RELATIONS BETWEEN PERCEPTIONS OF THE TEACHING ENVIRONMENT AND APPROACHES TO TEACHING

Background, Previous research has established substantial relations be tween students' approaches to study in higher education and their perc eptions of the learning environment. More recently, there has been a g rowing body of research into teachers' approaches to teaching and conc eptions of teaching. There has, however, been little research into the ir perceptions of the teaching context. Aims. This study aimed to deve lop an inventory of university teachers' perceptions of their teaching environment (PTE) and how those perceptions related to their approach es to teaching. Samples, The interview sample comprised 13 teachers of first year university physics and chemistry courses in two Australian universities, and the survey sample comprised 46 teachers from severa l Australian universities. Methods. In the qualitative study teachers were interviewed about the things they thought affected their teaching . The interviews were content analysed, and an inventory was produced. In the quantitative study, the results of the administration of the A pproaches to Teaching Inventory and the PTE were analysed by correlati onal, factor and cluster analyses. Results. This exploratory study fou nd systematic relations between the perceptions and approaches. The re lations observed suggest that the adoption of a conceptual change and student focused approach to teaching is associated with perceptions th at the teacher has control over what is taught and how it is taught, a s well as perceptions that the department values teaching and that cla ss size is not too large. Conclusions, The paper concludes by arguing that if we are to improve the quality of teaching and learning in high er education we will need to take account of the perceptions teachers have of their teaching context.