What Makes a 'Good' First-year Lecturer?

Abstract

IntroductionThe first year is an important stepping-stone in the career of the undergraduate student. Lecturers of first-year students play an important role in guiding students into this new phase of their lives. Much research has focused on the challenges facing new students, especially struggling, or non-traditional students. However, to our knowledge, little has been written about the attributes of the lecturers who actively promote student learning during this phase. The contribution of lecturers of first-year students has tended to be downplayed, especially at 'research-led' universities.Our work in Stellenbosch University's First-year Academy (FYA), an initiative to promote the holistic learning experience of all first-year students at the University, gave us an opportunity to explore this issue. The exploration was based on a subactivity of the FYA, which aimed to encourage the academic achievement of first-year students and to acknowledge the work of lecturers of first-year students. The activity involved inviting the 30 top-performing students across the University to a dinner hosted by the University's Rector. These students each nominated the lecturer who, in their view, made the most significant contribution to their academic success. The students were required to write a letter to the lecturer, explaining why he or she had had an impact on the student's academic performance. The lecturer, in turn, was required to write a letter of support and encouragement back to the student. These letters were then exchanged during the dinner. This initiative was extremely successful and well received, particularly among the academic community. The conversations that emerged during and after the event served as a catalyst for the study. These focused on the question 'what makes a good lecturer?' Our research, therefore, set out to explore the following questions: Leibowitz B, van der Merwe A, van Schalkwyk S (eds) Before describing the research that we undertook, we present some of the key findings from the literature that guided the study, and illuminated our own understanding of what emerged from the data gathered during the empirical phase of the research. Conceptualising 'good' lecturersWhat are the attributes of successful lecturers of academically successful students? What qualifies one lecturer to be categorised as 'good' and another perhaps not? The literature on this topic spans several decades, and provides interesting responses to these questions. Yet it would appear that clear consensus as to a suitable definition remains elusive (Trigwell, 2001:65). Schön's seminal work on teachers suggests that '[A]s we consider the artistry of extraordinary practitioners and explore the ways they actually acquire it, we are led inevitably to certain deviant traditions of education for practice -traditions that stand outside or alongside the normative curricula of the schools' (Schön, 1987:15). Importantly, Elton (1998:3) suggests that '[T]eaching excellence is not a simple concept and, as a concept, lacks precisi...

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