Student learning and the experience of teaching

The intentions that university teachers describe in their approach to teaching have been found to vary between teachers and to vary for the same teacher in different contexts. In addition, this variation is related to variation in the learning quality of the students of those teachers. Quantitative empirical studies reveal that when teachers’ intentions are focused on developing/changing students’ conceptions (rather than on the instruction or the content) their students are more likely to report adopting more meaningful learning approaches. These results provide a “scientific grounding” for discussions on effective university teaching and learning, and on interventions aimed at achieving higher quality student learning. Research over the past 40 years leading to the identification of these teaching-learning relations, and more recent studies of the experience of university teaching and learning, are reviewed in this paper. It concludes with a comment on some of the patterns to emerge from the overview and ways in which this research could be extended.