The demands and pressures during the first study year at university are likely to arouse a variety of emotions among students. Nevertheless, there are very few studies on the role of emotions in successful studying during the transition phase. The present study adopts a person-oriented and mixed-method approach to explore, first, the emotions…

The aim of the present study was to explore first-year students' academic emotions and how they relate to their study progress. A mixed-method approach was used. The data consisted of deep interviews with 43 students. The number of their study credits was used as an indicator of their study progress. The results revealed that students expressed a…

This case study explores the assessment of students' learning outcomes in a second-year lecture course in biosciences. The aim is to deeply explore the teacher's and the students' experiences of the validity and reliability of assessment and to compare those perspectives. The data were collected through stimulated recall interviews. The results…

The present study focuses; firstly, on analysing academics' conceptions of the purpose of assessment; secondly, on their assessment practices; and thirdly, on the relationship between their conceptions and practices. The data consisted of interviews with 28 pharmacy teachers. The analysis resulted in a continuum of categories of conceptions, from…

Since the late 1970s numerous studies have explored students' approaches to learning (referred to as the "SAL" tradition). These studies have provided valuable evidence of students' study strategies and intentions at the university. Since extensive research already exists on students' approaches to learning, there is a need to move…

Teaching is connected with a variety of emotions, but research on this area is scarce in the field of higher education. The present study explores the role of emotions and confidence within six different teacher profiles. Furthermore, the study aims to analyse emotions that arise during participation in courses on university pedagogy. Altogether…

In the present study 71 university teachers from several disciplines were interviewed in order to capture the variation in descriptions of teaching. Two broad categories of description were identified: the learning-focused and the content-focused approaches to teaching. The results showed that the relationship between the two approaches was…

Studies on teachers' approaches to teaching have identified two qualitatively different categories of approaches. The learning-focused approach is about teaching as facilitating students' learning and learning as knowledge construction, while the content-focused approach concerns teaching as transmission of knowledge and learning as absorbing the…

This article reports a study on the impact of university teachers' pedagogical training on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs (measured by Approaches to Teaching Inventory and an additional part measuring motivational strategies). The participants were 200 teachers of the University of Helsinki, who were divided into four groups…