Filling a gap in research on teaching in higher education

The research project described here, Identification and Development of Teaching Expertise at the University of Otago, addressed the gaps revealed in the aforementioned critical review through adopting a multiple methods approach to data collection. Heads of Departments in the Division of Sciences were invited to nominate staff recognised as excellent teachers who had demonstrated interest in exploring their own teaching. Seventeen lecturers, ten male and seven female, agreed to participate in the project. The collection and analysis of data followed a rolling or sequential design where data from preceding stages of the study served to inform and guide subsequent data collection. The sequential, qualitative design ensured that the participants' personal beliefs and espoused theories, made explicit through personal interviews and repertory grids, were subsequently examined in situations of actual teaching practice. Through the use of stimulated recall interviews based on video recordings of participants' teaching practice, participants were able to make explicit the typically tacit theories-in-use that guide their teaching actions. The examination of relevant course outlines and examination questions provided an additional means to examine the coherence between the participants espoused theories and their actual teaching practice, their theories-in-use.

Interview data were analysed applying a grounded theory methodology which allowed common categories to emerge empirically from the data. Findings from the personal interviews and the stimulated recall interviews were re-presented to the participants for verification. Findings that emerged from analysis of the initial interviews and the repertory grids were compared with findings related to the participants' teaching practice.

Findings
A working profile of excellent teachers of science at the University has been developed based on preliminary findings. Most of these tertiary teachers held several espoused theories and interesting relationships were revealed between the participants' espoused theories and their theories-in-use.

Conclusions
This study reinforces the critical importance of investigating tertiary teachers' personal theories and beliefs about their teaching in conjunction with an examination of their actual teaching practice. It is not sufficient to make explicit what teachers think, believe and espouse about tertiary teaching and learning. Future research on teaching in higher education must take account of the potential discontinuity between teachers' espoused theories and theories-in-use. It must avoid proposing classifications of teaching practices from studies that focus on teachers beliefs alone. In this way higher education research will begin to fill the gap evident in some recent studies.