Alternative views of reality: Instructional practices and how they are perceived by faculty and students

Background/Question/Methods

The Vision and Change report calls for an increase in inquiry-based teaching in biology courses.  For inquiry-based teaching to be successful, fidelity of implementation is key.  However, faculty self-assessment of their own instructional practices has been called into question.  In this study, we collected videotape data on faculty teaching in biology laboratory courses, faculty self-assessments of their instructional practices, and student assessments of faculty instructional practices.

Results/Conclusions

For all instructional practices constructs, faculty and student perceptions of instructional practices were not significantly related.  Whether faculty or student ratings were higher depended on the construct.  However, faculty ratings were consistently more variable than student ratings for all constructs.  Neither faculty nor student ratings of instructional practices corresponded with scores of teaching practices from videotapes.  Our results suggest three alternative realities – reality, faculty perceptions of reality, and student perceptions of reality.  Future research will explore underlying differences in these realities and which reality is most closely tied with student learning in laboratory courses.