Patterns of university teachers’ approaches to teaching, professional development and perceived departmental cultures

Abstract

Many studies have been conducted about academics’ approaches to teaching, professional development and perceived departmental culture, but their interconnectedness has been considered to a lesser extent. The research presented here examined these patterns comparatively by disciplinary fields and years of teaching experience. Three inventories were filled in by 1141 academics from one Finnish and two Hungarian universities. Based on a hierarchical cluster analysis, four patterns emerged: (1) Experimenters with diverse teaching approaches; (2) Experimenters perceiving their department’s culture as most supportive and collaborative; (3) Individualistic knowledge-focused teachers; and (4) Student-thinking oriented but professionally unintegrated teachers. About 45% of the teachers belonged to the first group. Academics in the last two groups were less open to professional development; in the third group, this was particularly true for academics working in the field of hard sciences, and in the fourth for those who had less than two years of teaching experience.