U800 proposal continues!

Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: Woman (Maroon 5)
Topic: Thesis writing

Alright unto ATI in different disciplines. By the way was hit with a bombshell yesterday – found out I didn’t send out the ATI after all – what I sent out was the Teaching Orientation Questionnaire developed by Kember and Gow (1994) and remodified by Norton et al to indicate personal intentions and beliefs rather than general! The ATI looks at intentions and strategies. Anyway, it has the same basic principle and they (Norton et al) called it an approaches to teaching. Anyway, first embark on the five types of teaching approaches as indicated by Trigwell. Then talk about how these are in two main types are on a continuum from teacher focused/ oriented to student focussed/ oriented. Indicate that it has been found the the teaching conceptions are related to these two orientations. Trigwell et al called these two orientations: Information transmission and conceptual change. Whilst in Kember and Gow (1994) chose these two scales to be aligned with what they term Knowledge Transmission and Learning Facilitation. (I think we can say in the methodology we chose to use the Kember and Gow questionnaire because it had more sub-scales that can be measured – never mind its because I got mixed up between the two questionnaires :D!)

Alright, we are going to follow that up with differences found in disciplines. Start with Lueddeke (2003) working hypothesis that hard subjects is teacher focused whilst soft is student focused. Describe his survey and indicate it was found that the business and social science teachers showed more of a student-focussed approach whilst the technology and nursing (technology stronger) had a more teacher-focussed approach.

Follow up this with Trigwell (2002) study that between design and technology teachers: they were more teacher focussed than the design teachers(soft).

Indicate that Lindblom-Ylänne et al research went further into subdivided the disciplines into four groupings according to Neumann (??). They found similar results that soft pure and soft applied were more student focussed than the hard pure and applied.

Thus conclude, there seems indication that soft subjects will be more likely to exhibit a student focussed approach. However, this were all done from a mixture of subjects that may be only way of teaching it – and perhaps using a subject that is common to all, one can truly compare how teacher’s approaches may vary when teaching it.

Now next topic: ASI across disciplines.

Move on to say, there has been found a relationship between the approaches to study and the approaches to teaching. Before you embark on what is the relationship – briefly explained the ASI – as a questionnaire to determine three types of studying and developed by Entwhistle and Tait (??? – can’t remember if that is right): surface, deep and strategic : what they represent and their subscales.

Now, go on to explain, that it has been found by Trigwell and Kember and Gow, that their scales compared favorably with ASI, i.e. if teacher focussed most likely to promote a deep approach, whilst if you’re student-focussed most likely to promote a surface approach.

Its therefore not surprising that results across disciplines seem to mirror that from ATI, that is, hard disciplines will have a surface approach whilst soft disciplines will have a deep approach. State the Ramsden and Entwhistle study in 1981 between arts and science students. Indicate same results were experienced by Lawless and Richardson (2002) for distance learning students. However, examining the scores from a study by Thang (2005) between Social Science, Applied Science and Business Administration in Malaysian universities suggested that there may not be much of a difference between these three disciplines. This may be something that’s intrinsic to the Malaysian university or suggest that the applied sciences courses perhaps hard applied are closer to that of the applied soft subjects of business Administration or that further work has to be done to determine whether this holds through for different university contexts and different disciplines.

Concluding Remarks
Just conclude that there are two types of software that can be used for conducting linear programming. Perhaps the differences in using these two softwares (as interactive or computing) may be dependent on the teacher’s approach – if they are focussed on learning facilitation of knowledge transmission. And that since teaching approaches are different from disciplines, that the teaching of linear programming should be different from each discipline and this should reflect the way that students’ approach the studying of linear programming.