BOOK REVIEW
Original Title: Teaching for understanding at
university: Deep approaches and distinctive ways of thinking
Author: Noel Entwistle
Published: 2009
Editor: Palgrave Macmillan
This book was written mainly for teachers in university departments,
although it would also be valuable for research students. I read this book from
the perspective of a researcher in the particular field who is trying to see
“where we are” concerning teaching and learning in HE. The book provides a
comprehensive and thorough look at the field of learning and teaching that
smoothly brings together educational psychology, pedagogy and education.
Throughout the book, the theory and the empirical findings are intertwined
comprehensively and the research findings provide a sound basis for the theoretical and practical suggestions for teaching
for understanding. Entwistle’s suggestions for teaching for understanding bring
to the current literature a fresh pedagogic theoretical look and are
thoughtfully accommodated in a scholarly
perspective on learning and teaching. Such a perspective brings together
the deep knowledge of the subject and tutors’ readiness to reflect on
particular issues relating to teaching and learning within their own
discipline, also taking into account their own experiences and how students go
about learning in their particular subject area.
On top of this, the author also raises the issue of an academic context where
supportive leaders provide the conditions for forms of teaching that encourage
students’ understanding.
The book could be seen as a pedagogy-oriented book that belongs to the
theoretical tradition of “the students’ perspective on learning and teaching”,
drawing from research into educational psychology. The author’s perspective is
fully informed by modern psychology and provides evidence for a complex picture
of the effect of teaching on learning that brings students’ understanding up
front. The perspective adopted by the author, goes beyond the practices
involved in teaching usually pointed out in the pedagogy literature. It
involves not only how knowledge and ideas are made available to students and
how evidence is used and ways of thinking are developed, but also what
approaches to learning students develop in tackling academic work. The
influence of teaching goes hand in hand with assessment, feedback, workload,
and the extent to which assessment procedures reward students’ efforts towards
understanding or towards memorisation. In addition, concepts like ‘interest’
and ‘empathy’ are used to provide insights into teaching for understanding.
Throughout the book, the direct and indirect influences of teaching on
learning are comprehensively discussed within the psychological perspective of
learning and in relation to “approaches to learning” (developed in educational
psychology within the tradition of the “students’ perspective on learning and
teaching”), and to the nature of
academic understanding and how this becomes feasible in different
disciplines. Approaches to learning are seen in relation to approaches to
teaching and are further discussed in the context of how teaching for
understanding takes place in different fields. The heuristic model of teaching
and learning suggested in the book indicates a research-based theoretical model
with aspects of teaching that encourage thinking and understanding and involve
emotional elements like interest, excitement, empathy.
Although the book comes to an end with a comprehensive chapter on
monitoring the effectiveness of teaching, drawing on a major British
research project using a questionnaire, along with group interviews, to reveal
students’ experiences of learning environment in relation to their approaches
to studying, the writer draws attention to the idea that the ‘disposition to
understand for oneself’ expands the notion of a deep approach. “This idea goes
beyond a deep approach by including a continuing willingness to direct effort
towards understanding, and an alertness to whatever might contribute to
deepening it further. The academic understanding that students develop has to
be expressed in terms of accepted knowledge and the conversations used in
describing it. But the activity of organizing understanding in one’s own way
remains crucial, if it is to become firmly rooted and, above all, easy to use
in the future. That future perspective becomes increasingly important as
students move out into a world of ‘supercomplexity’ (p. 181)”.
This idea, and the notion of ‘knowledge objects’ (entities developed by
students during their attempts to reach a personal understanding that have a
clear structure, while retaining flexibility and interrelatedness), suggest the
continuing effects of individual differences on learning. The holistic quality
of the experience of the
knowledge objects suggests the importance of teachers stressing the
interconnections that exist within a topic and also how students can be
encouraged to develop a dialogue both internally, and with others, as a way of
bringing together ideas from many sources that could enhance their existing
understanding. Such a perspective meets the ongoing discussion on the
development of thinkers, the inter-subjectivity in learning and also the
relational nature of learning either in terms of dialogic understanding or in
terms of a ‘meeting of minds’ [an idea that has been introduced subsequently by
Karagiannopoulou & Entwistle (2013)], which is seen as a relational experience
that brings together cognitive and affective elements in learning. The tutors’
contribution to creating interrelatedness and interconnections between notions
and conceptions plays an important part in the students’ growing awareness of
the nature of knowledge and epistemological development (Hofer, 2001), while
also contributing to Barnett’s (2000) concerns about preparing students for an
uncertain future. ‘Thinking in relation’ to the tutor’s ideas enables the
student to come to terms with different thinking paths, involving the
exploration of both similarities/sameness and differences/diversity, that lead
to students’ intellectual development and their engagement with the values and
norms of the discipline in supporting personal development (Baxter-Magolda,
2009; Karagiannopoulou & Entwistle, 2013).
The book suggests that effective teaching on understanding depends,
above all, on teaching being seen not just from the perspective of the subject
specialist but also from that of the student and so lecturers need to know what
learning processes and strategies are necessary for a deep approach to be
encouraged in the topic being taught, and this perspective is thus important
within the initial training of lecturers. Presenting a holistic
perspective for teaching and learning, the book presents a narrative for
teaching and learning in which they become integrated, while taking into
account the fact that students leaving university move out into a world full of
uncertainties and change. From this perspective, the role of the university is
to develop active citizens, and cultivate students’ disposition for
understanding for themselves, as critical thinkers and efficient learners in an
environment where tutors appreciate their way of thinking, empathize with their
difficulties and create space for students to develop their own voices.
The narrative the author presents does not consist of a “neat, little
study” but rather draws on different traditions, perspectives, findings and
theoretical and practical aspects of learning. It provides an overall picture
of teaching and learning in higher education and a narrative about ways and
practices that enhance teaching for understanding in different disciplines.
This is a valuable tool in a society that needs the university more than ever.
In an academic society where uncertainty and unpredictability dominate, there
is a prominent need, more than ever, for students to gain knowledge of the
epistemological foundations and the inner logic of their subject that allows
them to formulate their own insights, to contribute their own suggestions, to
develop their own understandings and to engage in their own actions. In order
for students to imbue their learning acts with their own experience and
feelings and develop a disposition for understanding for themselves, tutors
need to act as scholars of teaching, changing their way of thinking about
teaching and learning towards “Teaching for Understanding at University”.
Noel Entwistle has been at the forefront of research and thinking in the
field of teaching and learning in higher education for over forty years, and he
uses this experience in this book to provide a lucid insight into the nature of
university teaching and how it affects
students’ ability to build up their own ways of understanding academic
subjects. I believe it makes an important contribution to this literature when
university education is facing increasing pressures to demonstrate its
importance and relevance to society.
References
Barnett, Ronald. 2000. Realizing the University in an age of supercomplexity. Buckingham: Open
University Press and The Society for Research into Higher Education.
Baxter-Magolda, Marcia. 2009.
Educating students for self-authorship: Learning partnerships to achieve
complex outcomes. In C. Kreber (Ed.), The university and its disciplines:
Teaching and learning within and beyond disciplinary boundaries (pp.143–156).
London & New York: Routledge.
Hofer, Barbara. 2001. Personal
epistemology research: Implications for learning and teaching. Journal of
Educational Psychology Review, 13(4), 353–383.
Karagiannopoulou, Evangelia &
Entwistle, Noel. 2013. Influences on personal understanding: Intentions,
approaches to learning, perceptions of assessment and a ‘meeting of minds’.
Psychology Teaching Review, 19 (2), 80-96.
Karagiannopoulou, Evangelia
Associate Professor
University of Ioannina
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