Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Provision for higher education is now recognised as a major social and educational need.

In the United Kingdom alone, a million students by 1980 is no longer a wild statistic, but a realistic basis for forward planning. At the start of a new decade of expansion, Ruth Beard has produced a timely and comprehensive analysis of the nature of teaching and learning in higher education.

Drawing on innovations in teaching methods in universities and colleges, as well as on findings from educational research, Dr Beard examines ways in which the current upsurge of new ideas is affecting curricula, courses and teaching techniques. After a chapter on different psychological approaches to human learning, which sets out the theoretical background to the practical problems under discussion, the middle chapters of the book provide a rigorous analysis of the educational value of the lecture, the seminar, laboratory and small-group teaching.

The author, believing that courses cannot be fully effective unless teachers reconsider their methods in relation to their aims and objectives, evaluates important preliminary research which has looked at the interaction between teacher and student in different learning situations.

Teaching and learning in higher education demonstrates the vital need to ensure further improvements in the quality of teaching during the coming years. The book will be of particular value to teachers in universities and colleges, and also to those who are likely to benefit most from the raising of standards- the students themselves.

Ruth Beard is Director, University Teaching Methods Unit, University of London Institute of Education.