Typically conceptions of best practice in teaching and learning in higher education focus on the desirability of student-centred over teacher-centred approaches. Student-centred approaches are associated with higher quality learning outcomes while approaches that ‘transmit’ content are said to result in surface approaches to learning. Yet, such conceptions often seem to downplay the importance of the teaching context; the subject matter, the students and the strengths and weaknesses of the teacher. If such contextual features are taken into account, the concept of a ‘universalist’ best-way of teaching is challenged. Good teaching is sensitive to the teaching context and good teachers consider the culture and the educational backgrounds of the students. Best practice may entail teachers adopting various approaches as and when required.
In exemplar research, unlike the teaching approaches research, there is not very clear ‘best practice’. What has been suggested is that exemplars are best used in a dialogic mode where students can discuss exemplars with their teacher and other students. But even here, context seems to be under-explored, especially the agency of individual teachers. The teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning and assessment, their attitudes to exemplar use and their strengths and weaknesses as a teacher are likely to influence the choices they make with how best to exploit exemplars. Any attempt to define best-practice should therefore be contingent on aspects of why the teacher does what he/she does. Understanding this agency is likely to be critical to understanding the best use of exemplars in higher education.
What is perhaps needed is further research that explores the interplay of the agency of individual lecturers using exemplars (or choosing not to) and the environment of the teaching context. Such research would not be able to evaluate ‘best practice’. Rather, by exploring how teachers use exemplars, and relating this use to teacher agency and environmental factors, a deeper level of understanding could be reached about teachers’ choice of approach with regard to exemplars. This understanding could be used in a model that individual lecturers might use when considering their teaching practice and could be used for staff development.
psmythblog 