Abstract
The fundamental role of higher education is to help students learn to cope in a constantly changing and uncertain world. The key to this is to support the development of their agency and commitment to learning. Although technology is the main tool of knowledge transfer, according to the OECD, it is teachers who represent the values of their field and that of knowledge and learning.
Since academic development is a relatively recent topic in the Hungarian literature, the present research aims to explore teachers' role interpretation, goals, missions, approaches to teaching, and their commitment to academic development at one of Hungary's leading business universities, the Budapest Business University (BBU). The study is based on 33 semi-structured interviews recorded at BBU involving 33 teachers of economics-related subjects in three faculties of the university. The interview transcripts were analysed by thematic analysis.
The results show that participants have markedly different teaching approaches, and the interrelationships between their objectives, missions and academic development can be seen as constituting a system. Finally, the potential interrelationships among the different themes were examined. The findings show that the teachers' goals and missions are strongly related, although more affective factors can be identified in relation to missions. These affective factors include inspiring enthusiasm and building partnership and mutual learning. In line with this, most participants adopt a teacher/student interaction strategy, only few cases of student focus were identified.
Introduction
Since the completion of the process of opening higher education (HE) to the masses in the mid-2010s, Hungarian HE has been characterised by increasing institutional and student diversity (Hrubos & Horváth, 2012). Moreover, the demands of the labour market for skills, and the growing expectations of society and communities call for continuous renewal, as traditional forms of education based on knowledge transfer do not seem to fulfil those demands (Csehné Papp & Varga, 2018). While the most important task of higher education is to help students cope confidently in a complex, changing and uncertain world, it is unpredictable what knowledge and skills they will need in the future. Therefore, it is of primary importance to help students develop the agency to become lifelong learners. At the same time, the efforts to develop commitment to learning must take into account a mix of personal, social and cultural motivations (OECD, 2022): Educators need to be aware of the interrelationship between cognitive and affective factors in learning, while knowledge and cognitive skills must be in balance with social skills and values (OECD, 2022). The importance of these factors necessitate a broader understanding of quality of learning. As a result, the quality of the learning process, including general student well-being, learning experience, school experience, and the learning environment have become just as important as learning outcomes (OECD, 2019).
Since teachers are the key to meeting curriculum objectives effectively, the OECD highlights their role in representing both explicit and implicit educational values. Even though technology has augmented and transformed most elements in the teaching and learning process, it is still the teacher who determines the values (Geertsema, 2021) and facilitates crucial human interaction that contribute to the development of social skills and professional socialization (OECD, 2019; Schleicher, 2018). The values transmitted by higher education, the role of teachers and their approach to teaching, academic development, as well as Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) have been extensively discussed in the international literature. However, in Hungary, student-focused teaching and academic development have only recently entered the professional discourse (Káplár-Kodácsy & Dorner, 2022). The present study aims to explore teachers' role interpretation, teaching approaches, academic development and its potential similarities with SoTL, as well as to investigate the interrelationship between these areas among the teachers at one of Hungary's leading business universities, the Budapest Business University (BBU).
Theoretical background
Teaching approach
Teachers' experiences, values, beliefs, understandings, and perceptions of teaching determine their approach to teaching and greatly influence their students' approach to learning and their learning outcomes (Trigwell & Prosser, 2020). Teachers' approach to teaching determines whether they focus on themselves and information transfer or on their students and their changing conceptions. Although the literature defines two major categories in teacher approaches (Trigwell & Prosser, 2004), Information Transmission/Teacher-Focused (ITTF) and Conceptual Change/Student focused (CCSF) approaches, on closer examination five different teaching approaches can be distinguished (Trigwell & Prosser, 2020). These are 1) A teacher-focused strategy with the intention of transmitting information to students, 2) a teacher-focused strategy with the intention that students acquire the concepts of the discipline, 3) a teacher-student interaction strategy with the intention that students acquire the concepts of the discipline, 4) a student focused strategy aiming to develop students' conception, and finally 5) a student-focused strategy aiming at students replacing their conceptions (Trigwell & Prosser, 2020).
In line with trends to improve the quality of education, teachers' academic development has come to the forefront of attention (Sugrue, Englund, Solbrekke, & Fossland, 2018). The broadly defined objective of academic development is about the creation of conditions supportive of teaching and learning in the broadest sense (Leibowitz, 2014, p. 3), and one possible strategy is SoTL (Geertsema, 2016). SoTL recognizes that teacher's knowledge is dynamic, and shaped through practical work, therefore, teacher's academic development is a practice-based scientific topic (Roxå & Mårtensson, 2009).
Concept of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a widely discussed topic in the international literature, which has inspired several authors to create models, among them Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin, and Prosser (2000) (Fig. 1). In their system, the dimension of being informed ranges from informal theories to subject-specific pedagogies, the dimension of reflection broadens with the degree of focus, the dimension of communication expands according to number of those involved, and the conception dimension ranges from a teacher-focused approach to a student-focused one (Trigwell et al., 2000). Although movement in each of the four dimensions is possible independently, the dimensions are typically interrelated, making those teachers the most committed to SoTL who reach the highest level on all the scales.
The multi-dimensional model of scholarship of teaching of Trigwell et al. supplemented with Kreber's model (Kreber, 2002; Trigwell et al., 2000)
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00092
Consistent with this approach is Carolin Kreber's system (Kreber, 2002) whose rationale is to examine the sources and nature of knowledge creation. She describes three distinct, intrinsically valid, and valuable teaching career paths based on the extent of commitment to teaching. The first is Teaching Excellence where the teacher is not only an expert in their field, but they can motivate and help their students, therefore they are learning-centred. The second path is Teaching Expertise, where self-regulation takes the form of a high degree of adaptivity. They are knowledgeable about learning theories, as well as teaching methodology and can regulate their own learning, which is referred to as pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986). Besides being learning-centred, well-versed in professional literature and having focused reflection, the third level involves expert supervised knowledge sharing through publications, presentations or supporting the professional growth of others. This third level is called Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) (Kreber, 2002). In this research, Trigwell's (2000) model is merged with Kreber's (2002) categories (see Fig. 1) to refine the dimensions of the research and to enhance understanding.
Methods
In order to map what the teachers at BBU think about their goals, missions and career development paths, we sought to answer the following research questions:
What goals and missions do the teachers articulate?
What pathways do the teachers follow to develop professionally?
How do goals, missions and professional development paths relate to the teachers' approach to teaching?
The research questions demanded a qualitative approach and involved the analysis of semi-structured interviews which were conducted at BBU with teachers of economics related subjects from all the three faculties. The research received ethical clearance (2022/322 ELTE PPK KEB).
As our aim was to explore and describe how teachers at BBU think, this study does not pursue the goal of producing generalizable findings. Instead, it aims to help the reader to make “similarity judgements” (Davis, 1992, p. 606) through providing a rich description of the participants' beliefs and ways of thinking, and to help the reader to decide whether the understandings gained from this study can be transferred to their own contexts (Davis, 1992; Fraenkel & Wallen, 1993). Therefore, we opted for convenience sampling (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000): We sent out a general call to all BBU teachers through emails to the department heads and interviewed those who volunteered. In a short period of time, as many as 33 teachers from the three faculties of the university indicated their willingness to participate, which confirmed the relevance of the research objective.
The sample is quite balanced in terms of its gender distribution, as there are 19 female and 14 male participants. They have worked as teachers in HE for 18 years on average: the participant with the least experience has been teaching in HE for three years, while the most experienced participant has been a teacher for 37 years. The average length of HE teaching experience is between 10 and 19 years. The sample contains only two teachers with less than four years of experience, five teachers with an experience of five to nine years, 13 teachers have worked as teachers in HE for a period of 10–19 years, seven participants have a teaching experience of more than 20 years but less than 30, and six teachers have worked as HE teachers for over 30 years.
The interview was semi-structured to allow participants to expand upon the topic without any distraction. The first six questions were designed to inspire them to talk longer and provide more detail to allow for the in-depth investigation of the cognitive and affective domains of teachers' thinking. The questions tapped into the teachers' mission, adaptivity, academic development, and challenges, and how they cope with them. In the present study, the emerging themes related to teaching objectives, mission and academic development are discussed.
Participants had the option to choose if they preferred participating in a focus group or an individual interview. All of them opted for the individual interview, thus, 33 semi-structured interviews were conducted in the period of September – October 2022. Around half of the interviews took place in the buildings of the university, the others preferred to participate in an online interview. We followed the method of map-assisted interviews suggested by Kinchin et al. (2018). During the interviews, we created maps of the emerging concepts on the classroom board (in-person meetings), or in an Excel spreadsheet (online interviews). These notes provided both parties with a clear overview of the emerging themes. The notes were digitalised, clarified and through member checking (Creswell, 2013) the participants were asked to provide feedback in order to confirm the adequacy of the content, and thus to establish credibility (Creswell, 2013).
Besides member checking, the validity of the research was ensured by having the transcripts coded by two independent coders. One of them was the interviewer, the other who only read the transcripts but were not familiar with the interview notes. After the interview transcripts had been coded, compared and modified, the codes were compared to the notes taken during the interviews. The correspondence between the codes established in the interview transcripts by the two coders and the ones appearing in the interview notes were almost the same, which provides evidence for the validity of the interpretation. As regards the key words related to the teaching approach, most of them identified in the transcripts also appeared in the interview notes, although, there were some missing items. During the qualitative thematic analysis of the interview transcripts, we examined the texts in two ways. On the one hand, we applied a deductive logic to interpret the respondents' approaches to teaching because it is a concept in the literature with well-defined sub-categories, therefore we looked for sections in the text which corresponded to these a priori categories. This method provided the possibility to map participants' word use and, afterwards, to match it with concepts defined in educational theory. These are described in Table 1. On the other hand, we used an inductive logic for identifying the emerging themes related to teaching objectives, missions and academic development, where the analysis started without pre-determined codes or theoretical considerations, and both the main and the sub-themes were identified based on the corpus of texts (Sántha, 2017). Finally, the possible interrelations of the individual themes were investigated.
The keywords of teaching approaches
| A priori themes | Phrases used |
| Teacher-focused information transfer (1) | information transfer, knowledge transfer, the success of students, students' meaningful professional knowledge |
| Teacher-focused conception learning (2) | knowledge sharing, business mindset, economic approach, deep understanding, professional logic, understanding connections, critical thinking, analysing problems, problem solving |
| Interaction-focused conception learning (3) | connection, interaction, dialogue, closeness, trusting relationship, community feeling, cooperation, thinking together, and their synonyms |
| Student-focused conception development (4–5) | deep understanding, professional logic, business mindset, attitude, and student-focus |
For ensuring the anonymity of the participants, all personal data and distinguishing marks of identity have been omitted from the reports of the findings and the supporting quotes. The interviews are only identified with numbers that do not correspond to the order in which the interviews were conducted.
Results
Teaching approach
To investigate teaching approaches, the Approach to Teaching Inventory (ATI) (Trigwell & Prosser, 2020) or one of its specialised versions are the most commonly used research instruments. Therefore, it seemed a viable course of action to look for the statements in the ATI questionnaire (depending on the version used, 8 teacher-focused and 8 student-focused statements) in the interview transcripts. However, this method did not yield any results, because the statements of the ATI questionnaire did not always match the themes emerging from the interviews. Some statements were identifiable in the transcripts while others were not at all.
As the ATI questionnaire could not be used for the analysis, the participants' use of words was investigated following pre-defined rules. In line with both approaches in the literature, the analysis aimed to determine which of the five teaching approach categories the participants' teaching approach could be classified into, and which approach could be clearly described as student-focused. In our analysis we use the Approach to Teaching system as a hierarchy, therefore, the content of the categories is gradually expanding. Based on the phrases used, we placed the participants in the highest category, even though they also used terms specific to lower categories.
The rules for identifying emerging themes are as follows (key words were searched for in the full transcripts) Table 1. (The last two categories, the 4) student-focused strategy aiming to develop students' conceptions and the 5) student-focused strategy aiming to replace students' conceptions were merged, as the development and replacement of conceptions could not be clearly differentiated in any of the interviews.)
The most important factor in the analysis of student focus was the frequency with which students were mentioned. However, the fact that students were the main topic in the interviews does not necessarily indicate student focus. In fact, the interviews revealed that the teachers understand the concept differently from its interpretation in the literature. Following Frey, McKinney, and Trimble (2006), in this study, we interpret student focus as the teacher's endeavour to help students to arrive at a deep understanding of the learning material by creating suitable conditions for learning (the learning environment) in which active knowledge construction can take place. Therefore, in our study, the criteria for student-focus were the focus on learning rather than the teaching process, the mention of organizing learning and helping students to learn, as well as those comments that referred to thinking with the students' head, students' curiosity, insights into their mechanisms for understanding, and their learning processes. In one case, the theme of facilitation also emerged.
In order to establish a link between the categories of teaching approach defined in the literature, we counted the frequency with which each participant mentioned the phrases determined to belong to each of the categories. As the teaching approaches are organized as a hierarchy, and some participants mentioned phrases that belonged to more than one category, we assigned each participant the category that appeared to be the highest for them. The results of the thematic analysis of the 33 interviews are summarised in Table 2. The quantification of the results is used for the subsequent relationship analysis.
The participants' teaching approaches
| Teaching approach | Frequency (persons) | Relative frequency (%) |
| Teacher-focused information transfer | 4 | 12 |
| Teacher-focused conception learning | 8 | 24 |
| Interaction-focused conception learning | 17 | 52 |
| Student-focused conception development | 4 | 12 |
| Altogether | 33 | 100 |
The results show that although only few participants have a truly student-focused approach to teaching, more than half of the participants (17 persons, 52%) see building relationships as the means to effective education. It is important that all the four teachers with student-focused strategies fulfilled the criteria for interaction-focused approach. This is in line with the approach to student-focus which emphasises student engagement and the facilitator role of teachers. Several teachers, (12 persons, 36%) have a teacher-focussed teaching approach, which can be considered the traditional approach in higher education. However, eight of them (24%) focus on developing understanding and thinking. Altogether, 29 persons (88%) understand teaching to be more than transferring information: they seek to develop students' understanding, logical and critical thinking, and to create a business mindset.
Goals
The first interview question inquired into teachers' own goals. Quotations illustrating the codes of the goals are shown in Table 3.
Quotations about the goals
| Quotations about the goals | |
| Student success | “My goal is to help students to succeed.” (11) “My objective is to help students reach their goal of earning the certificate or degree of their choice.” (16) |
| Student knowledge | “My aim, and this I always tell my students, is that they learn to think as an economist.” (3) “Knowledge is skills and abilities rather than simply lexical knowledge. They need that too, but skills and abilities are the first: being able to use what you know is the most important.” (17) The best is when there is progress as we go along, when we lay the foundations first.” (14) |
| Knowledge sharing, building relationship, enthusiasm | “The relationship is the key, a teacher and a student need to build a relationship based on trust.” (20) “I always try to organize my lessons to be enjoyable and interactive.” (31) „The most important goal is to create openness to knowledge or the profession.” (11) |
| Develop other skills | “It is also my goal to develop their skills: not only to increase their knowledge but also to enable them to put this knowledge into a specific corporate context, this methodological knowledge.” (23) |
| Self-fulfilment | “…Besides, teaching for me is also self-fulfilment.” (4) |
The thematic analysis showed that the participants have diverse goals which are predominantly cognitive, practical, and strategic in nature. The system of emerging goals is shown in Fig. 2.
The system of teachers' goals
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00092
Woodall, Hiller, and Resnick (2014) classified the values students may seek in the following categories: practical (transferable knowledge and skills, useful information for the future), social (social life, social status, cultural diversity), strategic (opportunities for further education and better employment through the degree), and personal values (personal development, self-realisation, self-confidence). The findings show that the participants' goals are primarily centred around students (with only one exception), and focus primarily on cognitive domains. In Woodall et al.'s (2014) framework, these goals belong to the practical (transferable knowledge and skills, knowledge for the future) and the strategic (opportunities for further learning and employment through a degree) value groups.
The interviewees defined student success in terms of completion of the courses they teach and earning a degree. For most of them, the mere completion of a course is considered a success, and some participants mentioned a better grade as a proof of student success. The measure of success is the extent to which they manage to increase students' knowledge, which is itself a priority objective. None of the participants understood knowledge exclusively as lexical, memorised knowledge. In their view, knowledge included the ability of knowing how to apply it. Where this idea did not emerge spontaneously, participants were asked specifically about it. This positive phenomenon might be the consequence of teaching business and applied science subjects. Most participants view knowledge as the ability for logical thinking, a business mindset and attitude, as well as deep, applicable knowledge. These constitute a solid system of knowledge that serves as the basis on which further learning takes place (by adding details or by further elaborating on it). This solid basis is what they wish to impart to students.
Finally, the goals highlighted the need not only to impart specific disciplinary knowledge, but also to the development of skills more loosely related to it. Dilemmas and differences in opinion only surfaced regarding whether the two should be developed simultaneously or in a sequence building on one another.
The only goal of participants unrelated to students was seeking personal challenges, and self-fulfilment, which implicitly shows a love for the teaching profession, and which often surfaced during the discussion about the teachers' mission.
Objectives and missions
At the end of the interview, interviewees were asked to formulate their mission. Contrary to the first question about objectives, which the participants could answer easily and immediately, the question about their mission took participants by surprise; they needed considerably more time to formulate an answer. Despite the first reactions, short hesitation and thinking, all of them gave a well-formulated and concise concept.
Quotations illustrating the codes of the missions are shown in Table 4, and the system of missions linked to objectives is shown in Fig. 3.
Quotations from the missions
| Quotations from the missions | |
| Good atmosphere, mutual enthusiasm, usefulness | “I would like to teach the profession in a cooperative, good atmosphere” (8) “To make them understand and like the subject, because this is when it becomes knowledge” (4) “So that they would not come because it is compulsory, but to seek knowledge, so that they see the meaning, and feel the good vibes. So that they be enthusiastic, as I was when I was a student.” (4) |
| Perseverance | “There is only one secret to success: work invested.” (1) |
| Construction | “Building is the foundation for all my actions; that we build something, that we develop something.” (14) |
| Understanding, meaningful prof. knowledge, commitment | “My mission is to educate our students so that when they graduate, they become professionals whose work is a pleasure to review. The goal is to create commitment.” (7) “I strive to educate people who think, and to impart lasting and complex knowledge.” (25) |
| Exchange of opinions, community | “It is the teachers' responsibility and the essence of university life to create better things through critical evaluation and discussion, so that we can be part of a better economic environment in the future.” (12) “I focus on community and equal opportunity.” (12) |
| Pers.development, something extra | “Learning is time well-spent, personal development.” (29) “The goal is to exert a positive influence on a person’ life, to give them tools and the possibility for a good life.” (14) |
| Credibility, being interesting | “This is the meaning of my life, my work, I would like them to feel this.” (4) “Be credible and interesting!” (21) |
The system of goals and missions
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00092
As it can be seen in Fig. 3, the teachers' missions can be organically linked to their goals. Interestingly, besides practical and strategic values, social (pleasant atmosphere on the lesson, building relationships) and personal values (students' personal growth) are significantly stronger than practical and strategic values (Woodall et al., 2014).
The interviews reveal the links between individual elements shown in Fig. 3. The topic of motivating and engaging their students in the learning process surfaced as themes related to raising students' interest and highlighting the importance of their subjects. These themes were mentioned in the form of showing enthusiasm about the subject and learning, striving to create a good relationship with the students, and working together as partners in a good and friendly atmosphere.
The teachers see engagement as the basis for students' perseverance, and for teaching/learning the basics and then building on them. It can be achieved by using the right method in teaching the relevant professional content. In their view, success in engaging the students fosters perseverance which is necessary for students to start understanding the learning material and to develop a business mindset. This is how students acquire the basics of a profession and become committed to it. During the process, they also become aware of the need to continuously improve their knowledge. The commitment and good relations lead to community building, dialogue, and mutual learning at all levels of the institution. The learning process, then, involves all the stakeholders, resulting in mutual knowledge construction, which is the essence of university life. Arousing the interest of the stakeholders – primarily the students, in the participants' view –, providing opportunities for learning, facilitating their commitment, and striving for equal opportunities lead to students' personal growth, and promote their present and future well-being.
Besides inspiring students' enthusiasm, many participants felt the need to express how motivated they are. Most of the participants spoke of their love for their profession, their subject and teaching, and that the passion to strive to be better every day is what they would like to pass on to their students. According to the teachers, they build partnership with and motivate students by being a credible and interesting teacher who has a genuine concern for the students. This relates to the goal of self-fulfilment, and highlights the interdependent system of goals, values, and interests of all the stakeholders. Although the interpretation of credibility opens new avenues of research, it is clear from the accounts of the teachers that credibility means more for them than being up-to-date in the profession, and having a comprehensive disciplinary knowledge. They consider themselves credible when they succeed in showing their students that teaching is the most important part of their professional life, and this is the key driver of their teaching approach, actions, and adaptive orientation.
For the purposes of further analysis and clarity, the system of goals and missions was narrowed down to those four categories which include students. The biasing effect of this simplification is counterbalanced by a more manageable system of goals and missions (referred to as Missions) which can be compared to the other aspects. The four categories are 1) the achievement of success, where success is defined in terms of the increase in students' knowledge and commitment, the factors which may bring professional success for the students, 2) an emphasis on invested effort and development, 3) specific aspiration to interact, and 4) a love for the profession and learning, enthusiasm. Based on the mission that appeared the most salient in the individual interviews, we put each participant in one of the four categories. The relationship among the categories is illustrated in Fig. 4, and the number of teachers within each category is shown Table 5.
The consolidated system of missions
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00092
The missions of the participants
| Mission | Frequency (persons) | Relative frequency (%) |
| Achievement of success | 10 | 31 |
| Emphasis on invested effort and development | 3 | 9 |
| Specific aspiration to interact | 2 | 6 |
| Love of the profession and learning, enthusiasm | 18 | 54 |
| Altogether | 33 | 100 |
Academic development
Regarding academic development, participants highlighted up-to-date, comprehensive, deep, yet multi-disciplinary knowledge of the subject they teach, and its development. Only two of them consider themselves primarily teachers, therefore they spoke about academic development in this role only. Nevertheless, many of the participants have some kind of teaching qualification, and three quarters of them mentioned development as a teacher, even though no question addressed this topic directly to find out what the participants really think. The participants' approaches to academic development is shown in Fig. 5.
The teachers' approaches to academic development
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00092
As Table 6 shows, many participants view academic development as a teacher a spontaneous process and consider the educational knowledge elements tacit knowledge. Nevertheless, the theme of self-reflection also emerged as situation awareness, and as self-evaluation. The participants exhibited an inner drive “to be a little better day by day” and to this end they improve their methods, reflect, search and experiment. It transpires form the interviews that they consider it as a sign of academic development that unlike at the beginning of their academic career, now they are able to pay attention to and notice the students' problems. They can also notice the small signs of feedback which tell them whether their students “are with them” in the teaching/learning process. Moreover, many of them feel that there is a growing demand for mentoring in higher education.
Participants' academic development
| Approaches to academic development | Frequency (persons) | Relative frequency (%) |
| Academic development is related solely to disciplinary field | 8 | 24 |
| Spontaneous change | 6 | 18 |
| Informal conversation | 6 | 18 |
| Formal cooperation | 1 | 3 |
| Internal/external educational materials | 1 | 3 |
| Internal/external educational trainings/conferences | 10 | 31 |
| Own educational research publications | 1 | 3 |
| Altogether | 33 | 100 |
However, more than half of the participants consciously look for opportunities to develop in teaching. Informal dialogues and “tearoom discussions” are integral part of university teaching and constitute the fundamental building blocks of thinking and knowledge sharing. Several participants mentioned the benefits of visiting each other's lessons and the subsequent discussions, and the search for good practices in informal discussions. The teachers in several communities of practice (departments) mentioned that besides the curricular content, issues of teaching methodology are also discussed in formal meetings. These meetings play an important role in broadening their perspective and achieving consistency across the teachers of the department.
The next stage in the search for development is when teachers step outside their community to learn from the experiences of other communities. This is when teachers learn from and use materials (thematic notes and publications) created by internal and external educational development experts, and materials published in other knowledge sharing platforms (e.g., Facebook groups). BBU's Centre for Teaching and Learning offers a wide range of educational support materials, workshops, trainings, from which about a third of the participants regularly select those that they consider useful. One participant highlighted that (s)he regularly attends conferences on educational topics.
In the SoTL literature, it is publications on educational topics, considered to be a higher level of knowledge sharing, that differentiates pedagogical content knowledge and academia. None of the participants mentioned such publications, but there were some who spoke of planning to do so, and who since then have achieved this goal, therefore this publication was considered in the present research.
The approaches to academic development is summarized in Table 6 by showing the highest level mentioned by the participants, as higher levels imply those below.
Discussion
Having identified the different forms of Teaching Approach, Mission, and Academic development, the interrelationships between them were examined. The investigation was carried out following a qualitative research method using graphical representation of the emerging themes, and the analysis of the figures. The analysis sought to answer the question of whether and if so, how, teaching approach and mission, and academic development and teaching approach are related.
The interrelationship between teaching approach and mission
The interrelationship between teaching approach and mission is illustrated in Fig. 6. The Y axis shows the qualitatively distinct and ranked aspects of Teaching Approaches, while the X axis shows only the qualitatively distinct categories of Mission. The order in which the mission categories appear does not reflect a value judgement, only content logic and the relationship with the Teaching Approach. Moving by Teaching Approach, the figure shows that teachers with a teacher-focused information transmitting approach (4 persons) understand mission as student success, which is, at the same time, their own success (3 persons). Participants with a teacher-focused conception learning approach understand mission as invested effort and development (1 person), and inspiring enthusiasm and love for the profession (3 persons), but success is still in the centre.
The participants' mission and teaching approach
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00092
However, the case is very different for those aiming for conception learning through interaction. For them, success is less important (2 persons), while effort and development becomes more prominent (2 persons). Striving to interact emerges as a specific mission (2 persons), and there is a significant increase in inspiring enthusiasm and love for the profession (11 persons). Finally, the participants with a student-focused conception development approach identify enthusiasm and love for the profession (3 persons) and success (1 person) as their mission.
The results show that student success is present in the participants' minds regardless of their approach to teaching. Invested effort and development only appear for teachers with an approach focusing on students learning concepts. Similarly, striving to interact emerges in the approach with a focus on teacher-student interaction. Although it is present in the first approach, it is in the teacher-student interaction approach where enthusiasm and inspiring the love for the profession becomes really pronounced. In other words, whether this enthusiasm is the basis or the goal of the interaction, it is a characteristic feature of it: “Let's learn, grow together and enjoy!” (15).
The relationship between academic development and teaching approach, and similarities with SoTL
Finally, the relationship between the forms of Academic Development and Teaching Approach is discussed, with insights into the findings of the models in the literature on SoTL. The relationship between Academic Development and Teaching Approach is illustrated in Fig. 7.
The forms of participants' academic development and teaching approach
Citation: Journal of Adult Learning, Knowledge and Innovation 7, 1; 10.1556/2059.2024.00092
Figure 7 shows that most participants are in the intersection of interaction seekers and those who regularly take part in internal or external trainings to develop as a teacher. Above the balance axis, there is only one participant who is consciously trying to develop as a teacher. The figure also indicates that a considerable number of teachers are below the axis. For them, engaging in informal professional dialogue is what constitutes academic development, indicating that academic development is not (yet) part of their conscious professional development strategy.
The findings show that the position of the respondents is very similar to the SoTL model, even though the present research did not aim to investigate its applicability to the given context. That is the reason why the interview did not contain questions on, for example, reflection. Therefore, it must be emphasised that further investigation is needed to confirm whether the SoTL model is suitable to describe the relationship between teachers' academic development and teaching approach in this particular context.
In the SoTL model (Fig. 1), Teaching Excellence is used for teachers who have a student focus but teach following informal theories, and without focused reflection. The solid line circle indicates the group of participants (9 persons) who have a student-focus where student-focus is defined in broad terms including the desire to interact. However, those belonging to this group do not seek to read educational literature, and some interviews do not show evidence of focused reflection, either. Teachers who are at the next level in the model, showing Teaching Expertise, engage with general and discipline-specific pedagogical literature, and practise reflection-in-action. This is evidenced by the fact that they identify challenges and provide possible solutions. Moreover, they engage in knowledge sharing with colleagues. Many of the participants (11 persons) fall in this category, indicated by the dashed line circle. Finally, the dotted line circle represents those who belong to the category of SoTL since they present papers at conferences on education and publish their research in this field.
Conclusions
The study reveals that the participating teachers achieve their most important mission by creating partnership with the students, showing professional and teaching credibility, and being interesting and friendly. This is how they connect with their students, inspire their enthusiasm, and lay the foundations of basic disciplinary knowledge and its lifelong development. They are also committed to their own academic development individually and collectively as well. Their approach to teaching can be linked to both their mission and to their academic development.
The community of the BBU has recently defined its explicit values of collaboration, professionalism, commitment, development, and trust. A further interesting finding of this study is that all the five values mentioned above were present in the thinking, goals, and mission of the participants.
Limitations and recommendations
The limitations of the research are on the one hand its methodological one-sidedness (thematic analysis), on the other hand its context (all the participants were from the same business university). Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized, but are suitable for making “similarity judgments” (Davis, 1992, p. 606) with other contexts. On the other hand, they can serve as a starting point for further exploratory and confirmatory studies.
If academic development objectives are to be pursued at the local level, it would be important to communicate the TaT and SoTL models to the teachers to help them to recognise the gaps of their pedagogical awareness, and give them opportunity to reflect on their own teaching. We strongly believe that teachers would benefit from learning about the models' categories and the importance of student focus, reflectivity, and conducting and publishing pedagogical research. The correct understanding of student focus is also essential: By exploring the true content of the concept, a paradigm shift in educational thinking could be facilitated. As the results point towards the crucial significance of interaction, it is recommended that workshops be organized on this topic.
The results can also serve as the starting point for teacher development programs at BBU. The theoretical underpinnings of the research may be used as guidance towards a comprehensive teacher development program, while the interview guide and the method of analysis could be used to assess each teacher's position in the SoTL model, enabling teacher development programs to be tailored specifically to each teacher's individual needs.
It might be interesting to repeat the interviews after a series of educational development programs that address the issues raised in this study to examine improvement. Further research in this topic could include a large-scale examination into the relationship between enthusiasm, intention to inspire enthusiasm, and interactive teaching approaches. Additionally, it would be worthwhile to assess students' opinion on the same matter and to investigate the impact of instruction on them. Moreover, investigating the topic of teacher credibility might also be a potentially fruitful research area in the future.
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