Approaches to teaching in higher education: the perspective of network analysis using the revised approaches to teaching inventory

Over time, the academics' approaches to teaching (i.e., content- or learning-focused approach) were intensively studied. Traditionally, studies estimated the shared variance between the items that describe a behavioral pattern (i.e., the psychometric approach), defined as a learning- or content-focused approach to teaching. In this study, we used a different perspective (i.e., network analysis) to investigate academics' approaches to teaching. We aimed to bring in new insights regarding the interactions between the elements that define academics' approaches to teaching. We used the Revised Approaches to Teaching Inventory to collect responses from 705 academics (63.97% female) from six Romanian universities. The main results indicated that academics' conceptions about the subject matter are central to their preferences concerning the adoption of a content-focused or a learning-focused approach to teaching. The estimated network is stable across different sub-samples defined by the academic disciplines, class size, academics' gender, and teaching experience. We highlighted the implications of these findings for research and teaching practice in higher education. Also, several recommendations for developing pedagogical training programs for academics were suggested. In particular, this study brings valuable insights for addressing academics' conception about the subject matter and suggests that this could be a new topic for pedagogical training programs dedicated to university teachers.