1.4.1 Examining relations in educational practices: Analytical lenses and con-cepts
In line with an overall practice-oriented perspectiveand the notions ofeducationalquality describedabove, our analyticalstrategy aimed atrevealing both the content dimensionsof
6For several reasons, it wasnot feasible to distribute thequestionnaire to students in theMBA case targeting online activities in economic management and financial analysis.
the coursedesign and activities and theway in which thedifferent courseelements (types of instruction, learning activities, assignments, assessment criteria etc.)workedtogetherinthe enactment of the course. To make sense of the participants’ conceptions and experiences, and to identify and discuss differences and challenges that emerged in the various teaching-learn-ing environments, we draw on theoretical notions and concepts that relate to student learning and forms ofengagement, course designs and relations between curriculum elements, and to the disciplinary content and learning challenges of different domains.
First, student-centred approaches assume anactive role of students inlearning processes, which involvesparticipation inknowledge construction and exploration. Furthermore, such processestake placein the interaction between individuals, the tools and knowledge sources they haveat hand, and thewider social and instructionalenvironment. As highlighted in our review of student-centredapproaches and their learning potentials (Damsa etal.,2015,)peer discussions and interaction with othersare important inexploring and makingsenseof dis-ciplinary knowledge as well as in trying out and justifying arguments. In this regard, learning isunderstood from a sociocultural perspective, which underscores the ways in which stu-dents participate inactivities and how the activitiesstimulate productive interactions and knowledge construction(Säljö,2009).In relation tothe teaching-learning environments and coursedesigns, this brings attention to howteachers go about engagingstudents, to the kinds of participation different activitiesrequire and afford, and to howtasks and tools stimulate collaborative knowledge construction.
At the same time, learning is a lifelong process, and the ways inwhich students engage may varybothaccording to their previous experiencesand their interestsin the current topic or task. Activating previous experiences in learning activities and relating new informationto what thestudents alreadyknow is important for learning more generally (Brandsfordetal., 2005). Hence, a central relationineducationpracticesconcerns how the teaching and tasks may account for, and activate, students’variegated experiences. Students also differintheir approaches to learning, and how they experiencetheir teaching-learning environment varies as to whether they activate deep approaches to critically engage with and examine the knowledge content, or whether they stay withsurfaceapproaches and treatknowledgemore at face value (Parpala et al.,2009). Their approaches are,however,not stable, and the course design andteaching approaches may support deeper engagement when the tasks and assess-ment forms encourageexploration, critical inquiries and collaborative knowledge construc-tion. Hence, these perspectives can be used to explain differences in student experiences within a course environment, and to interpret experienced challenges in the course designs.
This alsobrings us to a second issue that concerns the relationbetween different elements in the coursedesign and how they are aligned. In section 1.2,we mentionedthe idea of con-structive alignment, which highlights the importance of clarifying the intended learning out-comes of a course and securing that the types of activities, assignments and assessment forms are wellalignedwiththese(Biggs and Tang, 2011). If, for instance, the learning activities en-couragecritical inquiries and collaborative knowledge constructionwhilst the assessment forms only recognize individual students’ capacity to memorize established facts, this may explainwhystudents perhapsare not too eager to participate incollaborativeactivitiesand engage more critically. One focus of the caseanalyses is thus on how the different elements of
the coursedesign work together. The ways inwhichfeedback and assessment areprovided to support learning and the relation between formative and summative assessment in the course design are important parts of such relations.
Other concepts to examine coherence in thecoursedesign are related to principles for knowledge organization. Here, a distinctioncan be madebetween designs that predominantly take the cumulative structure of the discipline and its scientific concepts as its organizing structure, and designs that emphasize the relation to work practices and the relevance of ac-tivities for thestudents’ prospective professional contexts (Muller,2009).Thefirsttype of design emphasizesconceptual coherence, while thesecond emphasizescontextualcoherence (ibid). In addition, we can imagine coursedesigns that foreground specific types of activities as their organizing principles, suchasstudents’ building a portfolio ofassignments and prod-ucts that count in the final examination, and courses organizedaround aproject that develops throughout the course. These examples reflect different logics ofcourseorganizationandhow the curricular elements are related to each other. Courses aswell asprogrammes may culti-vate one ofthese logics orcombinethem,and by revealing the type of curricularlogics in play we may analyse issues of alignmentaswellastensions that arise if different logics simultane-ously (and perhaps accidently) are at play.
Finally, the type of content to be learned inthe course and the forms of knowledgethis involves areimportant to consider. The relationship between learning activities and the char-acter of the knowledgein the domainis key ineducational practices. In many programmes, and especially theprofession-oriented ones, learningchallenges are related to waysof inte-grating conceptual and proceduralknowledge, or ‘theoretical knowledge’ and ‘practical skills’
ineveryday terms. Learning activities may be planned and enacted in different ways to sup-port knowledge integration, and they may havedifferent aims as to whether their primary purpose is to support thedevelopment of practical skills and bodilyknowledge, to challenge and develop conceptual understandingwithin the domain or to move beyond disciplinary boundaries to e.g. interact with other types of professionals or clients (Markauskaite &
Goodyear,2016). In allhigher education courses,some kind ofknowledge integration and adaptation is needed, which can be supported by the teaching and learning environment in different ways. Bydistinguishingbetween different formsofknowledgeandconsiderhow knowledge can become ‘actionable’ in various learning activities,we canrevealrelations be-tween teaching-learning activities and knowledge challenges in the respective domains.
1.4.2 Steps in the analysis
Following strategies for multiple-case studies (Stake, 2006; Yin,2009),we analysed the data from each caseseparately through a joint strategy to develop casereports for the different cases. This served as a basis for cross-case discussion of selected themes that emerged as im-portant for the quality of educational practices.
The analysis of the datasets took placeinseveral steps. First, the information from course documents, completedobservation forms and the interviews in each course were condensed through a joint protocol.This protocol followed the main categories of the observation forms.
By wayof a content analysis,theygenerated an overview of characteristics of the activitiesin
the courseand how they wereenacted, types of assignments with respect to howthey were planned and enacted, and the experiences of students and teachers related to assignments and course activities.
A second step wastodo a process-oriented analysis ofselected activities in thecoursethat were central to the coursedesign and represented ways of engaging students actively inthe course. The framing of such activitiescould, for instance, be the introduction,workand as-sessment of one assignment, or a role play exercise that aimed tosupport the integrationof different knowledge forms in student learning. The selectedactivities form ‘mini-cases’ inthe casestudies. Data from observations, interviews and coursedocuments relating to the activ-itieswere hereanalysedtogether and revealedqualities of the education practice with re-spect to how the teachersengagedand supported students, howstudents engaged in the ac-tivity and how the tasks and tools stimulated knowledge construction.
The interviews were subjected to a thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke,2006), which re-vealedexperienced challenges and opportunitieswith the course design and pedagogical ap-proaches. This served to answer the second researchquestion, but also to provide richer in-formation about the course activities and how students engaged.
Based on the descriptive analysis performed through these steps, the information from each coursewas then analysedas a whole to trace relations inthe coursedesigns and prac-tices, identify gapsbetween course elements and activity forms, and the ways inwhichthe students were engaged and supported in the learningprocesses. Thisprocess was guided by the analytical lenses and concepts described above and generated a theory-informed inter-pretation of experiences, gaps, strengths and challenges related to the teaching and learning environment in the course.
For this report, we have focused on presenting the analysis of the courseactivities and pedagogicalapproaches, and henceplaced emphasis on the characteristicsandexperienced challenges with the different ways ofusing student-centred approaches ratherthan following the students’ learning processes as such. The casereports that followgive an overall presen-tationof therespectivecourses, butplace emphasis on different topics and activitiesthat emergedasimportant for the quality of educational practice in the cases. The finalchapter presents a cross-case discussionofwhatwe canlearn abouteducational quality fromthese cases.
1.4.3 Credibility and limitations of the study
Thisreport presents the descriptive analyses of the case studies of the sub project. It presents activities and experiences within the respective course environments as a whole, with em-phasis given to the types of pedagogical approaches utilized inthe coursesand how these engage students inlearningprocesses. More detailed analyses of specific phenomena within the courses, such asthe ways in which students go about in their learning processes or the forms of teacher-student interactions that take place in feedback situations, require in-depth analyses of parts of the datasets,which will bepresented infuture scientific publications from the project. With this in mind,certain precautions and limitations followfor the use andthe inferences to be drawn from this report.
The study is based on material collected from a limitedselectionof courses in higher edu-cation, within alimitedtime frame. Aspreviouslymentioned, the cases havebeen purpose-fullyselected to provide insights intodifferent ways of working with teaching atthecourse level and teachers´ and students´ experiences related to these. It follows that we cannot make inferences from the singlecases about howdifferent approaches unfold at a generallevel in highereducation. Rather, the casestudies allow for analytical generalization and discussion of what we can learn fromthecase studies regardingissues that matter for quality inhigher education practices.
For each casestudy, a richcorpus ofdatawasgenerated throughtheinterviews with teach-ers before and after the observation periods, participant observations of activities, focus group interviews withstudents and thecollection of various course materials and documents.
Thisprovidesinsights intothecourseactivitiesas they were planned, enacted and experi-enced by teachers and students. The case studies were guided by jointinstruments for data collection (interview guides, observation protocols and questionnaire). Several rounds of jointinterpretation of transcripts and readings of casereports and finally thechapters of this report havebeen conducted among the researchers tosecurethe quality ofthe results. The interpretation of the many details and events of a coursewasfurther secured by participant validation. Thus, all the lead teachers have validated the individual case reports.
Although the amount of data collected from each case has initiallybeen set to secure a common empirical basis, the datasets of the individual cases are,to a certain degree, uneven.
This can be seen interms of the amount of datacollected ineach course, and the questionnaire has also been used variably among the cases due to differences instudent response rates(for more information, see the following chapters). Thesedifferences reflect differences in the coursedesigns and time periods for the teaching and learning activities, aswell as the char-acter of the pedagogicalapproachesused and their related opportunities for datacollection.
Nevertheless, all case studies have used the minimum standards for observation periods and joint instruments,asdescribed insection 1.3. All cases have a rich dataset collected for the purpose of obtaining rich informationabout the given pedagogicalapproaches. The difference in the amount of data is therefore primarily a challengewhen looking at the totaldatacorpus of all the cases, calling for a certain degree of caution wheninferences across cases are to be made.
It isimportant to underscore that the case studies presented in this report serve the pur-pose of identifying quality issuesineducationalpractices by conducting close-up research on how different ‘student-centred’ pedagogicalapproaches are used and experienced indifferent course contexts. They are conducted with this in mind, ratherthan for the sake of comparative analyses. Although the following chapters are presented in a similar thematic structure with relatedillustrations, and followa common outline guided by thejoint research questions and analytical perspectives of the study, they should not be readassimilarcases for direct com-parison. For instance, the cake diagrams used toillustrate the use ofteaching andlearning activitiesineach case chapter only refer to the particularcase and aredeveloped on the basis of coursedocuments andinformation from the teachers. The use of colours and terminology in these diagrams are not standardized but follow the rationale of each course environment.
The case studies emphasize challenges and opportunities related to the different approaches toteaching and designing courses. However,acloser analysis is required to makeconclusions about, for example, processes of learning, student engagement, feedback processes and deeper insights aboutteachers´ workwithcoherenceandalignment incoursedesign in the different courses. For such conclusionstobemade, a rigorous analysis ofmore specific and limitedaspects of courses must be conducted. In the time to follow,members of the project group will continue their work with the dataset,andthefindingswill be presented inplanned articles and book chapters.