Teachers' beliefs and intentions concerning teaching in higher education

A questionnaire measuring nine different aspects of teachers ' beliefs and intentions concerning teaching in higher education was distributed to teachers at four institutions in the United Kingdom, yielding 638 complete sets of responses. There was a high degree of overlap between the participants ' scores on the subscales measuring beliefs and intentions, and analyses of both sets of scores yielded two factors reflecting an orientation towards learning facilitation and an orientation towards knowledge transmission. However, teachers ' intentions were more orientated towards knowledge transmission than were their beliefs, and problem solving was associated with beliefs based on learning facilitation but with intentions based on knowledge transmission. Differences in teachers ' intentions across different disciplines and between men and women seemed to result from different conceptions of teaching, whereas differences in teachers ' intentions across different institutions and between teachers with different levels of teaching experience seemed to result from contextual factors. Teaching intentions thus reflect a compromise between teachers ' conceptions of teaching and their academic and social contexts .