Want to improve student learning? Start by teaching in a clearer and more organized way.
That is the deceptively simple implication of three studies presented last week at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
The studies further document an established correlation between students’ perceptions of their professors’ teaching and subsequent improvements in the students’ learning and attitudes.
While much of the pedagogical conversation in higher education focuses on innovations like the flipped classroom, the findings suggest the value of basic teaching techniques and traits.
All of the studies draw on the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, which followed thousands of students as they progressed through institutions of differing types, sizes, and levels of selectivity.
The Wabash study provides an unusually rich portrait of student learning and dispositions. Data include demographic information, scores on a standardized test of critical thinking, and measures of motivation and approaches to learning.
Those measures were correlated with a survey of students’ perceptions of the clarity and organization of their professors’ teaching. The survey asked students how often they thought their instructors provided clear explanations, used good examples to illustrate difficult points, were well prepared for and organized in class, and had a good command of the subject.
The new research confirms that perceived teaching quality and measures of learning consistently have a strong relationship, though it is not causal, said Ernest T. Pascarella, a professor of higher education at the University of Iowa and a co-author of the three studies.
“Something’s going on here,” he said.
‘A Very Big Deal’
Chad N. Loes, a professor of criminal justice at Mount Mercy University, studied how students’ perceptions of organized teaching correlated with gains in critical-thinking skills measured at the beginning and end of their first year.
His work is notable because it replicates the findings of the National Study of Student Learning, a 1996 effort that was led by Mr. Pascarella and drew on different data.
After controlling for students’ background characteristics, Mr. Loes and the other author, Mark H. Salisbury of Augustana College, in Illinois, found that well-organized teaching had only a small effect on the critical-thinking skills of students in general.
But the perception of such teaching had a pronounced effect on students in minority groups, whose gains in critical-thinking skills were nearly five times as large as those of white students.
While nonwhite students in the Wabash study entered college scoring behind their white peers on the test of critical thinking, the researchers noted that the gaps became statistically insignificant by the end of their first year.
“This is something that can ameliorate them,” said Mr. Loes, who is also director of student-outcomes research at Mount Mercy. “It’s potentially a very big deal.”
Similarly, clear and organized teaching had a positive direct effect on critical-thinking skills over four years, according to a study by Thomas F. Nelson Laird, an associate professor of higher education at Indiana University at Bloomington.
He and his team added a wrinkle, looking at the indirect effects of students’ perceptions of teaching. How, they wondered, did students’ perceptions affect their approach to learning? And how, in turn, did their approach influence their critical-thinking skills and tendency to engage in cognitive activity?
As the researchers predicted, the study found that high levels of perceived teaching quality were strongly associated with deep approaches to learning—the kind in which students synthesize ideas, apply material to new contexts, and reflect on what they have absorbed.
But the wrinkle they added produced surprising results. While one facet of the deep approaches, called reflective learning, had a strong effect, over all they did not have much of an effect on critical thinking.
Perhaps, Mr. Laird said, higher-order thinking skills are not adequately captured on a standardized test with right and wrong answers.
The third study, by Benjamin Gillig, a doctoral student at Iowa, found that meaningful interactions with faculty members outside class, along with clear and organized teaching, had the strongest positive effects on students’ motivation during their first year of college, which otherwise tends to drop significantly.
Modest Steps
While studies based on student reports are sometimes criticized as unreliable, such feedback is worthwhile in this case, said several researchers. Students’ opinions are not held out as the objective truth. What matters, the researchers said, is how the students’ perceptions affect learning.
Professors may not be such good judges of their own teaching, said Mr. Laird, who also directs the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement.
And yet their organizational skills and clarity can be easy to improve. “It doesn’t take a ton of money,” he said. “It takes a little bit of time and some reflection.”
To correct their own misperceptions, professors can ask colleagues to watch them teach and tell them how clear and organized they are. Or, said Mr. Laird, they can survey their class in the middle of the semester or seek coaching.
Mr. Pascarella, of Iowa, has watched videotapes of his teaching, from which he learned to signal his transitions more clearly. He has tried other modest measures, like outlining on the board the material he will cover and handing out, at the beginning of the semester, a review packet with the chief concepts in the course.
“It took me a while to become a decent teacher,” he said. “I just hate to think of the number of students I’ve screwed up.”
The survey of perceived organization and clarity may also tap into something larger, said several of the researchers. Professors who score well on the survey often demonstrate traits that may be even more important, like enthusiasm and passion, said Mr. Pascarella.
Faculty members who value their students’ perceptions of their teaching may also be the sorts of instructors who look at their courses from an alternate point of view, said Mr. Gillig.
It often means, he said, that professors have thought, “I have to do not only what works for me. I have to do what works for the students.”
