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Challenge and learning in honours education: a quantitative and qualitative study on students’ and teachers’ perceptions

In honours programmes, teachers face the task of designing courses in which students feel challenged and learn from accomplishing demanding assignments. The aim of this study was to investigate students’ and teachers’ perceptions of challenge and learning in an honours programme. From 2016 to 2019, students and teachers rated the learning activities during the programme and explained their ratings. The results showed that in the first two years, teachers estimated challenge and learning significantly higher than the students did. However, both students and teachers viewed the tasks as the factor with the strongest impact on challenge and learning. In the first year, students also identified group dynamics as challenging and a source for learning. Enhancing task complexity and supporting group dynamics are the main factors to adjust the level of challenge in an honours programme. Monitoring students’ and teachers’ perceptions can help to adapt the programme to improve students’ learning.

Why all the drama?

Improvisational drama techniques (IDTs) can benefit foreign language (FL) learners by offering them an engaging way to practise speaking while hiding behind the safety of a character mask. This study aimed to glean perceptions toward and experiences with IDTs among FL student teachers, as well as training needs related to integrating IDTs as a pedagogical tool. Foreign language student teachers at a Dutch university who had not received IDT-training took part in a questionnaire (n = 197). Former student teachers who had taken such a course in drama were interviewed in depth (n = 9). Almost all student teachers - both those who had and had not received IDT-training-shared the belief that IDTs have added pedagogical value. The majority of student teachers who had not had drama training indicated that they did not often implement IDTs in their classes. Former student teachers who had IDT-training continued to integrate IDTs with some regularity. Both groups provided valuable input on the components that should be included in a future IDTtraining module for both student teachers and in-service teachers. Our findings give rise to the hypothesis that training can play a key role in galvanizing teachers to implement IDTs, and allow us to formulate design criteria for an innovative training module.

Gender Perceptions of Challenging Student Behavior and Teacher Stress

The present study focuses on the level of stress male and female teachers perceive when dealing with the most behaviorally challenging student in his or her classroom. To measure stress in Dutch elementary classrooms, a sample was drawn of 582 teachers. First, they rated the most challenging student in their classroom on six different behavioral components: Against the grain, Full of activity/Easily distractible, Needs a lot of attention/Week student, Easily upset, Failuresyndrome/Excessively perfectionist, and Aggressive/Hostile. Teachers then scored perceived stress as a result of this challenging behavior. Two questions concerning gender relations in class rooms will be addressed. Do female and male teachers select the same type of behaviorally challenging students as the most challenging? And: do they perceive the same level of stress? Our data shows that female teachers do indeed report significantly more incidence of challenging behavior, but no evidence is found for differences between stress levels of male and female teachers.

Reflection in Technical Higher Education: Student Perceptions

Supervisor and Student Perspectives on Undergraduate Thesis Supervision in Higher Education

Diagnosing teachers are teachers who perceive diagnostic information about students’ learning process, interpret these aspects, decide how to respond, and act based on this diagnostic decision. During supervision meetings about the undergraduate thesis supervisors make in-the-moment decisions while interacting with their students. We regarded research supervision as a teaching process for the supervisor and a learning process for the student. We tried to grasp supervisors’ in-the-moment decisions and students’ perceptions of supervisors’ actions. Supervisor decisions and student perceptions were measured with video-stimulated recall interviews and coded using a content analysis approach. The results showed that the in-the-moment decisions our supervisors made had a strong focus on student learning. Supervisors often asked questions to empower students or to increase student understanding. These supervising strategies seemed to be adapted to students’ needs, as the latter had positive perceptions when their control increased or when they received stimuli to think for themselves.

Student perceptions of assessment and student self-efficacy in competence-based education

The purpose of this study was to provide insight into the interplay between student perceptions of competence-based assessment and student self-efficacy, and how this influences student learning outcomes. Results reveal that student perceptions of the form authenticity aspect and the quality feedback aspect of assessment do predict student self-efficacy, confirming the role of mastery experiences and social persuasions in enhancing student self-efficacy as stated by social cognitive theory. Findings do not confirm mastery experiences as being a stronger source of self-efficacy information than social persuasions. Study results confirm the predictive role of students’ self-efficacy on their competence outcomes. Mediation analysis results indicate that student’s perceptions of assessment have an indirect effect on student’s competence evaluation outcomes through student’s self-efficacy. Study findings highlight which assessment characteristics, positively influencing students’ learning, contribute to the effectiveness of competence-based education. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are indicated.