Good Teaching and Learning in the Academy

Abstract

This paper is based on original research at five Queensland Universities. It compared the teaching strategies of law, education and science academics in an attempt to discover any relationship between teaching strategies and subject matter. It also examined the teaching policy at each university, specifically university definitions of good teaching and its relationship to use of technology. The purpose of this research was to determine whether or not specific understandings of good teaching in the academy prevailed, and whether or not this (dis)advantaged certain faculties.

From an initial case study of QUT, the basic findings from our research were as follows:

• good teaching was found to have two central features: it was student centred and technologically innovative,
• irrespective of discipline, all lecturers espoused the importance of student centred learning as integral to good teaching, even though, in practice, teaching style appeared to be largely determined by subject matter,
• the most innovative and technological units were the least student centred

We conclude that what counts as good teaching is both contested and context bound. This has major implications for monolithic definitions of good teaching as espoused by university policy and teaching units. It also has clear ramifications for university measures of effective and innovative teaching and thus standardised procedures for both academic promotion and teaching practices across the university.