Student Attitudes towards Teaching Methods Used in Universities the UK

This study was in the context of exploring effective teaching and learning in the British higher education system from a student’s perspective. To explore the differences in level of knowledge of UK teaching methods between three subgroups of students and their attitudes towards those methods; to examine whether or not there is a relationship between students’ knowledge about those teaching methods and their attitudes towards them. Twenty participants at one University in UK were chosen. A survey research method was applied. Data collection was conducted through questionnaire with closed items, and then SPPS was used for data analysis. There existed a significant difference between Western and Eastern students in their knowledge of teaching methods used in UK universities. The difference in attitudes towards teaching methods between male and female students was not significant, either. Neither a positive nor a negative relationship between student knowledge of teaching methods and their attitudes towards them was found. Although there was no positive relationship between knowledge of teaching methods and attitudes towards those methods used in UK universities, some important implications about cross-cultural teaching and learning might be drawn from the significant difference between Western students and Eastern students in their knowledge of those teaching methods.


Introduction
Many researches have been done on effective teaching methods and effective learning at UK universities from the perspectives of teachers and researchers (Ramsdon, 2003;Wilkin, 1995).Few investigations, however, have been done on how much university students know about those teaching methods and what attitudes they have towards them.
Teaching in the UK universities aims to facilitate a university student's learning.As Brown and Atkins (1988) stated, teaching can be regarded as providing opportunities for students to learn.However, it has been found that university teachers' teaching intentions are most often implicit or to be inferred (D'andrea, 2008;Turner, 2002).If tutors want to make sure their teaching intentions are effectively realized, it is important for them to take time to think about articulating teaching methods to a group of students in their teaching activities.Rowland (1996) both have suggested that it is learning that links research and teaching to the benefit of both activities and the mutual satisfaction of teacher and learner.The importance of learning related to teaching is obvious.To really facilitate students' learning, it is essential for teachers to know how much the students (learners) understand of their teaching intentions.It is generally known that those intentions are mostly conveyed by a tutor's teaching methods.Hence, the following research questions deserve to be explored: How much do university students know about the teaching methods used in UK universities?Are there differences between certain subgroups in their knowledge of these methods?Do the attitudes of students towards those teaching methods matter?Is there a relationship between a student's knowledge of the teaching methods and attitudes towards those methods?Answering these questions are significant in that they might be able to help to understand the student learning experiences at UK universities from a different angle and to help teachers to reflect on effective teaching in terms of using various teaching methods.
Therefore, the specific aims of this investigation were to test a group of students of mixed age, gender and nationality on their knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities and attitudes towards those teaching methods.Then the researcher tried to explore the tentatively generalized differences between certain subgroups on two investigated constructs (i.e.knowledge and attitudes), and to explore the possible correlation between the two constructs from the data obtained from the samples.

Hypotheses
Constructs are basically 'ways of elaborating on abstract concepts'; they are 'created in order to facilitate making observations that will support the theory under investigation' (Black, 1999:35).In this investigation, the constructs were i) aspects of the university students' knowledge of the teaching methods used in UK universities; ii) aspects of university students' attitudes towards those teaching methods.Thus, four hypotheses in the form of questions might be constructed based on the aims of the investigation: Hypothesis 1.Is there a difference between Western students and Eastern students in their knowledge of teaching methods used in UK universities?Hypothesis 2. Is there a difference between male students and female students in their knowledge of teaching methods used in UK universities?Hypothesis 3. Is there a difference between male students and female students in their attitudes towards teaching methods used in UK universities?Hypothesis 4. Is student knowledge of the teaching methods used in UK universities related to their attitudes towards those teaching methods?
It must be clarified that the hypothesis on the difference between age groups was not written in this report due to limitation of the size of assignment.

Design
This investigation was conducted using a survey approach.Broadly speaking, surveys are designed to look closely at an existing situation without trying to manipulate the variables which characterise the situation (Cohen, Manion, & K. Morrison, 2011).Researchers must be aware of potential relationships between variables in order to carry out a proper investigation (Andres, 2012).Given that the aim of this investigation was to find the facts about students' knowledge about and their attitudes towards the teaching methods used in UK universities and, to explore the relationship between the two constructs, the survey method was an appropriate approach.Due to limitations of time, only a small-scale survey was conducted, and the data was collected through questionnaire from a small group of 20 from the nearest UK universities to the researcher's location.
Generally, independent variables are those that influence.It is the hypothesized cause.Dependent variables are those that are influenced.It is the hypothesised effect'.According to the hypotheses in this investigation, the variables to be measured included: Independent Variables: Nationalities (i.e.Western students, Eastern students) Age (i.e.younger students, older students) Gender (i.e.male students, female students) Dependent Variables:

Knowledge of teaching methods used in UK universities
Attitudes towards teaching methods used in UK universities Operational definitions 'are rulers, instruments that will produce an acceptable way of measuring constructs' (Black, 1999:35).In this investigation, the operational definitions were instructions to measure the two constructs presented previously.Specifically, they were i) the amount of knowledge and understanding of typical teaching methods used in UK universities, i.e., how much students know and understand the knowledge about those teaching methods; ii) a scale of agreement/disagreement on views of those teaching methods.Based on these operational definitions, questions (items) for testing knowledge and for measuring attitudes were designed in the form of a questionnaire.Then the outcomes were calculated according to operational definitions.Thus, the two constructs were measured by those instruments.
Questionnaires have the advantage of reaching a considerable number of participants in a short period of time.Data collected in this way was easily accumulated.And it was quick to gain a relatively complete collection of data.There were two sections to the questionnaire.Section 1 tested how much the participants knew about the teaching methods in UK universities with a high score indicating more knowledge of those teaching methods.Section 2 measured how much they agreed/disagreed on certain favourable and unfavourable views about those teaching methods, with the overall high score indicating a positive attitude towards those teaching methods.To test the reliability of the instrument scores, a parallel-form design was employed in the questionnaire, i.e. two versions of the test items were used to test the same thing in one questionnaire (one occasion).The consistency of the two versions' scores was checked through the Pearson correlation test on the SPSS (Foster, 2001;Pallant, 2013).
Validity of instrument score was also taken into account at the design stage.There are generally three forms of validity in survey research: validity of measurement, population validity and validity of design (Fowler, 2008).At the testing stage, the focus was put on the first one, i.e. the extent to which the data constitute an accurate measurement of what is supposed to be being measured.A rational/logical approach (Black, 1999) was applied to ensure the construct validity, that is, in developing the questionnaire, special attention was paid to the logical consistency of the contributing components of the abstract constructs for the concept in this investigation.The meaning and wording of the items were also carefully constructed.These efforts were made to make sure the questions were designed to measure what is supposed to be measured.Unfortunately, as Oppenheim (2000) suggests, both factual validity and attitudinal validity have inevitable difficulties in social research.So, the researcher tried to maximize the validity as much as possible.
After data collection, the data was analysed with both descriptive and inferential statistics.The reliability of instrument scores and the normality of scores were both investigated.Then the researcher compared the mean scores of knowledge and attitudes between each pair (Western and Easter students, male and female students) within each subgroup.These comparative analyses aimed to find whether or not there existed significant differences between both constructs within the nationality group and within the gender group.Testing the means of the two unrelated groups and Hypothesis testing (Independent T-test) in SPSS were chosen to conduct these analyses.To explore whether or not there were any associations between student attitudes towards teaching methods used in UK universities and their knowledge of them, the exploring relationship between interval data in SPSS was used.

Materials
The questionnaire used for data-collection comprised of two sections.Section 1 contained 20 closed questions on knowledge of teaching methods with a choice of either True or False, with each correct answer scoring one.Section 2 was designed to measure attitudes by offering a scale one-to-five (strongly agree-5, agree-4, uncertain-3, disagree-2, strongly disagree-1) as choices.Every choice by the respondent from the 20 questions was converted into interval data and added up to his/her overall attitude score.Thus, the questionnaire items resulted in a numerical value.
As was mentioned previously, to test the reliability of scores of the instruments, a parallel-form design was used.In this investigation, two versions of items were tested on one occasion, i.e., in Section 1, items 1-10 tested the same things as items 11-20, but did so in different wording; similarly, in Section 2, items 21-30 measured the same things as items 31-40, and differing in expression.Hence, the full score of section 1 was actually 10, and more knowledge about teaching methods resulted in a higher score; the full score for section 2 was actually 50, and a positive attitude resulted in a higher score.In this investigation, statistical analysis was based on the score of the first version, i.e. scores for item 1-10 and scores for 21-30, which were both represented as score 1 (See Result section).
Background information (e.g.age, gender and nationality) of each sample was collected through the questionnaire as well.Each sample was also allocated an ID serial number in the questionnaire, so his/her data could be managed with ease.The items for testing knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities were based on two reference books: Effective Teaching in Higher Education (Brown & Atkins, 1988) and A Hand Book for Teaching & Learning in Higher Education (Fry, Ketteridge & Marshall, 1999).
However, for to uncontrolled reasons and inexperience in planning, there were at least four major shortcomings to the questionnaire design.First, the items might not be a well-balanced for the content to be measured.They were likely to test only certain aspects of knowledge and attitudes, which did not represent the general situations which they were supposed to be investigated.Second, given that English is not the researcher's first language, the expression of the items might lead to some misunderstanding or did not convey what was exactly meant to be tested.This was a threat to the validity of the test.Third, the design of multi-item choices in the first section could influence the results of the test.There was no choice for I don't know, which should be given when respondents think the items are neither True nor False.The lack of this choice might lead respondents to guess an answer and fail to test whether they really knew that point or not.Fourth, there were some negatives and double negatives in the statements, which created difficulties for participants in their responses.

Participants
The key issue of sampling is the 'representativeness' of a defined population.If the samples are not respresentative, it is hard to get a valid estimate for population parameters from the statistics.As Oppehheim (2004:43) says, 'a sample's accuracy is more important than its size'.So in this investigation, more emphasis was put on the sample representativeness than its size.Due to time limitations, it was hard to get a sample by from either random sampling or systematic sampling or cluster sampling.Quota sampling may be quick, but may also introduce biases.With snowballing sampling, it is difficult to know how accurately these represent the population of concern.As a novice researcher, convenience sampling was chose.Although this method was quite limited in terms of valid statistical generalisation, attempts were made to make every participant typical of the subgroups and to the defined population.
The sample was categorized into 3 subgroups according to nationality, gender and age.Both undergraduate and postgraduate students who attended taught courses were chosen from Exeter University.The total number of participants was 20, including 10 male students and 10 female students, 10 Eastern students and 10 Western students, and, 10 younger students (19-29 years old) and 10 older students (above 30).One participant might be included in different groups, e.g. a male student might be both a younger student and an Eastern student.In case that there were any non-responses and missing data, the questionnaires were distributed to 25 students.

Procedure
Before the questionnaires were distributed to the participants, the questionnaires were assessed by tutors and peers, and this enabled an improved version of the whole questionnaire.Then, the participants were informed via email of what the investigation was about and were told that the responses would be anonymous.They were also told that this test was only to get their ideas and perspectives for educational research and was not intending to trick them in any way.After their consent was given, the questionnaires with instructions were sent to them, again by e-mail.Apart from one participant who did not respond, all the other participants sent back their responses.After the test, all completed questionnaires were kept safely in view of the ethical issues involved.Finally, all the data were deliberately destroyed by the researcher when the investigation was over.

Reliability
Reliability refers to 'the purity and consistency of measure, to repeatability, to the probability of obtaining the same results again if the measure were to be duplicated' (Oppehheim, 1992:144).As mentioned previously, to investigate the reliability of scores in the instrument, a parallel-form approach was used in designing the questionnaire.
The correlation coefficient (r) between two versions of the test was calculated with SPSS.The result (See Table 1 and 2) for the scores knowledge about teaching methods in UK universities was r=0.553; for the scores on attitudes towards those teaching methods was r=0.611.As Preece (1994) writes, 'coefficients as low as 0.5 can be acceptable'.So, for the two sections of the test, there was generally an acceptable reliability of scores.

Descriptive Statistics
The descriptive statistics for knowledge on UK university teaching methods and attitudes towards those methods are shown in Table 1 and Table 2.The descriptive statistics (Table 1) show that the score1 (the score from the first version) distribution of knowledge of teaching methods shows negative kurtosis (-0.8), while the score1 distribution of attitudes towards those methods indicates a negatively skewed tendency (-0.258).However, when the tests of normality (See Table 2.) were applied, the result of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test showed that, for score1 of knowledge, Sig.= 0.149, and for attitudes score1, Sig.=0.144.As a rule, if Sig. is greater than 0.05, the data are normal.Both values of Sig. in this test are bigger than 0.05.So, generally, the data in this investigation can be treated as normal.This also indicated that the underlying population distribution is normal.The mean scores of knowledge of UK university teaching for Western students and Eastern students were compared (See Table 3).The mean score1 for Western students was higher than that for Eastern students (8.8 versus 7.1).The same comparison between male students and female students was made (See Table 4).The mean score1 for knowledge for male students was slightly higher than that for female students (8.0 versus 7.9).The mean score1 for attitudes towards those teaching methods were also compared between male and female students (see Table 5), and female students had a higher mean score than male students (37.9 versus 37.6).To test if the differences were significant rather than just due to chance, the independent t-test was used on hypotheses 1-3, because this test is used to look for a difference between two unrelated groups of parametric data.
The scores for knowledge and attitudes in this investigation were parametric data, because they were had interval level status, and they were normally distributed in the population, indicated through the test of normality previously.Further, the variance of scores between the different groups was homogeneous-the standard deviations were not very different (See Table 3-5).
Hypothesis 1 (is there a difference between Western students and Eastern students in their knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities?) was tested using the t-test and results t=4.235; df=18; p<0.05 for 2-tailed test obtained.Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected and the difference between the mean score1 between Western students and Eastern students on tested knowledge is significant.
Table 7 shows the result for hypothesis 2 (is there a difference between male students and female students in their knowledge of teaching methods in the UK universities?).As can be seen in that table, p=0.862 for the 2-tailed test.This means that the difference between the mean for male students and the mean for female students was not significant.So, t=0.176 df=18; NS.
The t-test result for Hypothesis 3 (is there a difference between male students and female students in their attitudes towards teaching methods in UK universities?) are shown in Table 8.The p-value of 0.767 for 2-tailed test was much higher than 0.05.So there is no significant difference in means for attitudes score1 between male students and female students-the null hypothesis was retained.Thus, t=-0.301;df=18; NS.
Hypothesis 4 was to explore the relationship between knowledge of teaching methods and attitudes towards those methods.For interval variables in this investigation, the Pearson correlation test should be applied.Also, the direction of correlation in this investigation was not expected, so the test was 2-tailed (Table 9).As shown in Table 9, the Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.172.This result indicates that there was almost no correlation between student knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities and their attitudes towards those methods.

Discussion
As can be seen from the analysis of the results, Hypothesis 1 was accepted, and there was a significant difference between Western students and Eastern students in their knowledge of UK university teaching methods.More specifically, the former knew much more than the latter.
However, Hypotheses 2, 3 and 4 were rejected.It might be true that there were no significant differences between male students and female students in their knowledge of, and attitudes towards, UK university teaching methods; it might also be true that there was no correlation between student knowledge of and attitudes towards those teaching methods.In which case, it should be accepted that gender does not affect the degree of knowledge of those teaching methods and the attitudes towards them.But this is only one possibility.
There is another possibility.It might be that the hypotheses 2, 3 and 4 were true but rejected, in other words, that their null hypotheses were false but accepted (a Type II error).Many possible factors could cause this error.It is evident that if any one of three forms of validity (validity of measurement, validity of design and population validity) in the survey research was low, the overall validity of the study would be low and the result could be distorted.As mentioned above, although great effort was made to attain a high validity of measurement (construct validity), it is difficult to get a high level of such validity.Plus, validity at the research design stage might affect the test results.Threats to the internal validity of the design in this investigation might be: (1) the selection of samples-biased samples were probably chosen; (2) the nature of the sample-it may greatly affect the overall results for a subgroup.Threats to external validity may include: (1) the respondents' understanding of the instrument; (2) the respondents' answers to the items and whether the respondents were telling the truth or not.In addition, the sample in this investigation was not representative to ensure generalizability to larger population(s).The population validity of this investigation, that is, the extent to which the sample gives an accurate representation of the population it is supposed to represent, might also be low.This is because convenience sampling was adopted in the investigation and its limitation in representativeness was very obvious.
Most of the student participants in this investigation were the researcher's friends and classmates from social science programmes at Exeter University.It had limited representation of students from engineering, technology and natural science programmes.Poor representativness of the sample greatly affected the validity of independent variables in this study.
Due to the small sample size (20 students), it is evident that it is difficult for the sample in this investigation to be representative.The sample size also affected the normal distribution of the scores of the multi-item instrument.If more respondents had participated in the investigation, the results would have been different.
Given that it was not satisfactory in attaining a high degree in all three forms of validity in this investigation, and due to the limitation of the sample size, it might be wrong to conclude that hypothesis 2, 3 and 4 does run counter to previous expectations.
In future research, samples should be randomly chosen and the sample size should be enlarged.A set of questions for a trial questionnaire should be developed and piloted on some subjects for further revision.The questions that contribute the most to high reliability should be used in the final instrument.Several experts on teaching methods in higher education might be consulted and more references should also be found to check the content validity of the questionnaire.

Conclusion
In conclusion, from the result analysis of the data gained from samples, there was no significant difference between male and female students in their knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities and attitudes towards those teaching methods.No correlation between students' knowledge about teaching methods and their attitudes towards those teaching methods was found.Nevertheless, we did see from the findings that Western students had more knowledge about the teaching methods in UK universities than Eastern students.This finding at least shows that Western students are more familiar with the teaching methods in UK universities than Eastern students.This might be because of similar educational systems in Western countries.For Eastern students, the result implies that their knowledge and understanding of a British tutor's intentions and expectations are not sufficient (Valimaa, 1998).
Some further implications might be attained from the result.There are many reasons for the gap between Western students and Eastern students.For example, the education system in the home countries of Eastern students is different from UK system.Therefore, Eastern students should seek to know more about the teaching methods of British universities to prevent ignorance and misunderstandings of tutor's intentions, to avoid confusion over teaching and learning expectations, and to smooth their learning experiences in UK university classrooms.Meanwhile, in terms of teaching in the multicultural educational environments of British universities, teaching staff might consider to articulate their teaching intentions to students who are from different educational systems, if fruitful teaching and learning are expected.

Table 1 .
Descriptive Statistics for knowledge of and attitudes towards teaching methods in UK universities

Table 3 .
Mean score 1 for knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities *students from two groups of nationalities

Table 4 .
Mean score1 for knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities * gender

Table 5 .
Mean score1 for attitudes towards teaching methods in UK universities *gender

Table 6 .
T-test difference between Western students and Eastern students on score1 for knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities

Table 7 .
T-test difference in gender for score1, knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities

Table 8 .
T-test difference in gender for score1, attitudes towards teaching methods in UK universities

Table 9 .
Correlation test between knowledge of teaching methods in UK universities and attitudes When syndicate method is applied, each small team works on a section of the topic and does not need present its views to full group.()13)The main purpose of post-lecture tutorial is to add new information to pre-lectures.( ) 14) In mini-presentation, the only thing that students need to do is to provide his/her idea by using audio-visual aids.( ) 15) The ideas produced within a buzz group are not usually shared with large group.( ) 16) Workshop teaching method is specifically concerned with emotions and feelings.( ) 17) Seminar is only used for transmitting information.( ) 18) During brainstorming in the class, no criticism is given by the tutors, until all ideas are logged.( ) 19) During free discussion, tutors or leaders usually only observe.( ) 20) Snowballing as a formal method works well in problem-solving tasks as well as open discussion topics.( ) SECTION 2: How much do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements about teaching methods used in the UK universities?Please fill the space with the numbers you choose.One can learn better if he/she knows how teacher teach in the UK universities.22) Effective teaching can produce effective learning.23) The use of teaching approaches is a necessity for a student to learn well.24) Students need not know teaching methods in their learning.25) Different teaching methods used in class open up new ways for my learning.26) I like to participate in different activities in the teaching.27) The teaching methods will be helpful if I know what they mean.28) Teaching methods make the lesson being taught more interesting.29) Those teaching methods solve many difficulties in my learning.30) I know tutors' intentions through those teaching methods.Form II (Note the order of the number is different from the previous form) Knowing how one is taught doesn't affect his/her learning.32) Whether one can learn effectively or not largely depends on how he/she learns rather than how he/she is taught.33) If a tutor teaches without using teaching methods, a student can also learn smoothly.34) It is teachers' business to know teaching methods.35) Different forms of teaching methods are the same for my learning.36) Changing seats from time to time because of the demand of certain teaching method is annoying.37) It doesn't matter whether or not tutors tell the students what the purpose of the teaching methods they will use in the class.38) Those Teaching methods distract students' attentions.39) Those teaching methods confuse me very often.40) Those teaching methods are quite often misused.Note: this questionnaire is constructed by referring the following two books: Black, T. R. (1999).Doing Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences.London: Sage Publications.Brown, G., & Atkins, M. (1988).Effective Teaching in Higher Education.London: Routledge.Cohen, L. L. M., & Morrison, K. (2011).Research Methods in Education (7th ed.).London: RoutledgeFalmer.D'andrea, V. (2008).Organizing Teaching and Learning: Outcomes-based Planning.In H. Fry, S. Ketteridge, & S. Marshall (Eds.),AHand Book for Teaching & Learning in Higher Education.London: Kogan Page.12)