
and regions’ experiences in accessing schooling and high-quality education in different
international contexts. Students will gain practical experience applying social and
international educational theories to plans to increase access to schooling and quality
education in international contexts and to their future work as educators and engaged
global citizens.
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The learning objectives indicated that students would be able to describe and apply
educational theories by the end of the course, while the data collected showed that the students
found the theories too challenging to be understood. Although Dr. Ford adopted a student-
centered approach and selected assessment tools that led students to participate as independent
and active learners, students had difficulty connecting theory and practice due to their lack of
understanding in some of the theories. The lack of timely feedback was another reason for
students’ frustrations because they did not know if what they were doing was right. Thus,
although using documentaries, reports and case studies helped students to understand the content
and maybe create new maps of knowledge, the selection of theoretical content and lack of
sufficient written feedback ultimately detracted from students’ opportunities to fully understand
the topic at a sophisticated level. Students had varying opinions on the extent to which they
achieved the learning objectives of the course. One student said:
…much of our learning objectives involve critically thinking about education and the
issues surrounding it, particularly in relation to educational access, and then putting that
knowledge into the development of solutions, at least on a basic level. I think I've already
significantly improved in my knowledge of educational theory and problems facing
educational access, so I think I'm definitely on the right track.
The student thought that she was “on the right track” to achieving the learning objectives
of the course because she thought that there had been a transformation in her knowledge about
“educational theory and problems” and that she could now begin to think about solutions. Hence,
she believed that she could now think “critically” about the different topics they discussed in
class. Similarly, another student commented:
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I agree with what [Dr. Ford] said about, we talked about multiculturalism a lot and the
difference between like liberal multiculturalism and critical multiculturalism and it’s
something I would be thinking a lot about in the classroom but also we talked about
conflict theory and I work at an elementary school right now and I see that a lot ‘cause
we just had an admin change and I always see this kind of like students fighting against
the teachers and fighting against admin things like that so kind of understanding how that
works and how to navigate that seems really important in my career.
The student explained that she could make connections between the theories of
“multiculturalism” and what she experienced while teaching at an elementary school. The
student appreciated that the course allowed her to connect theory and practice and to analyze the
situations she experienced while working, forging an understanding of why students would fight
against teachers and administrators. She thought that the course gave her insights into her future
career. “Understanding how that works and how to navigate that” reflected that the course
objectives were aligned to give the students the tools and the learning opportunities to achieve
the course objectives. On the contrary, another student expressed that, although the course was
interesting, it was unrealistic:
I think we were all really interested in education in the US and elsewhere felt kind of
either like we couldn’t do anything about that or didn’t have any, you know, like I just
thought like how do I make education better in Thailand when I can’t even like do
anything in South-Central LA.
The student said that, although she was interested in the course, she felt that the course
was not realistic in asking students to solve global educational problems, simply because she
cannot solve the educational problems in her county or in America. Another student agreed that
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while she felt the course in general was interesting, it was less successful on other counts. For
this student, it was an apparent lack of cohesion in the course that impacted her motivation:
Not being motivated, like because I’m motivated because I want to learn but like I
haven’t worked on my final yet but like I know I’m probably going to get like a good
grade on it because like I’ve gotten good grades on everything else and because she’s not
like focused on grades, or like with the readings like I usually do the readings, I have like
a block before this class of two hours so usually I do the readings right before class and
like I do them because like I’ve started to find them interesting, but like a lot of times we
don’t end up talking about the readings for that week in that class, so it’s sometimes hard
for you to like prioritize the work of this class but like because I enjoy the subject that’s
more motivating.
The student explained that she was motivated to study the course because she liked the
content. However, the way Dr. Ford managed the course was not motivating because she gave all
of the students’ good grades, leading them to think that they did not “need to try hard,” like they
did for other courses, or to “prioritize” studying for the course, because even if the students did
the reading they wouldn’t “end up talking about the readings for that week in class.” Therefore,
although the student was motivated and interested in class, she lost learning opportunities
because the different components of the curriculum were not aligned in a way that would push
students to study hard.
Reflection
Dr. Ford considered instructor reflection an important component of effective teaching,
therefore she reflected on her teaching and how she could utilize the reflection to create more
integrated learning opportunities to her undergraduate students. Dr. Ford’s beliefs echo Shulman
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(2004), who argues that it is necessary for instructors to go through this process of reflection in
order to improve the effectiveness of their teaching. Dr. Ford argued that devoted members of a
community should always reflect in order to improve performance:
I’m trying to aim for like critical habits of mine; reflection, those kind of things, and like
I’m feeling like a vested member in this particular community, that’s what I’m going for,
but I don’t know if I do it all the time especially this is the first time I've taught the course
so there’s a lot of things that I need to improve upon and that’s what I’m working
towards.
Dr. Ford considered herself a devoted instructor, so she tried to develop the habit of
reflecting on her the effectiveness of her teaching with a mind to improve her performance and
the learning opportunities she created for her students. She explained that, as it was her first time
to offer this course, she thought that there was a room for improvement, and that is what she
would continue to aim for. According to Dr. Ford, the course was also a challenge for her at
other levels:
It is just time management, like I haven’t quite I mean I’m better but it is still a huge
problem like I haven’t quite figured out how to manage because I’m so used to these
short classes and then I don’t know it is just a totally different.
Teaching at undergraduate level was a challenge for Dr. Ford as she had been teaching
graduate students for a long time, so she needed to adjust her techniques to fit with the
expectations and experiences of undergraduate students. She also explained that managing a
class for almost three hours was a challenge as she was used to teaching much shorter classes.
Although she recognized that she was still struggling with the timing problem, she felt that it had
gotten better. In addition, she said: “I need to do a better job of like I said giving feedback like
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giving timely and detailed feedback beyond like, make it more detailed.” Dr. Ford also admitted
that there was room to improve the feedback that she gave students, explaining that she would
try in the future to give her students more “timely” and “detailed” feedback.
Dr. Ford acknowledged that, since “this is the first time I’m teaching this particular
course, there’s definitely a lot to be revised sort of as I’m learning and going.” Dr. Ford noted
that she would take measures to modify and improve the course if she were to introduce it again
in the future. She considered the course a learning experience that she could enhance moving
forward. She further explained that she would reflect on how to align the different components of
the curriculum in a more effective way:
I think that there could be a little bit more about making sure that everything is aligned
that could be really important and then huge I mean this is so mundane but it’s really too
I derive a great sense of value and purpose in that work and its not to say that I’ve got it
figured out, I don’t, I have so much room for growth.
Here, again, Dr. Ford said that she thought that aligning the curriculum was an important
factor that she would need to work on in order to improve the course. She explained that she did
not yet think she had figured out how to make better selections as to the curriculum, but that she
was willing to improve her teaching out of her respect for her profession. Although she kept
trying to improve her teaching, she believed that there would continue to be “so much room for
growth.”
Cross-Case Analysis
This section explores the intersections between the two case studies discussed above,
regarding how the two instructors’ curriculum choices shaped their students’ learning
approaches. The instructors’ choices were analyzed within the theoretical framework outlined in
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Chapter Two. The framework is applied to the instructors’ selection of content, their teaching
approach, assessment tools, feedback, and how these different factors were aligned with the
course objectives to direct students to adopt deep or surface learning approaches.
In my cross-case analysis, I will present the similarities and differences between the
decisions that Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford made while selecting their curricula and how their
decisions created or eliminated learning opportunities for their students. The decisions I will
present in the following pages are the decisions Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford made to select: (1) the
content, (2) the teaching approach, (3) the assessment tools, (4) the feedback strategies, and (5)
alignment of the previous four decisions with the learning objectives of the course. I will then
compare how the two instructors reflected on their decisions.
Content
As described in the literature, Ramsden (2003) and Shulman (2004) argue that choosing
interesting material which is at an appropriate level of challenge causes students to be more
engaged and involved in their own learning. The data from the interviews, focus groups,
observations, and artifacts showed that both Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford selected interesting topics in
order to keep students interested in the course. At the same time, both instructors gave students a
lot of space to pick topics or regions of interest to study, and both introduced students to different
forms of readings and asked the students to follow the news so as to stay updated on what was
new in relation to the class. Dr. Zahier was intent on narrowing down the number of topics she
covered in the course so that she could discuss them in depth with students. In addition, she
assigned fewer readings than were assigned in other courses in her department. Although Dr.
Ford did not mention whether she felt that the number of topics she covered was appropriate,
students did not complain that the workload was excessive.
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According to Ramsden (2003), one of the instructor’s responsibilities is to make a
challenge interesting by clarifying to students what must be learned in order to achieve
understanding and what can be left out for the time being. Although the two instructors
introduced the students to sophisticated theories, Dr. Zahier was aware that the theories and some
of the readings she selected were tough. Therefore, Dr. Zahier was vocal with the students about
the fact that the class was not developed to analyze IR theories, but rather to develop a basic or
foundational understanding of them so that they could connect these theories to real-world
problems and to the case studies they covered. On the contrary, Dr. Ford did not consistently
walk students through the challenging theories they were exposed to, so students could not
consistently make sense of the them, making it difficult at times for them to understand the
content.
Teaching Approaches
Both Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford adopted a student-centered approach and their goals were to
direct students to think deeply while investigating the content. They created different activities to
get students involved in the discussions. The two instructors did not adopt the teacher-centered
approach as they did not lecture and their activities were developed to get students engaged and
interested enough to negotiate their thoughts. Neither of the instructors tried to force their
opinions on students or to transfer their knowledge to them directly. They did not consider their
students empty vessels that they needed to fill in with their knowledge. On the contrary, it is
clear that the two instructors adopted the student-centered approach, as they respected their
students’ autonomy and created activities that would give them space to negotiate their
knowledge and to develop new ideas. The two instructors created learning opportunities in which
students worked in groups to develop their group-work skills. As described by Kiraly (2014), in
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the student-centered approach instructors do not impose knowledge on students, but facilitate the
process of acquiring the subject matter and help students to become independent learners.
Students in the focus groups appreciated that Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford gave them room to
participate as creative, productive and independent learners while getting support from their
peers and from the instructor as well.
Dr. Zahier lectured at times to explain to her students the theories that they had difficulty
understanding. However, her lectures were not traditional because she would pose questions to
the students mid-way and give them opportunities to discuss what they had understood and to
apply it to current events. She organized simulations as activities that got students as close as
possible to practicing real negotiations in the world of international relations. Although she
pushed them to discuss current events related to the topics they discussed in class, she kept the
class on track and followed the syllabus.
Dr. Ford also created activities to give students opportunities to get engaged with the
content and to negotiate what they learned. She created activities that helped students to make
inquiries, collect data and to present and discuss what they found. Although she created activities
to help students make connections between theory and practice, she did not devote time in class
to simplifying the theories they did not understand. Therefore, students struggled to apply some
of the theories appropriately. In addition, although Dr. Ford tried to keep the class interesting and
colorful by giving students time to talk about their experiences, the class frequently veered off
track and did not follow the syllabus, which was a prominent reason for students’ frustration.
Assessment
Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford did not utilize summative assessment tools, such as exams and
quizzes, that would direct students to memorize and recall or reproduce what the instructors said
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in class. In other words, the formative assessment tools that Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford used did not
direct students to adopt a surface learning approach. On the contrary, the instructors utilized
formative tools that directed students to be independent learners and to adopt deep learning
approaches. As Biggs (2003) asserts, while formative assessments monitor students’
achievement and push them to think about the content, summative assessments simply judge
students.
Dr. Zahier divided her students into groups and assigned each group a topic to debate.
While students debated the topics they covered in class, they were also required outside of class
to search for different sources, collect data, organize their thoughts, predict the ideas the
countering group would come up with, and get ready to rebut their ideas. The debate was an
assessment tool that provided the students with learning opportunities to participate as active
learners and to develop group-work and problem-solving skills as well as skills of inquiry. The
final project was, again, a formative assessment, which consisted of two parts. In the final
project, students had the freedom to pick any global international challenge they liked and were
asked to investigate it. In groups, students were required to research the topic, collect data, and
present an argument. Building on their presentations, they got feedback from Dr. Zahier to
incorporate while writing their final paper. The students appreciated that Dr. Zahier used these
assessment tools to challenge them and to guide them toward developing new skills and thinking
more deeply about international challenges.
Dr. Ford also developed assessment tools that required students to develop inquiry skills,
collect data, analyze them, and subsequently connect them to the theories they studied in class.
She also gave the students the freedom to select any problem related to school access and equity
in any region in the world to investigate. Although students appreciated that Dr. Ford did not
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utilize traditional summative exams, they considered the assignments vague and wished that Dr.
Ford would be clearer as to what she expected from them. Some students also found the
assignments unrealistic, as they were asked to suggest solutions to the international educational
problems they investigated.
As described by Light and Cox (2009), formative assessment helps students to adopt deep
learning approaches if students get feedback on their coursework which helps them to improve
their performance and to truly learn what they will already assume that they have learned. Dr.
Zahier and Dr. Ford gave students a lot of verbal support for their participation in class. Their
positive feedback encouraged students to participate because they knew their participation would
be respected. The two instructors integrated what their students said in class and built on it.
However, one of the main differences between the two case studies was the formal
written feedback that the two instructors provided. Before the debates, Dr. Zahier worked with
each group to review their notes and offered them feedback regarding their arguments, sources
and how to organize their thoughts. This feedback guided students to dig deep, organize their
thoughts, and prepare for counterarguments, even though she did not tell each group about what
the counterargument group prepared. In addition, Dr. Zahier gave students timely and detailed
feedback after their final project presentations. In addition to the written formal feedback for the
final project presentations, Dr. Zahier assigned time to talk with each group about their
presentations and discussed their questions about the feedback. The feedback provided guidance
as to how to improve their investigation of the topic, as she gave them suggestions to help them
get deeper and more organized.
Dr. Ford was not consistent in giving written formal feedback on students’ assignments.
Although she gave some students very constructive feedback and directed them as to how to
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improve their work and what to consider moving forward, she either did not give feedback or
gave the feedback very late to some students. Dr. Ford thought that giving all her students high
grades might mean that she did not set the challenge bar very high, and students agreed that
getting high grades did not motivate or push them to put in their best efforts.
Aligning the Curriculum with the Course Objectives
According to Ambrose et al. (2010) and Biggs (2012), the alignment of course objectives
with selected content, instructional strategies, and assessment is vital, in every course in higher
education, to ensure students achieve them. Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford designed their courses with
the students’ future after graduation in their minds. Therefore, both developed their courses and
aligned these different components to give students learning opportunities that would push them
to acquire the skills that they would need after graduation; such as inquiry, collecting and
analyzing data, discussing or debating their thoughts, and applying theory to real problems in the
fields of IR or global education.
Although Dr. Zahier aligned her content selections, teaching approach, assessment tools,
and feedback successfully with the course objectives, some of the readings in certain topics
proved too theoretical, technical or challenging for students. However, she compensated for the
challenging readings by simplifying and explaining the content in class. As she lacked expertise
in a specific topic, she could not really walk students through the reading, which might have
detracted from their opportunities to think deeply about this theme.
Although Dr. Ford intended to align her selection of the different curriculum components
with the course learning objectives, she did not consistently make the correct choice. For
example, while selecting the content, Dr. Ford selected some challenging theories that students
were not able to comprehend and consequently struggled to apply. She was not consistently
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successful in walking students through these challenges. In addition, although she created
activities that got students engaged in discussions most of the time, sometimes she veered off
track and failed to follow the syllabus, which ultimately reduced or eliminated students’
opportunities to discuss and practice the content. Not giving students feedback or giving the
feedback after a very long time prevented students either from enhancing their performance,
adopting different learning approaches, or applying the feedback to their work on other
assignments in order to meet the course objectives.
Reflection
Effective teaching happens when instructors examine the teaching and learning that has
occurred and reflect on what happened in class so as to avoid what went wrong and enhance
what worked well (Shulman, 2004). One of the main similarities between the two instructors was
that they believed there was space for them to improve their andragogy and to improve their
courses. It was the first time for each of them to offer the course I observed, so both thought that
they would make changes in the content and try to find readings that provided the right level of
challenge for students if they offered the course in the future.
While reflecting on their courses, Dr. Zahier and Dr. Ford said that they had been asked
to come up with their syllabus within a very short time-frame before the semester started, which
meant that neither one of them had sufficient time to select more appropriate readings

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CHAPTER FIVE: DISSCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This dissertation investigated the ways instructors’ selection of the content, the teaching
approaches, and the assessment tools direct students to adopt deep or surface learning
approaches. A qualitative multi-site case study was used to address the following research
questions: How do instructors’ approaches to curriculum shape undergraduate students’
opportunities to engage in higher levels of thinking in the United States?”
To answer my research question, I used purposeful sampling to select two instructors
who taught undergraduate courses, had excellent reputations for their effective teaching, and who
would be willing to participate in my study. I selected two instructors who worked in two
different social studies schools at the same private university. The data I collected to answer my
research questions included in-person interviews, class observation for 6 hours in one class and 8
hours in the other, two focus groups with students in each class, and documents such as syllabi
and written feedback. The data collected for this study provided insights into how the decisions
that instructors made while selecting the different components of the curriculum created
opportunities for students to adopt either deep learning approaches or surface learning
approaches. I chose to study two instructors who had a reputation as effective instructors.
Although they both created learning opportunities for students to get engaged and directed them
to develop high levels of thinking, there was room for improvement. Further, how their choices
of the curriculum shaped student learning experiences and directed students to adopt one
learning approach over the other aligned with my conceptual framework. Thus, I had six
findings. First, the more accurate the two instructors were in setting the level of the challenge
while selecting the content, the more the students were willing to get engaged with the course.
Second, the more thoughtful the instructors were while selecting the teaching approach they
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adopted in class, the more students were invested in participating. Third, utilizing assessment
tools that created opportunities for students’ productivity, and giving them the appropriate kind
of guidance, directed students to adopt deep learning approaches. Fourth, the more the content,
the teaching approach, and the assignments were constructed to align together and with the
course objectives, the more students were able to achieve the presumed outcomes. Fifth, the
more the feedback was constructive, the more students could apply it moving forward. Sixth,
instructors’ reflections showed that they were conscious of what worked and what did not work
well in their courses and that they had clearer thoughts of how to improve their courses if they
would offer them in the future.
Summary of Findings
Dr. Zahier studied and taught International Relations (IR) at Ivy League universities. In
addition to her interest in IR studies, she was also interested in effective teaching. It was her first
time offering the course I observed. Dr. Zahier intentionally selected content she believed would
facilitate students’ deep learning. She did not try to cover every topic related to IR but opted to
narrow down the number of topics she offered so she could focus with the students on each topic
and discuss each in depth. She tried to balance between topics she was knowledgeable about and
topics she expected students to be interested in. She selected topics she was knowledgeable
about, so that she could explain them and guide students to discuss them at high cognitive levels.
At the same time, she selected topics that students would be interested in, to keep them interested
in the course. However, when she offered interesting topics that she was not expert in, she was
not able to select readings that facilitated students’ learning. Although Dr. Zahier tried to select
the appropriate level of challenge while choosing the readings, she was aware that IR topics were
complicated, and she did not expect students to understand everything.
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Dr. Zahier balanced between lecturing and discussing each topic. She recognized that
some of the content was higher than the students’ level of knowledge, so she lectured to make
sure that students were introduced to the fundamentals they needed to build upon. At the same
time, she developed in-class activities that gave students opportunities to adopt deep learning
approaches. For instance, she gave them opportunities to work in simulations in which they role
played, negotiated, applied what they learned, and developed their solving problems and group
work skills.
Dr. Zahier also selected assignments that directed students to be independent learners,
develop group work skills, and adopt deep learning approaches. For example, one of the
assignments was to work in groups to debate the topics covered in class. In this assignment,
students were required to take position, collect data, organize their thoughts, prepare to present
them, presume what the other group would argue, and think how to rebut counterarguments. The
other assignment was to present about a topic they were invested in but had not been covered in
class. The goal of the assignment was to give students an opportunity to be independent learners
and to apply what they learned on topics they were interested in. When the students’
performance on this assignment did not meet her expectations, Dr. Zahier reasoned that she did
not give them sufficient guidance.
Further, Dr. Zahier gave students formative verbal and written feedback that guided
students to understand what they mistakenly thought that they understood. The feedback was to
guide students to adopt high levels of thinking by suggesting models of logical thinking that they
could follow and apply on other assignments. Dr. Zahier was conscious about her selections of
the content, the teaching approach, the assessment tools, and the feedback, and orchestrated them
to create learning opportunities for students to be thoughtful learners. The way the different
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components of the curriculum were selected helped students to transform their knowledge by
developing new maps of knowledge and engaging in deep levels of thought. In other words, none
of the different components of the curriculum were selected or developed to direct students to
develop distorted maps of knowledge by adopting surface learning approaches, in which students
would merely reproduce the knowledge transmitted to them in class. The data collected from the
interview, the focus groups, the observations, and the artifacts aligned to support these findings.
Dr. Ford had a significant amount of academic and clinical experience in education in
and out of the U.S. It was her first time offering the course I observed. Dr. Ford selected both
academic and non-academic readings to introduce students to both theoretical and real life
aspects related to the topic of the course. Although her choices of the non-academic readings
fostered students’ interest in the course, her choices of the theoretical readings were too
challenging and abstract, so students struggled to grasp much of the material. In addition, the
readings were not well organized, so the students felt lost at some points. However, the way the
course was designed gave students the freedom to study the problems of access and equity in
education in any area of their interest, which promoted students interest and engagement in the
class.
Dr. Ford developed several class activities that encouraged students to discuss, connect
between the different topics they covered in the course, inquire and collect data, and to develop
their problem-solving skills. However, she did not consistently explain the abstract theories in a
way they fostered students understanding in them. Students also became frustrated when the
class activities did not build on the readings and did not match what the syllabus stated that they
were supposed to do. Dr. Ford used assessment tools that gave students opportunities to be
independent learners, to inquire and collect data, and to apply what they learned in class on real
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education problems, however students thought that they needed more guidance to know what she
expected from them. Students appreciated that Dr. Ford’s assignments gave them space for
creativity and productivity and did not push them to memorize and recall her opinions.
Although Dr. Ford gave students very constructive and positive verbal feedback in class,
she either did not give them enough feedback on the assignments or the feedback was not timely,
so students were not able to apply feedback on other assignments. Thus, students were confused
for the lack of guidance and did not know if they were on the right track.
Dr. Ford’s selection of the different components of the curriculum was successful most of
the time and aligned with the course objectives which created opportunities for students to think
deeply about the content. However, the inconsistency reduced some opportunities in which
students could have learned at a deeper level.
Implications and Recommendations
Policy and Practice
Students appreciated the learning opportunities they received in the two case studies and
considered them unique experiences. The learning opportunities they were provided in these two
courses gave students space to think on high levels and directed them to be independent learners.
According to students, they do not enjoy these learning opportunities in most of their other
courses in which they were lectured and took traditional quizzes and exams that required them to
reproduce what they were lectured in class. Thus, one implication is that students at the
undergraduate level still experience courses that direct them to be passive learners in lecturers
and to take quizzes and final exams that push them to reproduce what instructors recite in
lecturers. Light and Cox (2009) argue that summative exams usually give students a way to pass
by listing information without demonstrating more serious deeper understanding of the course.
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Hence, the first recommendation is that universities should adopt policies that minimize the use
of exams that measure how much information students can recall and require instructors to
utilize assessment tools that assess the improvement in students’ skills and levels of thinking.
Therefore, to approve a new course, instructors should explain the reasons for the assignments
they utilize, the skills they assess, how often the assignments are given, and how they align the
assignments with the course objectives.
The two instructors in the case studies said that they gave their students high grades
because they did not have rubrics or did not know how to grade different types of creative
assignments. Students said that they were not motivated to study for a course when they were
sure that every student in the class would get a high grade. Roksa, Arum, and Cook (2016) argue
that employers are skeptical about the educational system in higher education, so most employers
do not believe that students or graduates’ college transcripts reflect students’ abilities and skills.
Students face obstacles when they try to transfer credits from one institution to another for the
same reasons. Thus, the second recommendation is not to approve courses unless instructors
have detailed rubrics of how they will grade the assignments. The third recommendation is to
send samples of each assignment to external examiners in other universities to check the
accuracy of the grading and the individual feedback students receive. In addition, each chair,
director, or coordinator should have access to the grades and check how quickly students get
their grades and individual feedback.
The two instructors said that they did not have enough time to pick the readings so some
of them were too challenging for students. They added that if they were to offer these courses in
the future, they would make changes either in the readings or in their sequence. Postareff,
Parpala, and Lindblom-Ylanne (2015) and Ransden (2003) argue that setting the right bar of
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 213
challenge while selecting the content is one of the challenges that instructors encounter when
selecting the readings. Thus, the fourth recommendation is to create a curriculum committee in
each department to approve new courses before they are sent to the university curriculum
committee. Each department curriculum committee should include a professor from the
department, an external professor from the field, a curriculum specialist, and a graduate or senior
student in the major or minor to examine the curriculum and comment on it. Then, the faculty
might adjust the course or defend it before submitting it the university curriculum committee.
The fifth recommendation is to rank universities depending on reports from employers on
how ready graduates from different schools are for work. The rank depending on the employers’
reports should play a role in state and federal governments funds to state and community
colleagues.
When the two instructors reflected on their choices and decisions, they discussed what
their weak points were and how they could improve their choices in the future. Shulman (2004)
argues that instructors’ reflection on their practices is one of the main components of effective
teaching. Thus, the sixth recommendation is to require faculty to reflect on their teaching every
semester and to demonstrate how they may improve their performance. This reflection should be
included in instructors’ dossiers for hiring or promotion.
Although hiring committees usually focus on the faculties’ research and publication in
their field, hiring for teaching positions should require research about the andragogy related to
the subject matter. One of the instructors in this study mentioned that as a TA she was pushed to
focus on research in her specialty rather than on teaching. The other instructor explained that she
did not have experience in designing curriculum as a TA, and that she gained her knowledge
about developing curriculums from the meetings she had with other faculty when she started to
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 214
work as full-time teaching instructor. Therefore, the seventh recommendation for administrations
in higher education would be to require getting certified to teach at university level as a main
factor in hiring and promoting teaching- track faculty. Thus, universities may require new faculty
to take courses or workshops about teaching and designing curricula to certify them to teach the
same way K-12 teachers need to get certified to teach.
The eighth recommendation is directed for those who are responsible for faculty
professional development in each school. The recommendation would be to organize workshops
about selecting the content, teaching approaches, assessment, and reflection regularly throughout
the year and at different times to update faculty with the best practices in their disciplines.
The ninth recommendation would be for universities to require chairs, directors of
programs, or coordinators to observe their faculty once or twice per year and include their class
observation reports in the annual faculty review process. Faculty might also be required to
observe other instructors’ classes, whether in their schools or in their discipline in other
universities, and write reports about what they learned from the classes they observed and how
they may integrate what they learned into their classes. These reports could be included in their
dossiers. The tenth and last recommendation is that faculty might also be required to video
record one or two meetings of their classes and discuss them with their colleagues. In the
discussion, they may reflect on their practices and how they may improve their teaching and to
get feedback from their peers.
Research
Although there were some weaknesses in the way the two instructors in the case studies
selected and applied some aspects of their curriculum, students said that they learned from these
courses more than they learned in many other courses. Roksa, Arum and Cook (2016), and Bok
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 215
(2008) argue that there are increasing concerns regarding the quality of teaching in higher
education and whether it is a good investment of money. They also argue that higher education
fails to prepare students to be active citizens in a democratic society. Therefore, another
recommendation is to launch a mixed method research study to track a sample of students who
experience variable teaching approaches, and investigate if specific approaches affect their
success after graduation, whether in postgraduate work or the job market; their ability to become
thoughtful citizens and show more readiness for various job responsibilities. The research also
should investigate if employers are more satisfied with the performance of this group of students
than others.
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 216
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Appendix A: Interview Protocol
Name of Instructor Interviewed: __________________________ Date: ___________________
Start time: ______________ End time: __________________ Total Time:
________________
Interview questions:
1. I am going to start by asking you some questions about how you design your courses:
2. What courses do you teach?
3. Why did you decide to offer these courses?
4. Did you teach the course I am going to observe before?
5. How did you decide what the learning objectives were going to be for the course?
6. Tell me about the process you use to design the course objectives.
7. Who, if anyone, did you talk to during the process?
8. How did you develop the syllabus?
9. How did you decide what the students were going to read?
10. How did you decide what types of assignments the students were going to complete as
homework?
11. How did you decide the in-class activities you wanted students to participate in?
12. If you haven’t had a chance yet to design a curriculum, but you will get the chance to
modify the course which I will observe,
13. What are the modification you will make to the current curriculum?
14. Why do you think these modifications are important?
15. How will you design the course objectives?
16. If you have already taught this course before, what are the modification you did in the
content to improve it, if any?
Now I want to shift gears into asking you questions about what you do during class
time:
17. What do you expect from the students during class time?
18. How do you expect them to use the readings?
19. What would be a recent example of how the students used the readings in class?
20. What are the ways you find that make your students’ learning experience interesting/
challenging?
21. Describe how you used that activity in a recent class time.
22. How do you expect students to interact with you?
23. How do you expect your students to interact with each other?
24. How do you expect your students to interact with the new content/ reading?
25. If you were to pick a word or set of words to describe how you want your students to feel
during class time? Do you want them to be excited, happy? Serious?
26. What do you do when a student gives you what you think is a superficial answer to a
question you have asked?
27. What is evidence to you that you are pushing their thinking?
28. Tell me about an activity or activities you design and think they get students very
involved in the course?
29. Give me an example of a recent class time that you think represents the way you like to
see them participate. Walk me through it.
30. How do you expect your students to use the information they learn?
31. How do you expect them to demonstrate what they have learned during class time?
TEACHING AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL 223
32. Tell me about a pedagogical challenge you have faced when you teach students this topic.
33. How do you overcome these challenges?
34. What are the challenges you face on a regular basis that you haven’t figured out how to
handle? For example, one challenge I have heard professors talk about is what to do
about students who are quiet and do not choose to participate in class.
35. Tell me about a time when you felt that the class was successful and maybe even better
that what you planned.
36. Tell me about a time when you felt that the class did not go as well as you expected
37. What did you learn, if anything, from that experience?
38. How, if at all, has it informed your thinking as a teacher?

Now I would like to ask you some questions about how you assess what students
learn:
39. How often do you give your students feedback?
40. What kind of feedback do you offer during class?
41. What about after class?
42. Do you have an example of feedback you have given to a student on paper? Would you
share it with me?
43. What do you think your students find most challenging about this class?
44. How do you help you students to overcome these challenges?
45. What do you think your students find challenging about you as a professor?
46. Do you give them any advice about how they should work with you?
47. What you think they need to know in order to be successful in your class?
48. What are the resources you give to your students and you think they should benefit from
using?
49. Some teachers say that the only reason students get bad grades is because they are not
hard-working students or they are not smart and there is nothing the teacher can do about
that. What do you think about that?
50. Some teachers say that if students are taking a class as a requirement and they are not
motivated, there is nothing the teacher can do to change students’ attitude
51. What kinds of things changed in you teaching recently? Would you give me an example?
52. Whom do you discuss your teaching with, if anyone?
53. What do you think are your strengths as a professor?
54. What do you think are your weaknesses?
55. How would you like to improve your teaching skills?
56. How were you prepared to teach at university level?
57. How often do you attend training or workshops about teaching?
58. What would you have liked to have been taught before you started working with
students?
59. What else would you like to share about your teaching?
60. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that we should talk about so that I can
understand your experiences as a teacher with curriculum, instruction, and assessment?
What would you have asked that I didn’t ask?

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Appendix B: Focus Group Protocol

Welcome and Introductions – 5 MINUTES
• Researcher introduces herself as a doctorate student from USC and a faculty at the same
university.
• The purpose of this research is to investigate how instructors’ choices of the content, teaching
approach and assessment tools impact students’ learning approach at the undergraduate
level.
• I’d like to get input from the students to see their perspectives on the choices of the curriculum
that facilitate their deep learning.
• Participants introduce themselves.
Focus Group Ground Rules – 5 MINUTES
• Getting information from a small group allows participants to engage in discussion and bounce
ideas around. We want to know what choices of the curriculum did instructors make that
allowed students to apply high levels of thinking.
• Group rules; no right or wrong answers; respect for each other’s
view; the role of the moderator to keep the conversation flowing
Confidentiality: promising students that nothing they will say be provided to their professor. Ask
participants not to tell other that they decided to participate in the study or about what
happened in the focus group.
Inductive Questioning – 15 MINUTES
• I’d like to ask the group what are some of the most important parts of your experiences with
this course that facilitate your learning, such as:
1. What do you think of this professor’s teaching?
2. What does he do to help you learn?
3. What makes it harder for you to learn?
4. How does the class time help you to study?
5. How does the reading help you to study?
6. How does the resources the professor provides you help you to study?
7. What other things does the professor do to help you study and understand the new material?
8. What are the assessment tools that facilitate your learning?
Let’s just go around the table and everyone gives an idea and I’ll write the ideas on the board,
then we’ll discuss them.
• After all have volunteered ideas, return to each and probe:
▪ What do you mean by that?
▪ In what situation would this ‘topic,’ ‘event,’ ‘issue,’ or ‘phenomenon’ be
▪ important?
▪ Why is it important?
▪ How do you think that helps you learn?
Deductive Questioning – 15 MINUTES
• Now I’d like to suggest a few other categories we haven’t mentioned and see what you
think. Target categories not addressed above.
▪ Choices of the content and workload:
➢ How do you find the readings in this course? Why?
➢ What are the most interesting reading in this course? Why do you find
them interesting?
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➢ What are the readings you would not recommend keeping in this course?
▪ Choices of instruction:
➢ How about the way the professor teaches?
➢ What are the activities that the instructor creates in class and you find
them helpful? Why do you find them helpful?
➢ What are the learning opportunities you get in this class, if any, to
connect what you studied before to the new material?
➢ What are the activities that keep you interested and engaged?
➢ How does the professor motivate the students?
➢ Describe to me the opportunities you get, if any, to solve problems?
➢ How does the professor create opportunities so that you connect the
material with real life situations?
➢ How does the professor inform students about the learning objectives and
help them to achieve the objectives?
➢ How does the professor create opportunities to help you adopt high levels
of thinking such as analyzing, evaluating and applying?
▪ Choices of the assessment tools:
➢ What are the assessment tools used in class as educational tools to help
you understand the topic? Like what?
➢ How frequent are the assignments throughout the semester?
➢ How often do you receive feedback?
➢ How do you find feedback you get during class time?
➢ How do you find the feedback you get on your assignments?
Closing – 5 MINUTES
Thank the participants; remind them about confidentiality

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Content, teaching approaches, and assessment are the main components of a curriculum. To understand how instructors’ selections of these components direct students to adopt surface versus deep learning approaches, this study addressed the following research question: “How do instructors’ approaches to curriculum shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels of thinking in the United States?” This multi-case study examined the decisions two instructors, who taught undergraduate social studies courses, made while selecting the different components of their curricula and how their choices directed their students to adopt surface or deep learning approaches. The data for this qualitative study included instructors’ interviews, classroom observations, student focus groups, and documents and artifacts. ❧ The findings from this study showed the significance of the instructors’ decision-making of the curricula on how the students approached their learning. The findings revealed that although both instructors aimed to develop engaging curricula that created learning opportunities for students to adopt high levels of thinking, one of them was more successful than the other. The instructor, who aligned the choices of the different components of the curriculum with the learning objectives of the course and carried out these choices thoroughly, was more successfully able to direct and guide students to adopt deep levels of thinking and to become independent learners. However, the instructor who made inadequate choices of the curriculum, or made good choices but did not carry them out appropriately, confused students and reduced their learning opportunities. The two instructors reflected on their teaching and how they could improve it.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Wali, Sozan (author)

Core Title An investigation of the way instructors’ approaches to the curriculum shape undergraduate students’ opportunities to engage in higher levels of thinking in the United States

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 08/03/2019

Defense Date 06/06/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag assessment,continents,curriculum,deep learning,effective teaching,feedback,OAI-PMH Harvest,reflection,teaching approaches

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Slayton, Julie (committee chair)

Creator Email sozanwal@usc.edu,suziwali@icloud.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-423115

Unique identifier UC11265466

Identifier etd-WaliSozan-5586.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-423115 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-WaliSozan-5586.pdf

Dmrecord 423115

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Wali, Sozan

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA