Saroyan and Snell 1997

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 Variations in Lecturing Styles Author(s): Alenoush Saroyan and Linda S. Snell Source: Higher Education, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 85-104 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3448314 Accessed: 25/03/2010 13:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Springer  is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to  Higher Education. http://www.jstor.org

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Lecturing Styles

Transcript of Saroyan and Snell 1997

  • Variations in Lecturing StylesAuthor(s): Alenoush Saroyan and Linda S. SnellSource: Higher Education, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 85-104Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3448314Accessed: 25/03/2010 13:29

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

    Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer.

    Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

    JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

    Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Higher Education.

    http://www.jstor.org

  • Higher Education 33: 85-104, 1997. 85 ? 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

    Variations in lecturing styles

    ALENOUSH SAROYAN1 & LINDA S. SNELL2 1 Centrefor University Teaching and Learning, McGill University, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 1Y2; 2Division of General Internal Medicine, Room A-421, Royal Victoria Hospital, 687 Pine Avenue West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A IAI

    Abstract Many factors contribute to the way a lecture is conceptualized and delivered. These include one's philosophy and beliefs about teaching, knowledge of pedagogical principles, availability of resources, and the realities surrounding the instructional situation. In this paper three types of lecturing styles are described and their differences are highlighted in the context of current conceptions of teaching and pedagogical principles. The three lectures are subsequently characterized as content-driven, context-driven, and pedagogy-driven. Evaluation data suggest that the more pedagogically oriented the lecture, the higher it is rated by students.

    Introduction

    Instructional methods in university teaching are varied and range from the very common such as lecturing and small group discussion to the more uncom- mon such as cooperative learning (Johnson and Johnson 1974), apprentice- ship methods (Brown, Collins and Duguid 1989), and anchored instruction (Cognition and Technology Group at Vaderbuilt 1990). While differences in instructional strategies can be easily discerned, differences in the same strategies when they are adopted and used by various individuals are not as apparent. The difficulty in distinguishing differences is partly due to the lack of a theoretical framework that could account for and be used to tease out the numerous factors which contribute to the variation. These factors might include one's philosophy and beliefs about teaching, the pedagogical princi- ples incorporated in the instruction, and resources and realities surrounding the instructional situation. In this paper three types of lecturing styles are characterized and their differences are highlighted in the context of existing conceptions of teaching and pedagogical principles associated with effective instruction.

    Factors which influence teaching

    Several important factors influence teaching practice and give it a particular set of characteristics. One factor consists of views and beliefs about teaching.

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    Frameworks depicting this factor are quite varied. Some have been referred to as "invidious" classifications which "...present one view in the most favorable and alternatives in the least favorable light" (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1989, p. 37). The frameworks proposed by Leinhardt (1993) and Ramsden (1992) are two such examples. In the former, teaching is depicted as a continuum at one end of which is the didactic instructor, leader, and disseminator of knowl- edge and at the other, the passive instructor who is the responder to learners' needs. Somewhere around the centre is the facilitator and the arranger of the learning environment (Leinhardt 1993). In the latter framework, which inci- dentally is one of the few pertaining specifically to higher education, teachers' views and beliefs are described in the context of three progressively sophisti- cated theories, namely teaching as telling, as organizing student activity, and as making learning possible (Ramsden 1992).

    What these and other similar frameworks have in common is that they characterize the least sophisticated view and practice of teaching as being teacher-centered and conversely, the most sophisticated view as being inter- active or student-centered. Thus, they measure gain in pedagogical expertise by the increase in the awareness of students' needs and the decrease in the amount of obsession with the dissemination of a pre-determined amount of facts and knowledge.

    Other conceptions of teaching are concerned with the characteristics and skills of good teaching and rely on the expert-novice distinction to embellish these differences. For instance, in one conception, teaching is characterized as the complex task of transmitting culture, training skills, fostering nat- ural development, and producing conceptual change. While the expert ped- agogue's view of teaching is representative of this complexity, the novice's view tends to be limited to only one of the perspectives. The measure of expertise is also defined by the manner in which core problems associat- ed with each of the conceptions are approached and resolved (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1989). Another conception concerned with the characteristics of good teaching describes all instruction in terms of three mutually exclusive paradigms: behavioral, developmental, and apprenticeship. The orthogonal relationship of these paradigms calls for different mechanisms for measuring expert-novice differences. In the behavioral paradigm, the distinction is made on the basis of incrementation, that is quantitative gains on the same scale. In the developmental paradigm, the focus is on personal beliefs, theories and explanations and the move toward expertise is gauged by the qualitative difference in reported events and experiences. Finally in the apprenticeship paradigm, sociological differences in the culture of practice is important and acculturation is used as the mechanism to measure change (Farham-Diggory 1994).

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    The expert-novice paradigm is not the only context by means of which effectiveness, and by the same token, variation can be measured. There is an extensive body of literature which focuses on pedagogical principles and the extent to which these principles drive instruction. It is out of this litera- ture that criteria for the evaluation of teaching and course ratings have been derived. For instance, one important pedagogical principle which impinges on effectiveness of instruction is the "fit" of the instructional strategy with the desired learning outcome (McKeachie 1994). Other pedagogical issues which have a direct impact on the type of instruction delivered include organization, clarity and expressiveness, and degree of interactiveness (Centra 1993; Feld- man 1984; Murray 1983; Solomon, Rosenberg and Bezdek 1964), intellectual excitement through communication and interpersonal skills (Lowman 1984), charisma, rapport, dynamism, and personality (Perry, Abrami and Leventhal 1979).

    Conceptual models can be used to explain why professors teach the way they teach and by doing so, they can account for some of the variation in prac- tice. Pedagogical principles, on the other hand, can effectively operationalize the task of characterizing instruction and can help specify the scope of dif- ferences in the way a particular strategy is implemented. These principles, as they pertain to lecturing, are discussed in the following section.

    Characterizing lectures

    Of all the instructional methods, lecturing is the most widely used format in university classes (McKeachie 1994; O'Donnell and Dansereau 1994) and in some instances, such as in traditional medical programs, the predominant one (Gibbs, Habeshaw and Habeshaw 1987). During its history, lecturing has been praised as well as criticized, sometimes for the same reasons. It has been praised because it can accommodate large numbers of students and thus can be quite economical, it can be interactive (Frederick 1986), can convey considerable amounts of information to large audiences with efficacy, and can be adaptable to divergent needs and audiences (Gage and Berliner 1991). The lecture has been criticized for not promoting higher order skills such as conceptual understanding, independent learning, and problem- solving abilities (Kimmel 1992; Puett and Braunstein 1991) which are better seen as fostered by more innovative instructional methods like problem-based learning (Barrow and Tamblyn 1980; Kaufman 1985). Different perspectives regarding advantages and disadvantages of lectures and individual differences in delivering them reinforce the need for having a theoretical framework for characterizing lectures and addressing the assertion that there is a lack of "an operational definition of the classical lecture" (Schonwetter 1993).

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    A framework for discerning differences in lectures

    Many of the characteristics of effective instruction can be extended to the lec- ture. The appropriateness of the instructional strategy for the desired learning outcome is one criterion of effectiveness. We know that specific teaching behaviours correlate significantly with specific kinds of learning outcomes. For instance, lecturing has been found to be an effective method when gaining knowledge of facts is the intended outcome (Kulik and Kulik 1979). Tom and Cushman (1975) found that a lecture which was characterized and rated as "well-organized" by students was a significant predictor of factual and con- ceptual knowledge gains. This "fit" can serve as one factor to differentiate between lectures.

    Organization is another important pedagogical principle and in lectures, it takes into account both the way in which the structure of knowledge is represented in a given discipline as well as the cognitive structure of students in that context (McKeachie 1994). The conception of teaching as producing conceptual change, as described by Scardamalia and Bereiter (1986), suggests that the core problem in this context is how a connection can be made with students' understanding, especially in large, heterogeneous classes. Thus, organization can be an important factor in maintaining or severing communi- cation links with students. There are several ways in which a lecture can be organized. Hierarchic forms, chaining, or a variation of these are some exam- ples (Bligh 1972). In hierarchic forms, different categories of information, all related to one topic, are grouped together. In chaining, organization is based on the temporal or logical sequencing of events or processes. Variations in the organization of lectures might include presenting by a) comparison; b) the- sis; c) logical dichotomy; and d) conceptual network of the area/field. Bligh emphasizes that the organization is important insofar as it fosters students' understanding and enables them to make links between presented concepts and their relationship to one another. Including an introduction and an explicit explanation as to the way in which the lecture has been organized, periodic summaries, and a conclusion can also enhance the effectiveness of a lecture (McKeachie 1994). Finally, providing signposts to inform students of what is ahead, providing cues when a transition is made from one topic to another, making clear links between new material and prior knowledge, and placing the newly gained knowledge in the context of the discipline can improve the organization (Leinhardt 1987; 1989; Leinhardt and Greeno 1986).

    A third characteristic of effective instruction is interactiveness. In this regard, specific guidelines have been developed to improve lectures in medical education (Cox and Ewan 1988; Foley and Smilansky 1980; Laidlaw 1988). The purpose of these guidelines has been to extend teaching beyond simply disseminating facts (Gibbs et al. 1987) via the "sponge method" (Schank

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    and Jona 1991) and to engage students in activities which are relevant to the intended learning (Marton and Saljo 1976; Ramsden 1992). For instance, when comprehension of a concept is the learning objective, asking students to write down their comprehension of a 15 minute lecture in a "one-minute paper" is a meaningful engagement of students in a large lecture hall (McK- eachie 1994). Interactiveness can also be defined in terms of the amount of attention paid to learners' needs, responses, and pedagogical concerns. Interestingly such sensitivity appears to have an inverse relationship with the complexity of the subject-matter being taught (Borko and Livingston 1990). Consequently, in university teaching where typically the subject-matter is complex, allowing or encouraging interaction may be particularly difficult to sustain because it could take a substantial amount of time and would thus jeopardize the adequate coverage of large bodies of information.

    The research which has yielded these and other characteristics of instruc- tion has been carried out with the express intent of delineating characteristics of effectiveness. The attributes have not been used to characterize either lec- turing or other instructional strategies nor to differentiate one lecture from another. In fact, only one empirical study (Brown, Bakhtar and Youngman 1984) has attempted to characterize lectures based on data from 258 randomly sampled lecturers. The study yielded five distinct lecturing "styles" defined as a "person's habitual mode of responding to a similarly perceived task" (Brown and Bakhtar 1988, p. 132). The styles were: oral, exemplary, infor- mation provider, amorphous, and self doubter. According to this study, oral lecturers depend on their verbal skills more than on their notes or audiovisual support. Exemplary lecturers are organized according to a set of objectives, stay away from providing detailed information, emphasize, repeat and sum- marize frequently, and use media effectively. Information providers remain attached to their notes and more often than not present unnecessary details. Amorphous lecturers and self doubters have an unstructured approach to lecturing, are not able to keep to the topic, and thus seldom achieve the instructional goal. This study also found that lecturing styles correlated with disciplines: oral lecturers were more common in the humanities, exemplars were more common in biomedical sciences; and information providers and amorphous lecturers more common in science and engineering. Self doubters appeared to be distributed across all disciplines. Moreover, the study found that years of experience was not an active variable in shaping the lecturing style.

    The typology proposed in the study described above differentiates between lecturing styles at a gross level but does not provide a comprehensive enough framework for describing characteristics of lectures at a more detailed level. This paper has attempted to examine variation in lectures at a more detailed

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    level. Three lectures are compared and their differences with regard to the appropriateness of lecturing to expected learning outcomes, organization, and interactiveness are described. It is shown that lectures can be planned and delivered in a number of ways reflecting different conceptions of teaching and with varying degrees of adherence to principles of good pedagogy.

    Method

    Procedure

    The introductory Dermatology program for second-year preclerkship students in a Canadian medical school was the setting for this study. The entire der- matology curriculum for this level was addressed in seven hours of lectures and two hours of clinical instruction. Additionally, these nine hours were organized in three blocks, each three hours long and up to four weeks apart. Individual lectures were drawn from specific topics in the field and each was delivered by a practicing dermatologist in a large group setting (n = 50). The clinical instruction comprised the last two hours of the third block during which groups of 4-5 students rotated through 10 cubicles and observed and interacted with one patient-physician dyad.

    Data sources/subjects From the set of seven one-hour lectures, three representing the most divergent styles were selected and analyzed for this study. Three types of data were used: a) responses to a questionnaire which were given to the lecturers prior to instruction to establish the scope of instructional plans; b) videotapes of the lectures, the audio-tracks of which were later transcribed verbatim to generate protocols of the instruction; and c) evaluation data from the students (student ratings), collected after each instructional block. In this evaluation, students were asked to rate the lecturers on 10 dimensions using a Likert-type scale of 0-5 where 0 was 'poor' and 5 was 'excellent'.

    Analysis

    Questionnaire responses were content analyzed to delineate the similarities and differences in the activities undertaken to prepare for the class, and the scope of content and pedagogical considerations incorporated in the prepara- tion. The procedure for analyzing the lecture protocols started with segment- ing, using syntactical markers to separate complete phrases and sentences (Ericsson and Simon 1986). Following the first segmentation, three general

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    categories of content, pedagogy, and other were used for encoding. 'Content' statements represented any discourse related to the subject matter. 'Pedagogy' statements represented discourse related to teaching, and statements coded as 'Other' represented unrelated discourse and false starts. A more detailed cod- ing was carried out for the content and pedagogy classifications subsequently. Based on the type of information conveyed during lectures, content statements were classified as definition, symptoms, differential diagnosis, and therapy. Pedagogy statements were content analyzed for evidence of the suitabili- ty of the pedagogical approach to intended learning outcome, organization, and interactiveness. Following this coding, a topical analysis was carried out (Bogdan and Biklen 1992). A distinct family of disease comprised one topic and included all content statements as well as pedagogical discourse related to that disease. The number of statements on each topic was also reported. This numerical value was used as an indication of the amount of time devoted to a given topic in the context of a one-hour lecture. The chronological order of topics and pedagogical interventions were used to generate lecture schema. Percentages of content-related statements and pedagogy-related statements were calculated. Comparisons were then made between the lectures on the basis of these percentages and the pedagogical characteristics of the lectures. Finally, student ratings of the lectures were compared using an ANOVA and a Tukey HSD test. These comparisons yielded data on the students' perceptions of each of the three lectures.

    Results

    The results presented here are organized in terms of the three data sources: instructional plans, instructional protocols, and student evaluations.

    Instructional plans

    The first lecture was planned around disseminating content and the means of this dissemination was didactic lecturing, using slides. The second lecture aimed at conveying "key" information about a limited number of topics and in communicating the affective factor involved in the diseases. The lecture was organized around interaction with patients and was delivered with the aid of slides. The third lecture was planned to cover a narrower scope, namely "terminology and diagnosis". It aimed at using clinical and practical examples to teach the assigned topics and having an informal test at the end of the lecture.

    In addition to differences in the instructional plans, there were differences in the way these plans were communicated to the students. Excerpts from the

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    second and third lectures indicate that plans were made explicit to the students at the outset. Comparable statements were not made by the first lecturer.

    Excerpt from lecture 2

    I brought three patients today [INTRODUCTIONS] These patients have a group of diseases which are ..... We are not going to ask them to describe [their disease] or anything. We are just asking them a few questions in an informal way initially for 5 minutes. Then we will talk a little bit about the diseases and I'll show you the diseases in slide format and then we'll go back and speak to the patients again. I don't want you to learn too much about these diseases so much as I want you to learn and to realize that these are real diseases that you may only see occasionally and rarely

    Excerpt from lecture 3

    I am going to introduce a few topics to you this morning. You may or may not have heard of these conditions before.

    There is lot of terminology in dermatology and that's why I have handouts this morning. So you don't have to take furious notes. You can sit back and enjoy the pictures. Obviously we cannot teach you just simple pictures. If you have any questions, you may ask them. I will try and make the answers as clear as possible. I have four topics to talk about:......

    After my lecture, I have some slides, five or six clinical slides to test your knowledge on what I have shown....

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    Table 1. Proportion of content and pedagogical discourse in lectures

    Lecture Total # of % of statements % of statements # of topics segments addressing content addressing pedagogy

    1 450 81.5 17.5 7 2 561 52 45* 3 3 557 51.8 47.2** 4

    *This includes dialogue with patients. This dialogue was considered pedagogical discourse because it represented the pedagogical tool which the instructor had selected to impress upon the students the affective aspect of the diseases. **The dialogue surrounding the test was included as pedagogical discourse.

    Table 2. Comparison of pedagogical attributes of lectures

    Attributes Lecture 1 Lecture 2 Lecture 3

    Learning outcomes stated X X Organization hierarchic hierarchic hierarchic * explicit statement on organization X X X * introduction X X X * periodic summaries X * conclusion X * signposts X X * transition cues X X X * link with prior knowledge X * handouts X

    Interactiveness * student activities X * response to students' needs X X * situating the learning (limited) X X

    X Evaluation component X

    Lecture protocols (delivery)

    Between lecture comparisons were made on the percentage of discourse related to content and pedagogy and the total number of topics discussed (see Table 1). Data show the dominance of content related discourse in the first lecture and a wider range of topic coverage. In contrast, lectures 2 and 3 cover fewer topics and include other activities to emphasize the important points of the lecture.

    Differences in pedagogical attributes are presented in Table 2 and are elab- orated further by characterizing each of the lectures in the remainder of this section.

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    Lecture 1. The focus of the lecture was the instructor, who with the use of clinical slides, fairly systematically presented seven topics (Figure 1). The lecture began with an overall description of the general category of diseases to be discussed; no outline of the topics, either verbal or written, was provided at the outset. Transition from one topic to the next was done successfully with statements such as "now having said that, we'll go on to the next topic" or "now, here we get into the nitty gritty". As can be seen in Figure 1, from the fifth topic onward, the degree of detail provided for each topic diminished progressively. The lecturer did not vary the delivery, but maintained the same pace, pitch, and movements. He did not initiate or introduce activities that would engage the students or would enhance a deeper processing of informa- tion. For instance, he hardly posed any questions and when he did, they were rhetorical in nature. He did not point out relationships and made explicit links between the material at hand and prior knowledge only when teaching the first topic. He did, however, entertain a few questions from the students (marked as 'question [S]' in Figure 1) at the end of the first and fourth topics. This lecture did not have a component to evaluate learning and a lecture-related handout was not provided.

    Lecture 2. The second lecture differed from the first in a number of ways. First, fewer topics (total of 3) were introduced and discussed (Figure 2). Sec- ond, it included a variety of activities such as interviews with three patients, a formal lecture, and a short opportunity for students to have a dialogue with patients about their respective diseases. Finally, the outline of the lecture as well as the intended learning outcomes were articulated explicitly (see previous excerpt from lecture 2).

    The inclusion of affective learning outcomes in addition to cognitive ones is of particular interest in this lecture since the achievement of outcome was facilitated by inviting patients with diseases related to the lecture topics to be present and to contribute to the lecture. Transition from one activity or topic to the next was clearly marked by statements such as "I'll go into the formal part of the lecture now". The presentation of each topic was interrupt- ed several times by questions from students. Furthermore, the opportunity to interact with patients added a dimension of interest and a change in the environment, and provided the students with an opportunity to independently analyze and evaluate a given situation, develop hypotheses, and use evidence to solve clinical problems. Learning was not evaluated in this lecture and lecture-related handouts were not distributed.

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    Overviewof tpics, instuctonal plan, and learning outcomes {16}

    Dialogue with paient # 1 {63}

    Dialogtl with patient 2 {62}

    Dialogue with patient 3 {47}

    TOPIC 1 {93}

    cinical manifestations causes

    * defiion * clnical manifestations ?personal info on slide suiferential ts

    *treatment *dfferential d(?K)rsis

    PEDAGOGY SEGMENTS (42)

    ? cue fortopic change [5 learning outcome [31

    * question (S) [1+1 *response [13+181 use of AV 1

    I TOPIC 2 TOP {118} {8

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    (18} * cue for topic change [1 * oveniew 11] * Ieairng outcome [101 * question (S)11+1] * response 2+21

    Students' Interacion with paitsl I

    TOTAL NUMBER OF SEGMENTS = 561 Content segments = 292 Pedagogy segments = 81 Proportion of content related talk = 52% Dialogue with patients = 172

    Figure 2. Schema of lecture 2

  • I Personal intducton {4}

    I Overview{20)} Colfiiinidion of underst6ndkg {2}

    TOPIC 1 (141}

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    I Test[801

    TOTAL NUMBR OF SEGMENTS = 557 Content segments = 289 Pedagogy segments (including test and feedback = 263 Propoition of content related talk= 51.8% Personal introduction = 4

    Figure 3. Schema of lecture 3

    Lecture 3. The third lecture differed from the other two in several ways. Most notably, it was organized in such a way that only one-third of the

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    TOPIC 4 {20}

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    eag outcome 12 question (S) 11+1

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    time was devoted to the actual lecture, with equal time given to answering students' questions and to an informal evaluation of learning (Figure 3). Moreover, a succinct handout, containing all the information disseminated in the lecture, was distributed in advance which effectively placed students' focus on listening and active participation rather than on note-taking. As can be noted in the following excerpt, this lecturer continuously assessed students' learning needs and responded by appropriate degrees of explanation.

    Excerpt from lecture 3

    You were supposed to have [learned] that in an oncology lecture But I will review that word if you wish

    [I have used] a lot of terms there If you have problems [with them], please interrupt

    In this lecture, like the previous one, the structure of the lecture and specific learning outcomes were clearly articulated, "Again, a lot of terms here,[but] if you remember the clinical names, that's all I'm interested in." Similarly, tran- sitions from one topic to the next were very clear and always prefaced by the phrase, "The next topic I am going to talk about is...". Of the lectures, this one adhered the most to pedagogical principles (Table 2). The lecture consisted of an introduction, a well organized body with a sequence of generalizations followed by specific periodic summaries, a conclusion, and an evaluation. The actual lecture comprised only 20 minutes of the one hour, which limited the total amount of novel information considerably and allowed time for an informal evaluation of learning.

    Student evaluation data

    Lecture 1 received lower mean ratings on all dimensions of the questionnaire and yielded an overall mean rating of 3.58 as compared to 4.16 for lecture 2 and 4.52 for lecture 3. There were significant differences (p < .05) between lectures 1 and 3 on all dimensions; between lectures 1 and 2 on appropriate- ness of level of instruction, active student involvement, enthusiasm, effective use of media, and overall teaching effectiveness; and between lectures 2 and 3 on clarity, organization, communication of expected learning, and respon- siveness to students (see Table 3). However, in overall teaching effectiveness, lecture 2 received a higher mean rating.

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    Table 3. Mean ratings of student course evaluations and between lecture differences

    Questionnaire items Lecturer 1 Lecturer 2 Lecturer 3 (n = 35) (n = 34) (n = 33) x (s.d.) x (s.d.) x (s.d.) F ratio

    Clarity 3.80 (0.72) 3.99 (0.58) 4.52 (0.57) 11.75 Organization 3.69 (0.83) 4.00 (0.89) 4.67 (0.54) 14.24 Communication of expected learning 3.51 (0.92) 3.94 (0.74) 4.55 (0.97) 11.72 Appropriateness of level of inst. 3.63 (1.11) 4.18 (0.67) 4.52 (0.67) 9.48 Active involvement of students 2.63 (0.97) 4.38 (0.89) 4.30 (1.10) 34.49 Provision of summary of main points 3.60 (0.85) 3.97 (0.72) 4.64 (0.65) 16.77 Responsiveness to students 3.11 (1.55) 3.91 (1.29) 4.33 (1.27) 6.91 Enthusiasm 3.49 (0.92) 4.21 (0.84) 4.61 (0.61) 16.99 Effective use of media 3.77 (0.69) 4.44 (0.61) 4.55 (0.67) 14.06 Overall teaching effectiveness 3.63 (0.77) 4.62 (0.74) 4.59 (0.58) 16.54

    * Significant differences (p < 0.05) between lectures 1 and 3 on all dimensions. * Significant difference between lectures 1 and 2 in appropriateness of level of instruction, active student involvement, enthusiasm, effective use of media, and overall teaching effective- ness. * Significant differences between lectures 2 and 3 in clarity, organization, communication of expected learning, and responsiveness to students.

    Discussion

    The three lectures described in this paper confirm Frederick's (1986) view point with regards to the potential and versatility of lectures. These lectures represent a broad range of possibilities with respect to delivering and engaging students in meaningful learning. While all three are similar in that they are presented in a one-hour slot, review the same general area of medicine, and are organized hierarchically, they differ in style and pedagogical strength.

    Lecture 1 portrayed in this study is content-driven. It aims at covering a large amount of information in the span of one hour and hardly includes activities that would enhance cognitive processing and storing of voluminous information. This lecture is a good example of Ramsden's (1992) "teaching as telling" theory, and the lecturer is an equally good example of Leinhardt's (1993) "didactic instructor" and Brown et al's. (1984) "information provider". There is little evidence that the conception of teaching extends beyond that of "cultural transmission" (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1989).

    As compared to lecture 1, lecture 2 is context-driven because it uses the context of clinical instruction effectively to promote the instructional goals which clearly extend beyond providing information. Within Ramsden's (1992) framework, perhaps this type of lecture is closer to theory 3 in which the belief about teaching is to make learning possible. Since the overriding

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    instructional goal is to impress upon students both the key aspects of a set of diseases and the psychological impact of these diseases on patients, the presence of patients is a powerful pedagogical tool for bringing about that particular learning. In Leinhardt's (1993) model, this instructor would be placed in the center of the continuum since he is the "arranger of the learning environment". In this lecture, greater pedagogical expertise is evidenced by a broader conception of teaching in which the transmission of culture and training skills are as evident as the conception of teaching as producing con- ceptual change (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1989). As well, the apprenticeship paradigm, as described by Famham-Diggory (1994), can be associated to this particular lecture. The initial interviews of the instructor with the patients in front of the class is a fine example of modeling, which is one of the stages of cognitive apprenticeship (Brown et al. 1989).

    Finally, lecture 3 can be best characterized as pedagogy-driven. It attempts to promote and foster the learning of clinically useful principles by means of a wide range of pedagogical tools and ensures that the opportunity to apply the knowledge is provided during the lecture. Some of the elements which have rendered lecture 3 more pedagogically oriented, such as clearly articulated objectives, limited content, summary, a short evaluation, and handouts, are fairly simple ideas which can be implemented easily and which can make a significant difference in terms of student evaluation and potentially student learning. This is an "exemplary lecturer" (Brown et al. 1984) who has clearly articulated learning outcomes and a pedagogical approach which corresponds with those outcomes. In this lecture, the purpose is to make learning possible (Ramsden 1992). The lecturer is not passive. On the contrary, she responds to student needs and reviews and backtracks when and where the need is felt or expressed (Leinhardt 1993).

    Whereas the content-driven lecture is teacher-centered, the context and pedagogy-driven ones are student-centered. What this implies is not only a greater involvement of the student in the instruction but also a change in the nature of the teaching task. It is cognitively more demanding to exert less control over discussion topics, divert from predetermined content, encourage freedom in classroom interaction and questioning than it is to teach from a script or a detailed outline (Leinhardt 1993). In other words, pedagogical advantages of an interactive lecture also require greater advance planning and preparation on the part of the professor. Conversely, content-driven lectures tend to reduce the complex skill of teaching into the organization of content with a view that teaching and learning are synonymous terms. There is an assumption behind this view that the consequence all teaching is learning. This assumption makes it easier to blame students or other elements if perfor- mance is poor or if expected learning does not occur. In contrast, context and

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    pedagogy-driven lectures make a distinction between the concept of teaching and learning and this is evidenced by the additional effort that lecturers make in arranging the environment to make learning possible. Activities to pro- mote interaction, evaluation components which provide feedback to students, and a consideration for pedagogical principles in delivering instruction are mechanisms that have been used in lectures 2 and 3.

    With respect to the organization, the formal presentation of all three lec- tures can be characterized as hierarchical (Bligh 1972). However, insofar as making the organization clear enough for students to grasp and follow, the pedagogy-driven lecture has an advantage over the other two. This advantage is due to the comprehensive and concise handout which outlined the discussed concepts and their links and relations. Knapper (1987) has suggested that the primary purpose of a handout is to make available to students a large body of information for independent study outside the class so that class time can be devoted to discussing a few basic ideas. In this lecture too, only general characteristics were discussed, while the minute details were purposefully omitted from the lecture.

    Student ratings of these lectures suggest that the more pedagogical oriented the lecture, the better it is perceived by the students. As might be expected, the content-driven lecture was rated the lowest on every dimension of the evalu- ation and the pedagogy-driven one was evaluated the highest. The exceptions were two dimensions: active involvement of students and overall teaching effectiveness, which yielded slightly higher although not significantly dif- ferent ratings for the context-driven lecture. The higher mean rating given to lecture 2 in the overall teaching effectiveness dimension is an interesting phenomenon which could be due to many factors. For instance, it is possible that students' interpretation of "overall" has been the standing of the present course in relation to other courses in the program. It could also be that the dimensions in the questionnaire do not sufficiently measure the construct of "effectiveness". That is students, in their assessment of overall effectiveness, might have included other factors which were not listed as questionnaire items.

    Dimensions such as clarity, organization, and communication of expected learning have been reported among the strongest correlates of student learn- ing (Cashin 1988). In addition, McKeachie (1994) has suggested that students are better able to learn in lectures in which periodic summaries are provided. In light of this literature, the pedagogy-driven lecture may be considered to be more effective with regard to its impact on student learning. However, the purpose of this paper was to present and describe divergent styles of lecturing. It did not aim at establishing superiority of one lecturing method over anoth- er and consequently, it cannot be concluded that what has been labeled as

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    pedagogy-driven yielded significantly better learning than the content-driven lecture. To establish that, a more tightly designed study needs to be carried out in which a number of lectures corresponding closely to the definitions provid- ed for each type with varying topics are carefully examined and compared. The description of the lectures provided herein can serve as the first phase of such a study. Moreover, in an experimental design, a number of confounding variables such as the personality of the lecturer or the inherent interest level of the topic of the lecture, which might render one lecture superior to the other, need to be controlled. These are interesting topics of investigation for future research.

    Concluding remarks

    The lecture is a much maligned instructional strategy, perhaps inappropri- ately so given the potential differences in approach, delivery, and student evaluation. In this paper, three variations are described and several criteria for improving the pedagogical quality of lectures are articulated. It has been shown that pedagogically sophisticated lectures yield higher student ratings and potentially better learning. From the range of variation in lectures pre- sented in this paper, it can be concluded that the merit of each instructional episode needs to be established on its own and not within the instructional strategy to which the episode belongs. Thus a lecture can be as effective as any other instructional strategy so long as it is appropriately suited to the intended learning outcomes and is pedagogically planned and delivered. In a context where a fundamental curricular change (i.e., eliminating lectures) is not pos- sible, a pedagogically-driven lecture might still be a very viable medium of instruction in all levels of postsecondary education, from undergraduate to continuing professional education.

    Acknowledgements

    This study was funded in part by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors would like to thank Timothy Rahilly for his help on an earlier version of this paper and Song Guangwen and Susan Davies for their assistance in data collection.

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    Article Contentsp. 85p. 86p. 87p. 88p. 89p. 90p. 91p. 92p. 93p. 94p. 95p. 96p. 97p. 98p. 99p. 100p. 101p. 102p. 103p. 104

    Issue Table of ContentsHigher Education, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 1-113Volume InformationFront MatterCurricular Reform and the Changing Social Role of Public Higher Education in Costa Rica [pp. 1 - 28]Is Job Sharing Worthwhile? A Cost-Benefit Analysis in UK Universities [pp. 29 - 38]Improving Learning Skills: A Self-Help Group Approach [pp. 39 - 50]Variations in Students' Evaluations of Teachers' Lecturing in Different Courses on Which They Lecture: A Study at the London School of Economics and Political Science [pp. 51 - 70]Assessment Preferences and Their Relationship to Learning Strategies and Orientations [pp. 71 - 84]Variations in Lecturing Styles [pp. 85 - 104]Book Reviewsuntitled [pp. 105 - 108]untitled [pp. 109 - 110]untitled [pp. 111 - 112]

    Erratum: Reasons for Discontinuing Study: The Case of Mature Age Female Students with Children [p. 113]