The value of theorising our teaching: In search of explanatory power

by Dr Sherran Clarence

Licence-free image from Pixabay 2024

The current post and the Why bother with theory in practice podcast (see September 2024 post) are all about theory: why we need to theorise teaching in higher education, and what this work offers us as teachers, and our students as learners. In this post I am going to focus on two main reasons: explanatory power (and understanding), and better practice (and reflection). ​

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​The value of theorising our teaching: in search of explanatory power 

Dr Sherran Clarence
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The current post and the Why bother with theory in practice podcast (see September 2024 post) are all about theory: why we need to theorise teaching in higher education, and what this work offers us as teachers, and our students as learners. In this post I am going to focus on two main reasons: explanatory power (and understanding), and better practice (and reflection). 
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The main reason for using theory in any research or practice is for its ‘explanatory power’. As Patrick White argues, to be called ‘theory’, it must be abstract, testable and explanatory. This means that theory helps us move beyond description of a problem or issue, to explain why we might be facing this problem, why it is a problem, and point us towards how we might begin to solve the problem. When we choose the right theory for the problem we are trying to understand and solve, we have greater ‘explanatory power’; in other words, greater understanding of the issue, the ability to explain it to others, and a way to address or resolve it. But how do you choose the ‘right’ theory when there are so many out there? 

My advice is to start with your questions, with the problem. I would argue that many of us who teach in higher education ask systemic questions but try to answer them with individualised solutions. For example, a common question I hear from lecturers and supervisors is some form of ‘why is there a gap between what I am teaching/asking for/recommending and what the student is producing/writing/creating? Why don’t they ‘get it’? 

This is not a question about the individual(s) in front of you, although it may appear to be at first. Yet so much research and practice over the last three or four decades has used theories that focus on changing individual behaviours to solve what are more likely issues with the university itself and its systems and structures: the curriculum, the assumptions that inform contemporary teaching, learning and supervision, and how accessible success is (or isn’t) to increasingly diverse student cohorts. Examples here are theories like behaviourism, cognitivism, even some forms of constructivism: they posit that if we create the ‘right’ learning environment, students will modify themselves to fit it and succeed, and if they can’t, the problem is them, not the environment. They are not motivated enough; they are ‘underprepared’ for university education; they lack the right kinds of skills or knowledge.  

The problem with focusing on the individuals – teachers or students – is that this tends to decontextualise them, removing them from their own histories, stories and geographies, and from the university and society they are part of; it removes the structures and systems that do have a profound role in shaping possibilities, opportunities and choices. As a colleague once said at a conference: if you have a diverse group of students in front of you in a lecture hall who have invisible and visible disabilities, who are managing part-time work and maybe caring work alongside their studies, who have come from poorly resourced schools, who have borrowed money for their fees – but are still there, coming to classes, doing the work (even if they don’t seem to be ‘getting it’), you are teaching the most motivated people you may ever meet. And they were offered a place according to the university’s criteria, so they must have enough of the ‘right’ preparation, skills and knowledge to build on. This means, if we are still trying to ‘fix’ the students, we are looking at the wrong part of the problem and using the wrong theorised explanations; we don’t have useful explanatory power, and we keep going in circles, blaming students, blaming secondary schools, blaming teachers, all of which does not get us closer to widening genuine access and success. 

We need, rather, to be using theories that help us question the systems and structures, and the principles and assumptions that inform their ways of working. Theories that focus, for example, on social justice (Nancy Fraser and bell hooks), on the structure of different forms of knowledge and the ways in which it needs to be learned, applied and transformed (Basil Bernstein and Legitimation Code Theory), and the social, economic and political environments that surround and shape universities and their teachers and learners, informing what (and who) is valued within different disciplines and fields in terms of marking achievement and success (Pierre Bourdieu and Legitimation Code Theory). We need theories that help us ask the kinds of ‘why’ questions about our observations and experiences that point us beyond seemingly obvious answers (we need better students, for example) to deeper considerations of the systems we work within, who they are designed to serve and advance, and who may be left behind or excluded, perhaps inadvertently. Radical feminist theory, critical social theory, critical and social realist theory have all been useful in higher education research and practice as tools to deepen explanatory power, ask better questions, and find answers that address the system and the individuals as part of it, rather than focusing on the ‘decontextualised’ individuals. 

This brings me to my second reason for why we should theorise our teaching and students’ learning: ‘better’ practice. The notion of ‘best’ practice is a common one in higher education, and we’re always in search of it. But, as Cecilia Jacobs and others have argued, we should resist this notion of one ‘best’ practice to trump all others. The reason for this can perhaps be found in the answer to the question: ‘best for whom’? If I am teaching maths and have found a workable method, would that necessarily be ‘best’ for teaching English literature? If I have found a good way of explaining tough concepts to first year students, would that be ‘best’ for Master’s students? And so on. The problem with ‘best’ practice models is that they tend to be homogenising, and when they work, they’re great, but when they don’t, we may slip back into the blame game – these are not motivated or ‘good’ students, the teacher or tutor is not experienced enough, etc. But, what if we committed ourselves to ‘better’ practice: to acknowledging that different kinds of knowledge – different disciplines and fields – have different values, different ‘ways of knowing, being and doing’, different knowledge structures. Curriculum, teaching and assessment have to be developed with these in mind, rather than to one set of criteria or understandings of ‘success’ that apply across the board. ‘Better’ practice requires theorised thinking using the kinds of critical theories mentioned above that help us ask better ‘why’ questions, and that lead us to different ways of doing things, to potential solutions and next steps so that we can keep reflecting critically and changing as the environment we teach within, and our students learn within, changes: social, economic, environmental, political.  
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Our task, as teachers, is not just to teach ‘content’ and ‘skills’; our task is to help students use the disciplinary and academic knowledges, skills, practices and values they learn at university to understand themselves and the world they live in differently, to help them find their way to their own ‘why’ questions, and their own individual and collective answers, solutions and ‘better’ practice. To do this well, we need to equip ourselves, as far as we can, with tools that give us explanatory power and a clear understanding of the issues and problems we are working, and that enable us to reflect with peers on these issues and on ourselves in ways that enable us to find ‘better’ practices, better ways of teaching, assessing, engaging students, and better ways of creating genuine pathways to success for all of the students in front us, at whatever level they (and we) are working.  ​


About the contributor

Dr Sherran Clarence is currently the lead at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) on centralised doctoral and supervisors education and development. She coordinates a programme of workshops and events each academic year for all doctoral candidates and their supervisors across their eight academic schools. In addition to this, she supports training and development work within funded research projects attached to the NTU Doctoral School, and conducts her own research focused on doctoral and early career stages of higher education. Her current research is drawing on theory from her earlier degrees in political science and gender studies, as she is using feminist and critical social theory, along with participatory methods, to explore doctoral students’ understandings of doctoral study, academia and academic work, community and research culture, and time. Her concerns in this research centre on matters of inclusion, equity, transparency, and social justice, as well as belonging or ‘mattering’. 
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Her previous research has focused on academic literacies and writing research and practice, and on academic development practice, specifically on how disciplinary knowledge-making practices are modelled for and taught to undergraduate students, such that they are enabled to build and understand knowledge in joined-up or cumulative ways. This research, which drew on Legitimation Code Theory and the work of Basil Bernstein, specifically, culminated in writing a book for academic development and lecturers, entitled Turning Access into Success: Improving University Education with Legitimation Code Theory (Routledge, 2021). All her work is underpinned by critical theoretical approaches to understanding the world around us, whether this is about academic literacies development, curriculum and pedagogy, or creating inclusive, socially just research environments and researcher development. She also writes a blog for postgraduate researchers and supervisors, called ‘How to write a PhD in a hundred steps (or more), which encompasses Masters-level study as well as early-career and mid-career researcher concerns.

Blog https://phdinahundredsteps.com
LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherran-clarence-4089841a/ 
ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2777-4420
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