Regulation of university teaching

The aims of the present study are twofold: firstly, to explore dimensions in the regulation of teaching in a multidisciplinary sample of university teachers, and secondly, to analyse factors related to the regulation of university teaching. Seventy-three university teachers representing several disciplines participated in the study. These teachers volunteered to be interviewed. Before the interviews, teachers were asked to fill in the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (Trigwell and Prosser 2004). Then they were asked about their own study experiences, the teaching traditions of their disciplines and the teaching cultures of their departments and the effect these had on them as teachers. Three different groups emerged of almost equal size from the analyses of the transcripts, each reflecting qualitatively different ways to regulate teaching. The groups were labelled External regulation, Self-regulation as a reaction to own bad experiences and Self-regulation through constructing one’s own approach to teaching through reflection. The factors related to variation in regulation included previous study experience, cultures of the discipline, teaching experience and approaches to teaching.