Conceptions of learning among teachers and students in higher education. A Swedish-Polish comparative study

The article presents conceptions of learning among students and teachers at two European universities, in Linköping (Sweden) and Gdansk (Poland). The research was conducted along the principles of phenomenography by two teams working simultaneously on their respective samples. The strategy of sampling and interviewing, as well as the rules of interpretation, were discussed and kept as similar as possible by both teams. In some cases a procedure of cross-interpretation was applied, another tested i.e. the categories identified by one team as possibly applicable to their own empirical material. The analysis of the Swedish material yielded three different categories describing the conceptions of learning among teachers and students: Learning as change, as completion, and as contextualisation. There is a potential conflict between teachers’ and students’ perspectives in that the students emphasise the relevance for the coming profession, while teachers hold a more academic conception of the nature of learning and the driving forces for learning. In the Polish sample, four categories of learning were discerned: learning as an instrument, as change, as acquisition of knowledge, and as a natural (biological) disposition. In the Polish material a clear distinction between two different milieus for learning, those of institutions and of “real life situations’, has been spotted as critical to the understanding of the nature of learning. The comparative analysis of the outcome of the phenomenographic analyses aims at identifying hypothetical factors of cultural difference that could have influenced both outcome spaces. However, this part merely sketches the issue. The present report is part of a broader project aiming at analysing the conceptions of learning, knowledge, teaching and assessment, and a more complete comparative analysis will only be possible after all the parts are presented.