Variation Theory in Teaching and Phenomenography in Learning : What’s Their Impact When Applied in Engineering Classrooms?

Although phenomenographic research approach has been widely used by education researchers to investigate students’ learning, little attention has been paid to the relationship between a pedagogical approach adopted by teachers and students’ learning outcomes, particularly in engineering education. This experimental study proposes integrating variation theory as a pedagogical approach to a face-to-face classroom environment for teaching complex engineering contents and adapting a phenomenographic approach to evaluate students’ learning outcomes. The teachers who participated in the experimental group incorporated the variation theory in their teaching process. In contrast, the teachers in the control group, being ignorant of the variation theory, taught the same content to achieve the same specific learning outcome. Drawing on data from students’ written responses both from experimental and control groups, this article illustrates how teachers implemented variation theory in the classroom and its impacts on student learning. The implementation of variation theory was confirmed by classroom observation, and the variation in understanding the topic was emerged from students’ written responses and interview data through phenomenographic analysis. The findings indicate that teachers informed by variation theory use variation and invariance that creates necessary conditions for learning. This study demonstrates how, by incorporating variation theory, a faculty member designed different pedagogical approaches, which helps students conceptualize complex engineering topics more systematically than those who do not discern variation. The study concludes with theoretical, empirical, and pedagogic implications for teacher education in engineering