Biggs’ three levels of teaching

Most often our teaching is too general, too sweeping. The vast majority of what passes for teaching has a number of really significant flaws. It’s based more on what the teacher is familiar with  than on any idea of what might be effective. Of course, we can always find some good practice amongst academic staff, but sadly it is a small percentage. The vast majority of learning and teaching is demonstrably less than effective.

The following is an attempt to draw on Biggs’ (2001) three levels of teaching to formulate three levels of improving teaching and, as a result, improve learning.

Biggs' Three Levels of Teaching

1.     What the student is. 
This is the horrible “blame the student” approach to teaching. I’ll keep doing what I do. If the students can’t learn then it is because they are bad students. It’s not my fault. Nothing I can do.

2.     What the teacher does.
This is the horrible “look at me and all the neato, innovative teaching that I’m doing”. I’m doing lots of good and difficult things in my teaching. Are the students learning?

3.     What the student does. 
Obviously this is the good level. The focus is on teaching and leads to learning.

Biggs (2001) uses a quote from Tyler (1949) to illustrate that this is not a new idea that learning takes place through the active behavior of the student: it is what he does that he learns, not what the teacher does. Flowing from these levels is the type of teaching that can occur at level 3. It is based on the simple steps of:

• Clearly specifying detailed learning objectives for students.
• Arrange teaching and learning activities that encourage/require students to carry out tasks that provide the student with exposure, practice and feedback on the learning objectives.
• Design a grading/marking system that requires the student to demonstrate how well they achieve the stated learning objectives.

Performing these 3 simple steps well results in the situation that Biggs (2001) describes: In such a teaching, where all components support each other, students are “trapped” into engaging in the appropriate learning activities, or as Cowan (1998) puts it, teaching is “the purposeful creation of situations from which motivated learners should not be able to escape without learning or developing” (p. 112). A lack of alignment somewhere in the system allows students to escape with inadequate learning.

Souns simple, doesn’t it? So why don’t more teachers use it?

References

1. Biggs, J. (2001). “The Reflective Institution: Assuring and Enhancing the Quality of Teaching and Learning.” Higher Education 41(3): 221-238.
2. Kreber, C. and H. Castleden (2009). “Reflection on teaching and epistemological structure: reflective and critically reflective processes in ‘pure/soft’ and ‘pure/hard’ fields.” Higher Education 57(4): 509-531.