Stacey, Paul

English

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23Reflections about challenges of constructivealignment amongst heterogeneous masters’studentsPaul StaceyDepartment of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO)University of CopenhagenAimsThis paper addresses and reflects upon a number of problems experiencedin attaining constructive alignment in courses taken by social science mas-ters’ students who have a wide variety of disciplinary, cultural, and edu-cational backgrounds. This is deemed worthy of attention because an im-plicit assumption of many university courses is that students have simi-lar, if not identical points of departure. This can be observed from suchthings as descriptions of course material, course objectives, and formula-tions of outcomes demanded from students, as well as expected levels ofstudent participation. This paper does not question the need for formulat-ing explicit course objectives and demands. It does however question andproblematize some assumptions concerning students found in descriptionof course objectives and demands. My experiences of teaching question theunderlying assumption. This is based on recognition that although studentsgenerally share a benchmark level entry qualification, they nevertheless arevery mixed – in terms of academic ability, but also, their expectations ofteachers and teaching, their aspirations concerning learning methods, theirexperiences with different pedagogic styles and didactic methods, and notleast, the role they assign themselves as students, as well as their under-standings of good and bad teachers and teaching methods. In this paper Itherefore present and problematize student heterogeneity as evident acrossa number of student-student and student-teacher interactions and I discuss290 Paul Staceychallenges and possible solutions, based on my own teaching experience,in order to fulfil constructive alignment.Disciplinary background and case baseI teach and supervise BA and MA level students in social science. The-matically, I have mainly taught qualitative methods, theory, and case basedcourses in international development studies, which typically focuses on avariety of social, economic, and political challenges experienced in devel-oping countries. A key characteristic of the courses taught and students Ihave supervised are that they come from all over the world. In this paperI focus specifically on experiences of teaching a methods course – Quali-tative Methods in Agricultural Development (QMAD), at the Institute forFood and Resource Economics (IFRO). I have had a central role in QMADthe last 2 years and will teach it again in the autumn. Typically, I am respon-sible for three times three hour lectures, and three times six hour lectures.Besides, I normally supervise about three or four student groups and thewriting of a group based report.StructureThe paper is composed in the following way; first I give a brief descriptionof the course these experiences are based upon, its objectives and composi-tion. Then I characterise the students in terms of different disciplinary, cul-tural and academic backgrounds and I present concrete examples of prob-lems experienced with constructive alignment and the “near impossibilityof teaching”. Thereafter I reflect on how I have endeavoured to overcomethe challenges experienced, what I do when planning and teaching such acourse, and reflections about adapting teaching to suit heterogeneous back-grounds of students.The course: QMADQMAD aims to provide students with the skills in undertake qualitativedata collection through field work related to agricultural development indeveloping countries.Primarily, QMAD is about learning to acknowledge23 Reflections about challenges of constructive alignment ... 291the importance of explaining precisely what data you want to collect, howyou will collect it, and how the collection of data may influence the objectof research. Thus, the course is very much about recognising the dynamicrelationships between the researcher and the researched and how the twocan influence each other in often unforeseen ways. Students are expected tobe active during the 12 lecture days, and they have to submit a group basedwritten assignment that has to be presented to the class, and which has to bepassed for the students to go to an individual oral exam, which marks theend of the course. Teaching is in English and the course normally attracts45-60 students. In 2015 some 28 countries were represented. About halfof the master’s students were from countries outside of Europe. Addition-ally there are usually a handful of guest PhDs students in attendance fromAfrica and Asia. Teaching comprises 6 sessions of 3 hours, and 6 sessionsof 6 hours which means a relatively long time spent in classrooms. Teach-ing comprises a range of methods including traditional lecturing, lecturingwith intermittent short exercises, longer group based exercises, class basedexercises, open discussions, student presentations, film showing and discus-sion, open Q & A sessions, and sessions of project based group work withteacher supervision. The idea with offering and planning a range of differ-ent teaching and learning environments is to stimulate student activity andencourage participation across different types of teaching forum.Student heterogeneityThe course attracts students from four different master programmes that,as noted above come from a large number of different countries. From ex-perience this means the teacher has to constantly manoeuvre within andbetween the different academic and cultural backgrounds of the students.This is in order to strike a suitable and comfortable balance between, onthe one hand, teaching "as if" all students stem from the same educationalprogramme and are all, so to speak, on the same page, and on the other,to adapt the teaching methods to those which the types of students groupsare familiar with, expect, work most productively with, or feel most com-fortable with. I have found that a real challenge is to appropriately adaptthe teaching methods to the heterogeneity of the class but without compro-mising the objectives. To shed light on these challenges I give below someconcrete examples.292 Paul StaceyOntological heterogeneityThe most noticeable difference between students can be defined in termsof ontological heterogeneity between “positivists” and “social construc-tivists”. The majority of students have a strong background in natural sci-ence based traditions with solid knowledge and skills of quantitative datacollection and deductive methods. Simplified, this means they frequentlycome to expect the QMAD course to deliver clear cut, precise, measurable,and objective methods and “once and for all” answers to their methodolog-ical or method related queries. They may also expect clear cut theories tobe introduced that can explain social realities. This group, which also cutsacross geographical and ethnic boundaries, subsequently may meet up inclass with unrealistic expectations of being taught “fool proof” methodsthat can accurately explain “real life” phenomena. It is not uncommon formembers of this group to pass comments, or ask, in the following ways; ‘Iunderstand most of it, but can you give me a specific answer?’ or, ‘What isthe best thing to do in this situation?’ Consequently, student comments andquestions reveal they are searching for singular and fixed answers. In real-ity however, the study of social phenomena and the role of the researchermeans that there are rarely universal clear cut answers to social scienceinvestigations.As result of students’ ‘positivist’ ballast, there is therefore a risk theyinterpret the aims of QMAD and social science methods as confusing, to-gether with the course objectives, content, and didactic methods employedby the lecturers - that point to acknowledging and conveying the complex-ity of social reality. Thus, problems experienced by students are based inassumptions about students upon which teaching is based. Overall, the dif-ferences between student backgrounds and course assumptions about stu-dents may be a cause of frustration for students from positivist traditions.This is especially the case when they are confronted with the strongly in-terpretative and phenomenological, process orientated traditions of muchsocial science research.Student uncertainty occasionally surfaces in course evaluations wherethey express the teaching did not provide the answers they were lookingfor, and that teacher explanations about ‘what to do and how to do it in thefield’ were vague and non-committal. Similarly, lecturers may be describedas indecisive or placing too much weight on research answers based ontheir own research experiences. Clearly, this set of problems is ontologicalin nature as it reveals students lack of understanding about the process of23 Reflections about challenges of constructive alignment ... 293social science research. Such challenges are also difficult to solve quickly,as they requires a back to basics teaching of different approaches to theaccumulation of knowledge, as well as explanations as to what knowledgeis, how it is produced in social science, and what role the researcher mayplay in producing knowledge.National and continental heterogeneityThe challenges of the positivist bias depicted may overlap with the nation-ality of the students. Allowing for the affirmation of stereotypical imagesof non-European students, I have found that African, Asian, and espe-cially Chinese students may have different expectations of what teachingand learning involves, compared to European and especially Scandinavianstudent groups. Basically, this is an ethnic and geographical divide andexpresses itself with non-Western students groups wanting more teacherbased instruction and traditional forms of teacher centred lecturing. Euro-pean groups meanwhile may be less interested in teacher driven instructionand demand instead an assortment of different teaching styles that carrymultiple possibilities for them to develop individual competences.For example, Chinese students frequently express either an implicit orexplicit unwillingness to engage in dialogue with teachers and other stu-dents and participate in oral presentations. When they do, there is a stronglikelihood they will read up from a text, not have the skill to reflect on whatthey have done, and will be unwilling to give and receive feedback fromother students. They may appear passive and search out concrete answersthat are “spoon fed” to them by the teacher. They may also have little ex-perience with interpreting or analysing a text independently of the teacher,and may be shy in forwarding their own views or critically discussing theinterpretations of others. They may not understand that there can be a largedifference between a teacher disagreeing with a student’s opinion, and ateacher thinking the student has produced good or poor work. Thus, thisgroup aspires towards pleasing the teacher, not developing the skill to thinkindependently. I have also experienced that Chinese students search outeasily remembered facts and information so that it can be repeated at theexam. Hereby, they experience a dearth of deep learning commonly accom-panied with an unwillingness, or an inability to participate actively in groupbased work. Finally, it is common that non-Western students do not haveany experience with oral exams. The set of problems sketched here can294 Paul Staceyalso overlap with, and be made worse by, student levels of oral and writtenlanguage proficiency. The worst case scenario is where the class becomesdivided between, on the one hand, students with an African and Asian pos-itivist background that expect teacher centred instruction, lack experiencewith critical thinking, and have a poor level of English, and on the other, Eu-ropean and Western students with a social constructivist background. Thelatter demand dynamic teaching, interactive, and modern learning methodsand are used to critically assessing research processes. Finally these willalso have a high command of written and oral English. As such, Scandina-vian students may occupy the other end of the spectrum to Chinese. FromHigh School, they generally have experience with group based work aswell as presenting, discussing, and sparring with others from the rest of theclass. There are also used to developing independent points of view fromthose of the teacher and may be keen to share experiences that differ fromthose in textbooks. This divide may thereby be termed as “conformists” vs“interactionists”.Solution – accept and engage with student heterogeneityThe “conformist” vs “interactionist” binary demands the teacher or super-visor recognises the heterogeneity of the class early on (which can be ac-knowledged with a basic survey of student backgrounds). Most importanthowever is to develop a class culture where the students are encouraged andsupported to express their concerns to the teacher about the direction andmethods of teaching. Further, to open up for discussion I try and emphasisethat there are no predefined correct answers to the topics we are discussing,and all thoughts are welcome. The aim is to create a space where studentsdo not feel they are being judged but are encouraged to fill the space withtheir own views. No matter what they are, they thus provide material forbroader classroom based discussions. It is also a good idea to constructheterogeneous groups and not allow either of the groupings to form homo-geneous clusters. Hopefully in this way the students can learn more fromeach other. Having identified and discussed several challenges of attainingconstructive alignment, I now present some solutions.23 Reflections about challenges of constructive alignment ... 295Solutions – focus on the processTo get around the above challenge I have found it useful to invest time inexplaining the process of social science research as well as defining andpresenting the specific methods. This means emphasising that social sci-ence research is very often, if not always, an iterative and intuitive processand the object of enquiry is not always clear from the very start, and it iscommon that the focus of attention and study changes as the research de-velops. At the same time, it is also necessary to devote quite a lot of time toexplain that the answers to any set of social science research questions arevery context specific. This means recognising and making explicit the con-sequences of making the choices regarding research angles, which becomejust as important facets of the research process as explaining and makingexplicit what exactly the research has found out. This stands in contrast tothe position of “positivist” inclined students, who seek out concrete results, rather than concentrate on the process of getting to particular results.Solution – be explicit about the uncertaintiesIn order to overcome student frustrations and confusions, I have also foundthat a worthy subject of class discussion is to make explicit that social sci-ence methods are generally not a subject that can be understood in real time,so to speak: it is thus expected, and students have to realise the fact, thatthe “aha moment” that students expect to experience may not come untillate on in the course. Progress towards this realisation can be aided by turn-ing the problem on its head and encouraging students to identify how theythink specific method issues should best be solved – and how they thinkthey could use their own competences from their own disciplinary back-ground to tackle such problems. Although the answers they give may wellbe bias towards quantitative data collection, the process of getting studentsto acknowledge the ‘messy’ nature of social science is made easier by firstgetting them to communicate how their own disciplines would tackle thetask. This often leads to the realisation that something more is needed thanquantitative methods.During the learning process I also find it vital to communicate that itis common that students may not understand what exactly it is they areexpected to learn. Thus, it is not enough for students to read the course ma-terial. They also have to develop the skill to reflect on what they are doing296 REFERENCESand why which is the real learning aim. In sum, it is vital that students createand develop their own awareness of disciplinary shortcomings. It is therebyimportant to communicate, discuss, and share the view that social sciencedemands time to digest and reflect upon the choices of methods. Also, it isimportant to make explicit that the search for scientific certainties in termsof concrete answers is often in vain in social science. Hopefully in theseways, students come to realise it is more worthy and relevant to recognisethe limits and significance of the uncertainties that are related to a particu-lar research design, than to reach a firm conclusion based on an incoherentprocess. Finally, it is intended that a revised version of this working paperwill be distributed and discussed in class. The aim here is to make explicitthe challenges I have experienced and of course acknowledge the concernsof the students that together can provide a framework for solutions.ReferencesAndersen, H. L. (2010). ‘Constructive alignment’ og risikoen for en forsim-plende universitetspædagogik. Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Tidsskrift,9.Biggs, J. (1999). Teaching for Quality Learning at University (1st ed.). So-ciety for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.All contributions to this volume can be found at: http://www.ind.ku.dk/publikationer/up_projekter/improving-university-science-teaching-and-learning---pedagogical-projects-2017---volume-9-no.-1-2/

Reflections about challenges of constructive alignment amongst heterogeneous masters’ students

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Reflections about challenges of constructive alignment amongst heterogeneous masters’ students

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