Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012doi105194hess-16-3677-2012copy Author(s) 2012 CC Attribution 30 License

Hydrology andEarth System

Sciences

On teaching styles of water educators and the impact ofdidactic training

A Pathirana1 J H Koster1 E de Jong1 and S Uhlenbrook12

1UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education Delft The Netherlands2Delft University of Technology Section of Water Resources Delft The Netherlands

Correspondence toA Pathirana (apathiranaunesco-iheorg)

Received 20 January 2012 ndash Published in Hydrol Earth Syst Sci Discuss 8 March 2012Revised 29 August 2012 ndash Accepted 19 September 2012 ndash Published 17 October 2012

Abstract Solving todayrsquos complex hydrological problemsrequires originality creative thinking and trans-disciplinaryapproaches Hydrological education that was traditionallyteacher centred where the students look up to the teacherfor expertise and information should change to better pre-pare hydrologists to develop new knowledge and apply itin new contexts An important first step towards this goal isto change the concept of education in the educatorsrsquo mindsThe results of an investigation to find out whether didactictraining influences the beliefs of hydrology educators abouttheir teaching styles is presented Faculty of UNESCO-IHEhas been offered a didactic certification program named uni-versity teaching qualification (UTQ) The hypothesis thatUTQ training will significantly alter the teaching style offaculty at UNESCO-IHE from expertformal authority traitstowards facilitatordelegator traits was tested A first surveywas conducted among the entire teaching staff (total 101 re-sponse rate 58 ) The results indicated that there are signifi-cantly higher traits of facilitator and delegator teaching stylesamong UTQ graduates compared to faculty who were notsignificantly trained in didactics The second survey whichwas conducted among UTQ graduates (total 20 response rate70 ) enquiring after their teaching styles before and afterUTQ corroborated these findings

1 Introduction

In higher education two types of knowledge generationapproaches can be identified discipline-oriented studiesand problem-oriented (mission-oriented) studies (Ashby1973 Short 2002) Traditional higher education institutes

excelled in preparing graduates with the former ap-proach Ashby (1972) noted ldquoThe incongruence betweenthe discipline-oriented training which most students receiveand the mission-oriented activities in which many of themwish to engage after graduation is one of the causes ofour present discontents with higher education So there isa need (if we can do it) to include in higher educationsome experience which will help people to learn the art of[mission-oriented] sort of decision making which includesscientific data estimates of practicality and a frameworkof ethical principlesrdquo Looking back today this is a state-ment describing the predicament we are facing in hydrolog-ical education Hydrology related challenges are by naturebroad local-specific unique and multidisciplinary (eg Uh-lenbrook 2006 Wagener et al 2010) Solving them calls forskills that go beyond the knowledge that could be expectedto be obtained by studying a single discipline as well as welldeveloped integrative skills and a mix of competencies (Uh-lenbrook and de Jong 2012) Note that we apply a verywide definition of hydrology in this paper which is followingthe terminology used in the UNESCO International Hydrol-ogy Programme (IHP) and includes fields such as hydraulicswater managementgovernance aquatic ecology sanitary en-gineering water supply engineering and hydrological mod-elling in a wider sense

Largely due to tradition world-wide higher education pro-grams related to hydrology still remain very much discipline-oriented entities they focus mostly on the fundamentalknowledge of processes theories and models but often paylittle attention to training students in the art of applying theseto real-world problems But we do expect the graduates toperform in the real world solving mission-oriented problems

Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union

3678 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

The discipline we term as hydrology is fast shifting itsboundaries challenging its practitioners and researchers tochange their approaches swiftly (Kleinhans et al 2010) Ithas been long accepted that the ldquoscience on which solu-tions to present and future global water problems must bebased does not fall within the purview of a single disciplinebut rather is truly multidisciplinary and inherently interdisci-plinaryrdquo (Jury and Vaux 2005)

Solving a complex hydrological problem typically in-volves several steps (1) define identify and analyse the prob-lem (2) identify or develop possible solutions and select theoptimal one and (3) implement the solution In the tradi-tional classroom we routinely forgo step 1 and often gloss-over step 2 and spend considerable time on step 3 As anexample students may spend time learning various simplifi-cations of shallow water equation and how it is numericallymodelled in one two and three dimensions While being es-sential fundamental knowledge for a flood modeller this it-self does not fully prepare a student to be a problem-solverin a real-world environment Making a good flood modellershould start with exposing the students to the problem offlooding through means like case studies examples and self-guided exploration This exposure stimulates the interest ofthe student to learn how to model floods as an important stepin flood modelling and flood management This is an essen-tial step that should not be hurried or treated superficiallyThe learning of fundamentals then comes as a logical stepin a sequence of steps in solving a tangible problem Af-ter the fundamentals the students should be guided to revisitthe initially introduced problems and critically evaluate howthe modelling techniques they learned help solving the prob-lems and to identify the remaining knowledge gaps At thisstage they should learn how their contribution could poten-tially help solving a much broader flood management prob-lem that is multidisciplinary Among others skills such asunderstanding the roles of different experts and effectivelycommunicating results with them and other stakeholders hasto be covered An in-depth discussion of the competencyprofile of hydrologists and other water professionals (ie T-shape model) is provided by Uhlenbrook and de Jong (2012)

It is important to critically look at approaches to water ed-ucation and take action where necessary to ensure that thehydrology education experience has an adequate degree ofldquoproblem-orientedrdquo skill development One of the importantactions in this regard is to give the students the freedom toexplore and develop knowledge and in the process to de-velop the necessary mission-oriented skills Looking up tothe teacher for expertise is not a model that fits very wellwith this paradigm As the teachersrsquo approach to teaching in-fluences the studentsrsquo development trajectories it is useful tolook at how we teach hydrology in order to understand whatneeds to be improved in hydrology education While con-tent is indisputably important in education teaching stylesemployed are also (if not more) crucial in problem-orientedskill development

11 Teaching styles

Each university teacher approaches teaching in a uniquestyle Similar to any other profession like engineering or ar-chitecture teachers demonstrate different styles of interact-ing in their profession and possess different beliefs abouttheir approach There have been numerous attempts to in-troduce taxonomy to teaching-styles Solomon (1966) at-tempted a classification of university teachers using termslike ldquowarmrdquo ldquoflamboyantrdquo ldquodryrdquo etc Bennett (1976) re-ported a study including 1258 respondents from primaryschool education using a classification approach based on28 questions Traditionally teaching-style studies have at-tracted their share of criticism of being ldquoconfused with af-fectation denigrated as a kind of posturing to mask a lack ofsubstance or tolerated as a natural manifestation of personaleccentricitiesrdquo (Eble 1980)

Towards the 1990rsquos more formal classifications can beseen in the didactic literature Quirk (1994) used a four termclassification (assertive suggestive collaborative and facili-tative) in his teaching-style taxonomy of clinical educationin medicine Later Grasha (1994 1996 2009) developed amore elabo-rate method based on five styles (expert for-mal authority personal model facilitator and delegator) thatdefine four clusters of teaching-styles (ExpertFormal Au-thority Personal ModelExpertFormal Authority Facilita-torPersonal ModelExpert DelegatorFacilitatorExpert)

The expert teacheris mainly concerned that the studentsreceive correct information and are well prepared in theirdiscipline In hydrology this is a teacher who focuses onteaching processes (eg evaporation infiltration etc) the-ories (eg Richards equation) models (eg Green-Amptsmodel for infiltration) etc Naturally the style allows forthe efficient transfer of knowledge A main disadvantage isthat it focuses more on the outcome than on developing thethought process leading to that outcome Theformal author-ity teacher focuses on following relevant standards (eg usingdesign codes for infiltration facility planning) A disadvan-tage of this style is that it can lead to rigid standardized andinflexible teaching (Grasha 1996) Apersonal modelteacherfocuses on setting an example rather than prescribing (egdemonstrates how a professional solves infiltration problemsby means of examples) The feeling of inadequateness if un-able to live up to the standards of the instructor is a downsideof this approach Lastly thefacilitator anddelegatorstylesportray the teacher as a guide encouraging students to ex-plore knowledge (eg let students explore by reading web-search discussions etc) Less experienced students as wellas those unused to this approach may feel confused and di-rectionless with this autonomy

Felder and Silverman (1988) in their popular paper at-tempted to link psychological traits of students and theirlearning styles with teaching-styles They concluded thatldquoLearning styles of most engineering students and teachingstyles of most engineering professors are in-compatible in

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3679

several dimensions Many or most engineering students arevisual sensing inductive and active and some of the mostcreative students are global most engineering education isauditory abstract (intuitive) deductive passive and sequen-tial These mismatches often lead to poor student perfor-mance professorial frustration and a loss to society of manypotentially excellent engineersrdquo This study and others since(eg Grasha and Yangarber-Hicks 2000) have emphasizedthe importance of understanding the teaching and learningstyles to gain more insights into their interplay in the processof university education

12 Appropriate mix of teaching styles for hydrology

Effective education in the fields of hydrology needs a com-bination of teaching styles of expert formal authority per-sonal model facilitator and delegator Take the example ofdesign of urban storm drainage systems the students shouldbe able to understand the physical processes theories govern-ing the flow of water in conduits and methods of calculation(eg computer models) They may also need to understandthe engineering practice norms regulation and standardsLast but not least there are skills beyond the technical as-pects that may best be conveyed by demonstrating to the stu-dents how some things are done successfully through study-ing real-world cases Expert formal-authority and personal-model aspects of teaching-styles could be useful for achiev-ing these However even for achieving these ldquobasicrdquo knowl-edge and skills in addition to traditional teaching facilitat-ing students to explore construct and internalize knowledgecould be effective (Felder and Silverman 1988) Facilitatorand delegator traits could be useful in this context Facilitat-ing and delegation can also work for stimulating students forlearning by developing their interest to the subject Howeverthe real need for these traits comes into play when the educa-tor is faced with the problem of helping students develop theadvanced skills to effectively apply what they have learnedIn the case of design of urban storm drainage systems thesemay include critically analyse a design communicate theessential aspects of a design to a multidisciplinary team ofexperts develop a ldquofeelingrdquo for accuracy of modelling re-sults These skills are also important when the students moveto the next stage of their academic programme namely con-ducting scientific research towards writing a masters thesis(Pathirana et al 2012) Encouraging the students to take ini-tiative in a supporting environment can help substantially indeveloping such skills In this context we argue that whileone teaching-style is not inherently superior to others it isimportant for hydrology educators to also learn to be facili-tators and delegators This is particularly important owing tothe fact that hydrology educators were historically not verygood at either

13 University teaching qualification (UTQ) atUNESCO-IHE

Each year UNESCO-IHE enrols some two hundred MSc stu-dents largely from developing countries in Asia Africa andLatin America in its master programmes in the field of wa-ter and environment The programmes and specialisations aremainly engineering oriented although some focus more onsciences or have significant social sciences components Thevast majority of these students are mid-career professionalswho upon graduation return to their countries and often playimportant roles in shaping the policy and practice in the wa-ter sector in these countries The fact that the graduates ofUNESCO-IHE end up in working in diverse geographicaleconomic and cultural settings makes it even more impor-tant to focus their education on the development of skills andcompetencies (cf Uhlenbrook and de Jong 2012) as opposedto merely delivering knowledge The breadth and nature ofthe water problems they may have to solve in their profes-sions are so large and diverse that it is practically impossibleto equip them during their education with all the knowl-edge and techniques needed to solve them It is important forUNESCO-IHE graduates to develop the ability to face un-derstand and solve water problems that are novel and chal-lenging It is therefore our belief that in order to foster stu-dent development in this direction a shift of focus amongstteaching staff from expertformal authority traits towards fa-cilitatordelegator traits is necessary While this may be seenas a universal requirement in higher education it is partic-ularly important for the learning environment at UNESCO-IHE due to its thematic-focus (water) and global mission andits heterogeneous student population that is characterized bya large cultural ethnic religious and language diversity

In order to achieve this shift and starting from 2010 fac-ulty of UNESCO-IHE is currently offered a didactic cer-tification program named university teaching qualification(UTQ) a programme aimed to develop didactic skills of theteaching staff in the direction of facilitating active learningin higher education The UTQ programme focuses on ldquocon-structive alignmentrdquo where the student constructs herhisown learning through relevant learning activities It stimu-lates the lecturer to create a learning environment that sup-ports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the de-sired learning outcomes In other words the UTQ training in-tends to stimulate UNESCO-IHE faculty to develop facilita-tordelegator teaching styles A programme aimed to developdidactic skills of the teaching staff in the direction of facil-itating active learning in higher education UTQ candidatesafter an introductory meeting with the UTQ coach ndash who isa qualified educationalist ndash participate in a refresher courseon didactics (total about 10ndash12 h of contact time) Then withthe help of the coach they plan the UTQ portfolio activitiesThey spend around 130 h typically spread over a one yearperiod compiling the portfolio which is then assessed by a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3680 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

portfolio committee The UTQ programme is described indetail in Appendix B

The UTQ program is based on the theory of construc-tive alignment ndash a type of outcome based education usedfor devising teaching and learning activities and assessmenttasks that directly address the learning outcomes intended ina way not typically achieved in traditional lectures tutorialclasses and examinations (Biggs and Tang 2011) Construc-tive alignment is a combination of two principles first con-structivism which states that learning is an active construc-tive process where the learner actively constructs knowledgeThen there is the concept of ldquoAligned Teachingrdquo stating thatfor effective learning the stated learning objectives activi-ties for achieving those objectives and the assessment of thelevel of achievement should be consistent ndash or aligned ndash witheach other It stimulates the lecturer to create a learning en-vironment that supports the learning activities appropriate toachieving the desired learning outcomes rather than focusingon transferring on knowledge In other words the UTQ train-ing intends to stimulate UNESCO-IHE faculty to develop fa-cilitatordelegator teaching styles

After running the UTQ program for two years and pro-ducing about 20 graduates we were interested to know theimpact of the program An important logical step in this di-rection is to understand the profile of the faculty in relationto UTQ and didactic training in general Our working hy-pothesis in this study was that UTQ training will signifi-cantly alter the teaching-styles of faculty at UNESCO-IHEin a direction that fosters learning styles that lead to thedevelopment of necessary skills to solve the broad multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary problems in the water sec-tor We based our study on Grasharsquos (1996) teaching styleclassification The hypothesis translates then into a questionwhether the UTQ program was instrumental in shifting theteaching styles from the expertformal authority towards fa-cilitatordelegator traits

In the next section we discuss the approach we used totest our hypothesis Then we present the statistical analysisof the data and the results Finally we discuss the resultsand arrive at conclusions We also discuss the limitationsof our approach the possible peculiarities of the population(ldquoUNESCO-IHE facultyrdquo) and the validity of the conclusionsbeyond the population studied

2 Methodology

The most straightforward method for testing our hypothesisis to examine the population before and after UTQ (treat-ment) However in the present case there are several prob-lems in using this approach Unless the participants weretested before UTQ (which had not been done) there is noway of objectively ascertaining the changes between be-fore and after It is of course possible to question the UTQgraduates about their personal ldquobeforerdquo and ldquoafterrdquo situation

However this type of survey instrument is prone to be influ-enced by issues related to personal judgment of individualsThe other alternative is to examine the differences betweenfaculty who have undergone UTQ and those who did notThis approach has the weakness that any non-randomness ofselectionvolunteering of staff for UTQ might have an im-pact on the results After careful consideration of both ap-proaches we decided to apply a combination of the two

First we conducted a detailed survey on all faculty ofUNESCO-IHE and examined whether there are statisticallysignificant differences among the two classes (UTQ vs oth-ers) Then we used a follow up survey among UTQ graduatesto see if the outcome validates the results of the first survey

We based our analysis of teaching-style on the five stylesdefined by Grasha (1996) In the first survey we used the val-idated survey instrument comprising of 40 questions (Teach-ing Styles Inventory Version 30 Grasha 1996) We alsoquestioned the participants on their academic background(teaching experience in years current level of engagement inteaching as number of hours per year field of expertise (un-dergraduate major) of the respondent previous experience indidactic training including UTQ other programs like UTQseminars and workshops) Further we also asked them to rate(on a five point scale) their inclination to have future didac-tic training and belief whether they will benefit from suchtraining Optionally the respondents could state their gen-der and geographical area where they did (a) most of theirschooling (b) their undergraduate degree and (c) their high-est post-graduate degree

In the second survey after describing the nature of eachstyle (after Grasha 1996 p 154 Table 4-1) we invited theUTQ graduates to assess their ldquolevel of belongingrdquo to eachclass before and after UTQ training Further we asked themto provide descriptive answers to the following questions

ndash What were the most important things you learned

ndash What (if any) did you change in your classroom behav-ior and interaction with students compared to what youdid before you followed the UTQ course

ndash If yes has your new way of teaching lead to improve-ments ndash for yourself and for the students (YesNo) Inwhat way

ndash If nothing substantially changed why not

Further we also asked the respondents to rate on a fivepoint scale whether they disagreedagreed to the followingpropositions

ndash The UTQ program was useful to you

ndash you learned new things during the course

ndash the UTQ trainer stimulated your learning

ndash your colleagues stimulated your learning and

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3681

ndash you have applied what you learned in the course in yourown teaching activities

Both surveys were conducted online (Lime Survey 2011)anonymously but using a token-based control system so thatonly invitees could respond There was no opportunity formultiple responses from the same invitee

3 Results

31 Survey 1

UNESCO-IHE has around 100 academic staff of which some90 are significantly involved in teaching Out of the totalof 68 people that responded ten responses were incompleteand therefore 58 records were available for analysis The op-tional questions on gender and educational background wereskipped by seven and eight respondents respectively ndash mak-ing the sample size somewhat smaller for those variablesThe results were analysed using a statistical analysis tool(GRETL Cottrell and Lucchetti 2011) The answers to theforty questions in the Grasharsquos teaching-style part were usedto compute the degree of belonging to each of the five stylesexpert formal authority personal model facilitator and del-egator Category choices for teaching experience and cur-rent level of teaching engagement were converted to intervalvariables (Table A1) The multi-choice for previous didac-tic experience was added up giving weights of 1 2 and 4for seminarsworkshops once more than once and longerUTQ type certification trainings respectively For example ifa responded has attended multiple seminars a workshop andUTQ she would be assigned 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 All rating scales(eg would you like to undergo in didactic training in the fu-ture) were five choice (ranging from ldquostrongly-disagreerdquo toldquostrongly-agreerdquo) and were converted to interval values rang-ing from 1 to 5

The educational background questions were used to de-rive four categorical variables Only-EUR whether or not arespondent was exclusively educated in Europe Only-Westexclusively in the ldquowestrdquo (here ldquowestrdquo defined as EuropeNorth America and Oceania) Only-NW exclusively ldquoNon-Westrdquo and West + NW mixed

Figure 1 shows the distributions of important variables inthe sample Approximately 50 of the sample had more than10 yr of teaching experience (Fig 1a) Forty were teachingmore than 25 contact hours per year out of which 18 didmore than 70 contact hours (Fig 1b) The field of educa-tion of the sample was largely engineering followed by sci-ence (Fig 1c) Among those who indicated the gender therewere twice as many men than women (Fig 1d) The sampleconsisted of predominantly European educated (school un-dergraduate and post-graduate) teachers (37 out of 58) Onlytwo respondents had had exclusively non-western education(Fig 1e) Slightly more than 50 of the sample had un-dergone significant didactic training sometime during their

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

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Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

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Discussion

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1 year1 to 2 years

2 to 5 years5 to 10 years

More than 10

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(a) Teaching Experience

NumberofCases

lt 10 10 to 25 25 to 70 gt 70 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(b) Teaching hours per year

NumberofCases

Science Engineering Other0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(c) Field of Education

NumberofCases

Male Female Unspecified0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

(d) Gender

NumberofCases

Only Eur Only West Only NWest West+NWest0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

(e) Where Studied

NumberofCases

Significant Not Significant0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(f) Didactic Training

NumberofCases

UTQ

Other

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample (a) Number of years of teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year (c) Field of undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender (e) Region where educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate) (f) Didactictraining Significant who have undergone significant didactic training (includes UTQ graduatesand those who responded as possessing significant didactic training from other sources) NonSignificant those who do not have undergone significant didactic training

25

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample(a) Number of yearsof teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year(c) Fieldof undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender(e) Regionwhere educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate)(f) Di-dactic training Significant who have undergone significant didac-tic training (includes UTQ graduates and those who responded aspossessing significant didactic training from other sources) Non-significant those who do not have undergone significant didactictraining

career out of which 17 had completed the UTQ program(Fig 1f)

We examined the correlations between all interval vari-ables (all except gender and educational background whichwere categorical) For the sample size of 58p = 5 criticalvalue for correlation is 026 We observed strong correlationsamong some of the five teaching styles Given the fact thatmany teachers demonstrate a combination of several of thesestyles ndash referred to as ldquoclustersrdquo (Grasha 1996 Lucas 2005Lucas and Wright 2009) this is to be expected (details aboutcor-relation analysis are given in Appendix A)

Next we examined whether there are statistically signifi-cant differences in teaching-styles between UTQ graduatesand faculty who were not significantly subjected to didac-tic training In this analysis we ignored the respondents whohad significant didactic training other than UTQ due to thefact that we did not have adequate information on the natureof such training to classify them to the same group as UTQgraduates

Due to the difficulty of making the normality assump-tion for all the variables in the survey outcome we se-lected Mann-Whitney U (MWU) test (also known as theMann-Whitney-Wilcoxon or Wilcoxon rank-sum test) to testthe differences of various categories of respondents MWUis a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test for assessing

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3682 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

whether one of two samples of independent observationstends to have larger values than the other and can be appliedfor unequal samples (Mann and Whitney 1947) GRETLrsquosMWU test reports the p-value of the test and U statistic(among other parameters) The results of the MWU tests aregiven in Table A2

Figure 2 shows the differences between UTQ trained fac-ulty vs those who did not have significant didactic trainingIt confirms that UTQ trained faculty belongs significantlymore to the facilitator (p lt 10 ) and delegator (p lt 1 )types No significant differences were found for the othercategories

Interestingly partitioning based on gender also showedsignificant differences in teaching styles Figure 3 showsthe differences between male (M) and female (F) respon-dents for the five teaching-styles and their inclination to un-dergo didactic training Female respondents had a lesser de-gree of ldquoformal authorityrdquo (p lt 1 ) and ldquopersonal modelrdquo(p lt 5 ) traits compared to male respondents Female re-spondents also liked to have didactic training significantly(p lt 5 ) more than the male respondents

We also found that the years of experience in teachingdid not have a significant (p lt 20 ) impact on teaching-styles although more experience significantly reduced (p lt

5 ) the inclination to have didactic training Further theeducational background of the faculty (exclusively westernvs mixed + non-Western) did not have any significant (p lt

10 ) impact on teaching-styles or the inclination to have di-dactic training

32 Survey 2

The key finding of the first survey towards our hypothesiswas that the degree of belonging to the facilitator and dele-gator style is significantly higher amongst UTQ trained fac-ulty compared to those who did not (yet) undergo significantdidactic training We conducted the second survey to corrob-orate this finding

First we used respondentsrsquo own assessment of their de-gree of belonging to each of the five teaching-styles beforeand after UTQ While the styles expert formal authority andpersonal model did not show statistically significant differ-ences those of facilitator and delegator did show signifi-cant (p = 0016 andp = 0007 respectively) increases (theMann-Whitney U-tests results are given in Table A5) Fig-ure 4 shows the five teaching-styles pre and post UTQ

We also did a compilation of answers to the descriptivequestions of the survey (provided as a Supplement to thismanuscript) which also showed similar opinions about whathas changed In general all staff members who participatedin the UTQ programme evaluated it as a positive experienceTeachers have become more aware of the fact that teach-ing should be primarily about what students learn and muchless about what they teach As one teacher indicated (see

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Pa

per|

Discussion

Pa

per|

Discussion

Paper

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iscussionP

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Faculty with No Significant Didactic Training

Faculty with UTQTraining

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respondents and those who did nothave significant didactic training lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and 7th percentile

26

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respon-dents and those who did not have significant didactic traininglowast

indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and7th percentile

Supplement) ldquoI can teach as much as I like but if this doesnot lead to learning then it is all in vainrdquo

4 Discussion

41 Major findings

The first survey clearly showed that the degree of belong-ing to the facilitator and delegator teaching styles is signif-icantly higher among UTQ graduates compared to facultywho were not significantly trained in didactics The secondsurvey which was conducted using a completely differentapproach (and was therefore independent of the first survey)showed that according to the judgment of the UTQ graduatestheir degree of belonging to the facilitatordelegator styles in-creased significantly after UTQ training Therefore we canaccept the hypothesis that UTQ training significantly influ-ences teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE faculty enhancingtheir facilitator and delegator styles

Is is interesting to compare this findings with the sim-ilar study of Postareff et al (2007) They did a statisticalstudy of impact of university teachersrsquo pedagogical train-ing on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs us-ing some 200 faculty members of University of HelsinkiThe found that even when the effect of teaching experienceis held constant there was a positive impact of a siginfi-cant level of didactic training (of more than 30 EuropeanCredit Transfer System credits) in shifting the focus of teach-ing from information transmissionteacher-focused approachto teaching towards a more ldquoconceptual changestudent-focusedrdquo approach While the terminology used in that study

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3683HESSD

9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Male Faculty

Female Faculty

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Like Tr

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have didactic training between male andfemale respondents lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1

27

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have di-dactic training between male and female respondentslowast indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1

are different from the current one the findings are similar ina generic sense

The first survey also revealed some other interesting traitsFirst women showed a significantly lesser degree of be-longing to the formal authority and personal model teach-ing styles than men They also showed a significantly higherdegree of interest to follow didactic training Lastly theeducational background of teaching staff (West vs Non-westMixed) did not influence the teaching styles

42 Learning ndash the flip side

The teaching style is one of the many important parametersthat determine success of an educational program in otherwords the degree to which the students achieve the learningobjectives Ultimately what matters is the quality and effec-tiveness of learning which has a lot to do with the attitudesof the students These attitudes in-turn are largely governedby their background experiences habits and expectationsIn an organization like UNESCO-IHE the heterogeneity ofthe student background in terms of geographic origin edu-cation system professional experience etc is only reason-able to assume that there are considerable differences amongindividual studentsrsquo attitudes towards learning (Uhlenbrookand de Jong 2012) A majority of UNESCO-IHE studentsare mid-career professionals who have been working in thesector (industry government academia etc) for a minimumperiod of years (often much longer) after their bachelorrsquos de-gree (Pathirana et al 2012) They are of considerably higheraverage age than the post-graduate students of a classical uni-versity and therefore largely experienced only in the tradi-tional teacher-led mode of education The need for changingteaching styles is driven by the needs of the profession of hy-drology (Sect 21) attempting to address the nature of prob-lems that future professional have to solve and the skills theyneed to effectively do that We are of firm opinion that the

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

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Interactive Discussion

Discussion

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04

05

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09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Before UTQ training

After UTQ Training

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in their teaching-styles after UTQ com-pared to before lowastlowastlowastplt1 lowastlowastplt5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

28

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in theirteaching-styles after UTQ compared to beforelowastlowastlowast p lt 1 lowastlowast

p lt 5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

employment of more facilitator and delegator traits by teach-ers will improve ability of the graduates to face up to thesechallenges However it is extremely important for the educa-tor to be aware of the fact that by doing so they may be forc-ing some students to get out of their ldquocomfort zonerdquo Gradualintroduction of change with careful monitoring of achievingthe learning outcomes and effective mentoring programs aretherefore recommended It is also not expected that an im-provement of immediate student feedback (eg student eval-uations) as a result of such a shift may be observed ndash in theshort-term even the opposite might happen

43 Limitations

The study has some limitations In the first survey we implic-itly assumed that the sample of faculty that had followed andcompleted the UTQ program was largely random and thattherefore existing traits of the faculty did not influence thedifferences that we observed We discussed this issue withthe department heads who were responsible for the selectionof staff for following UTQ In almost all cases the teachingperformance of the faculty or their teaching styles had notbeen considered in the selection process The final decision tofollow the course was however a joint one This could haveimplied that those that followed UTQ were inherently moreopen to didactic training However the inclination to followdidactic training was not significantly different (p = 30 )between the groups UTQ trained and other faculty Note thatwe do not have adequately large samples to conduct a non-parametric similarity (eg Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test

We need to question whether the statistically significantdifferences of teaching styles do imply a significant practicalimportance For example the mean value of delegator styleincreases from 052 to 075 due to UTQ training (Fig 4) a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3678 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

The discipline we term as hydrology is fast shifting itsboundaries challenging its practitioners and researchers tochange their approaches swiftly (Kleinhans et al 2010) Ithas been long accepted that the ldquoscience on which solu-tions to present and future global water problems must bebased does not fall within the purview of a single disciplinebut rather is truly multidisciplinary and inherently interdisci-plinaryrdquo (Jury and Vaux 2005)

Solving a complex hydrological problem typically in-volves several steps (1) define identify and analyse the prob-lem (2) identify or develop possible solutions and select theoptimal one and (3) implement the solution In the tradi-tional classroom we routinely forgo step 1 and often gloss-over step 2 and spend considerable time on step 3 As anexample students may spend time learning various simplifi-cations of shallow water equation and how it is numericallymodelled in one two and three dimensions While being es-sential fundamental knowledge for a flood modeller this it-self does not fully prepare a student to be a problem-solverin a real-world environment Making a good flood modellershould start with exposing the students to the problem offlooding through means like case studies examples and self-guided exploration This exposure stimulates the interest ofthe student to learn how to model floods as an important stepin flood modelling and flood management This is an essen-tial step that should not be hurried or treated superficiallyThe learning of fundamentals then comes as a logical stepin a sequence of steps in solving a tangible problem Af-ter the fundamentals the students should be guided to revisitthe initially introduced problems and critically evaluate howthe modelling techniques they learned help solving the prob-lems and to identify the remaining knowledge gaps At thisstage they should learn how their contribution could poten-tially help solving a much broader flood management prob-lem that is multidisciplinary Among others skills such asunderstanding the roles of different experts and effectivelycommunicating results with them and other stakeholders hasto be covered An in-depth discussion of the competencyprofile of hydrologists and other water professionals (ie T-shape model) is provided by Uhlenbrook and de Jong (2012)

It is important to critically look at approaches to water ed-ucation and take action where necessary to ensure that thehydrology education experience has an adequate degree ofldquoproblem-orientedrdquo skill development One of the importantactions in this regard is to give the students the freedom toexplore and develop knowledge and in the process to de-velop the necessary mission-oriented skills Looking up tothe teacher for expertise is not a model that fits very wellwith this paradigm As the teachersrsquo approach to teaching in-fluences the studentsrsquo development trajectories it is useful tolook at how we teach hydrology in order to understand whatneeds to be improved in hydrology education While con-tent is indisputably important in education teaching stylesemployed are also (if not more) crucial in problem-orientedskill development

11 Teaching styles

Each university teacher approaches teaching in a uniquestyle Similar to any other profession like engineering or ar-chitecture teachers demonstrate different styles of interact-ing in their profession and possess different beliefs abouttheir approach There have been numerous attempts to in-troduce taxonomy to teaching-styles Solomon (1966) at-tempted a classification of university teachers using termslike ldquowarmrdquo ldquoflamboyantrdquo ldquodryrdquo etc Bennett (1976) re-ported a study including 1258 respondents from primaryschool education using a classification approach based on28 questions Traditionally teaching-style studies have at-tracted their share of criticism of being ldquoconfused with af-fectation denigrated as a kind of posturing to mask a lack ofsubstance or tolerated as a natural manifestation of personaleccentricitiesrdquo (Eble 1980)

Towards the 1990rsquos more formal classifications can beseen in the didactic literature Quirk (1994) used a four termclassification (assertive suggestive collaborative and facili-tative) in his teaching-style taxonomy of clinical educationin medicine Later Grasha (1994 1996 2009) developed amore elabo-rate method based on five styles (expert for-mal authority personal model facilitator and delegator) thatdefine four clusters of teaching-styles (ExpertFormal Au-thority Personal ModelExpertFormal Authority Facilita-torPersonal ModelExpert DelegatorFacilitatorExpert)

The expert teacheris mainly concerned that the studentsreceive correct information and are well prepared in theirdiscipline In hydrology this is a teacher who focuses onteaching processes (eg evaporation infiltration etc) the-ories (eg Richards equation) models (eg Green-Amptsmodel for infiltration) etc Naturally the style allows forthe efficient transfer of knowledge A main disadvantage isthat it focuses more on the outcome than on developing thethought process leading to that outcome Theformal author-ity teacher focuses on following relevant standards (eg usingdesign codes for infiltration facility planning) A disadvan-tage of this style is that it can lead to rigid standardized andinflexible teaching (Grasha 1996) Apersonal modelteacherfocuses on setting an example rather than prescribing (egdemonstrates how a professional solves infiltration problemsby means of examples) The feeling of inadequateness if un-able to live up to the standards of the instructor is a downsideof this approach Lastly thefacilitator anddelegatorstylesportray the teacher as a guide encouraging students to ex-plore knowledge (eg let students explore by reading web-search discussions etc) Less experienced students as wellas those unused to this approach may feel confused and di-rectionless with this autonomy

Felder and Silverman (1988) in their popular paper at-tempted to link psychological traits of students and theirlearning styles with teaching-styles They concluded thatldquoLearning styles of most engineering students and teachingstyles of most engineering professors are in-compatible in

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3679

several dimensions Many or most engineering students arevisual sensing inductive and active and some of the mostcreative students are global most engineering education isauditory abstract (intuitive) deductive passive and sequen-tial These mismatches often lead to poor student perfor-mance professorial frustration and a loss to society of manypotentially excellent engineersrdquo This study and others since(eg Grasha and Yangarber-Hicks 2000) have emphasizedthe importance of understanding the teaching and learningstyles to gain more insights into their interplay in the processof university education

12 Appropriate mix of teaching styles for hydrology

Effective education in the fields of hydrology needs a com-bination of teaching styles of expert formal authority per-sonal model facilitator and delegator Take the example ofdesign of urban storm drainage systems the students shouldbe able to understand the physical processes theories govern-ing the flow of water in conduits and methods of calculation(eg computer models) They may also need to understandthe engineering practice norms regulation and standardsLast but not least there are skills beyond the technical as-pects that may best be conveyed by demonstrating to the stu-dents how some things are done successfully through study-ing real-world cases Expert formal-authority and personal-model aspects of teaching-styles could be useful for achiev-ing these However even for achieving these ldquobasicrdquo knowl-edge and skills in addition to traditional teaching facilitat-ing students to explore construct and internalize knowledgecould be effective (Felder and Silverman 1988) Facilitatorand delegator traits could be useful in this context Facilitat-ing and delegation can also work for stimulating students forlearning by developing their interest to the subject Howeverthe real need for these traits comes into play when the educa-tor is faced with the problem of helping students develop theadvanced skills to effectively apply what they have learnedIn the case of design of urban storm drainage systems thesemay include critically analyse a design communicate theessential aspects of a design to a multidisciplinary team ofexperts develop a ldquofeelingrdquo for accuracy of modelling re-sults These skills are also important when the students moveto the next stage of their academic programme namely con-ducting scientific research towards writing a masters thesis(Pathirana et al 2012) Encouraging the students to take ini-tiative in a supporting environment can help substantially indeveloping such skills In this context we argue that whileone teaching-style is not inherently superior to others it isimportant for hydrology educators to also learn to be facili-tators and delegators This is particularly important owing tothe fact that hydrology educators were historically not verygood at either

13 University teaching qualification (UTQ) atUNESCO-IHE

Each year UNESCO-IHE enrols some two hundred MSc stu-dents largely from developing countries in Asia Africa andLatin America in its master programmes in the field of wa-ter and environment The programmes and specialisations aremainly engineering oriented although some focus more onsciences or have significant social sciences components Thevast majority of these students are mid-career professionalswho upon graduation return to their countries and often playimportant roles in shaping the policy and practice in the wa-ter sector in these countries The fact that the graduates ofUNESCO-IHE end up in working in diverse geographicaleconomic and cultural settings makes it even more impor-tant to focus their education on the development of skills andcompetencies (cf Uhlenbrook and de Jong 2012) as opposedto merely delivering knowledge The breadth and nature ofthe water problems they may have to solve in their profes-sions are so large and diverse that it is practically impossibleto equip them during their education with all the knowl-edge and techniques needed to solve them It is important forUNESCO-IHE graduates to develop the ability to face un-derstand and solve water problems that are novel and chal-lenging It is therefore our belief that in order to foster stu-dent development in this direction a shift of focus amongstteaching staff from expertformal authority traits towards fa-cilitatordelegator traits is necessary While this may be seenas a universal requirement in higher education it is partic-ularly important for the learning environment at UNESCO-IHE due to its thematic-focus (water) and global mission andits heterogeneous student population that is characterized bya large cultural ethnic religious and language diversity

In order to achieve this shift and starting from 2010 fac-ulty of UNESCO-IHE is currently offered a didactic cer-tification program named university teaching qualification(UTQ) a programme aimed to develop didactic skills of theteaching staff in the direction of facilitating active learningin higher education The UTQ programme focuses on ldquocon-structive alignmentrdquo where the student constructs herhisown learning through relevant learning activities It stimu-lates the lecturer to create a learning environment that sup-ports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the de-sired learning outcomes In other words the UTQ training in-tends to stimulate UNESCO-IHE faculty to develop facilita-tordelegator teaching styles A programme aimed to developdidactic skills of the teaching staff in the direction of facil-itating active learning in higher education UTQ candidatesafter an introductory meeting with the UTQ coach ndash who isa qualified educationalist ndash participate in a refresher courseon didactics (total about 10ndash12 h of contact time) Then withthe help of the coach they plan the UTQ portfolio activitiesThey spend around 130 h typically spread over a one yearperiod compiling the portfolio which is then assessed by a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3680 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

portfolio committee The UTQ programme is described indetail in Appendix B

The UTQ program is based on the theory of construc-tive alignment ndash a type of outcome based education usedfor devising teaching and learning activities and assessmenttasks that directly address the learning outcomes intended ina way not typically achieved in traditional lectures tutorialclasses and examinations (Biggs and Tang 2011) Construc-tive alignment is a combination of two principles first con-structivism which states that learning is an active construc-tive process where the learner actively constructs knowledgeThen there is the concept of ldquoAligned Teachingrdquo stating thatfor effective learning the stated learning objectives activi-ties for achieving those objectives and the assessment of thelevel of achievement should be consistent ndash or aligned ndash witheach other It stimulates the lecturer to create a learning en-vironment that supports the learning activities appropriate toachieving the desired learning outcomes rather than focusingon transferring on knowledge In other words the UTQ train-ing intends to stimulate UNESCO-IHE faculty to develop fa-cilitatordelegator teaching styles

After running the UTQ program for two years and pro-ducing about 20 graduates we were interested to know theimpact of the program An important logical step in this di-rection is to understand the profile of the faculty in relationto UTQ and didactic training in general Our working hy-pothesis in this study was that UTQ training will signifi-cantly alter the teaching-styles of faculty at UNESCO-IHEin a direction that fosters learning styles that lead to thedevelopment of necessary skills to solve the broad multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary problems in the water sec-tor We based our study on Grasharsquos (1996) teaching styleclassification The hypothesis translates then into a questionwhether the UTQ program was instrumental in shifting theteaching styles from the expertformal authority towards fa-cilitatordelegator traits

In the next section we discuss the approach we used totest our hypothesis Then we present the statistical analysisof the data and the results Finally we discuss the resultsand arrive at conclusions We also discuss the limitationsof our approach the possible peculiarities of the population(ldquoUNESCO-IHE facultyrdquo) and the validity of the conclusionsbeyond the population studied

2 Methodology

The most straightforward method for testing our hypothesisis to examine the population before and after UTQ (treat-ment) However in the present case there are several prob-lems in using this approach Unless the participants weretested before UTQ (which had not been done) there is noway of objectively ascertaining the changes between be-fore and after It is of course possible to question the UTQgraduates about their personal ldquobeforerdquo and ldquoafterrdquo situation

However this type of survey instrument is prone to be influ-enced by issues related to personal judgment of individualsThe other alternative is to examine the differences betweenfaculty who have undergone UTQ and those who did notThis approach has the weakness that any non-randomness ofselectionvolunteering of staff for UTQ might have an im-pact on the results After careful consideration of both ap-proaches we decided to apply a combination of the two

First we conducted a detailed survey on all faculty ofUNESCO-IHE and examined whether there are statisticallysignificant differences among the two classes (UTQ vs oth-ers) Then we used a follow up survey among UTQ graduatesto see if the outcome validates the results of the first survey

We based our analysis of teaching-style on the five stylesdefined by Grasha (1996) In the first survey we used the val-idated survey instrument comprising of 40 questions (Teach-ing Styles Inventory Version 30 Grasha 1996) We alsoquestioned the participants on their academic background(teaching experience in years current level of engagement inteaching as number of hours per year field of expertise (un-dergraduate major) of the respondent previous experience indidactic training including UTQ other programs like UTQseminars and workshops) Further we also asked them to rate(on a five point scale) their inclination to have future didac-tic training and belief whether they will benefit from suchtraining Optionally the respondents could state their gen-der and geographical area where they did (a) most of theirschooling (b) their undergraduate degree and (c) their high-est post-graduate degree

In the second survey after describing the nature of eachstyle (after Grasha 1996 p 154 Table 4-1) we invited theUTQ graduates to assess their ldquolevel of belongingrdquo to eachclass before and after UTQ training Further we asked themto provide descriptive answers to the following questions

ndash What were the most important things you learned

ndash What (if any) did you change in your classroom behav-ior and interaction with students compared to what youdid before you followed the UTQ course

ndash If yes has your new way of teaching lead to improve-ments ndash for yourself and for the students (YesNo) Inwhat way

ndash If nothing substantially changed why not

Further we also asked the respondents to rate on a fivepoint scale whether they disagreedagreed to the followingpropositions

ndash The UTQ program was useful to you

ndash you learned new things during the course

ndash the UTQ trainer stimulated your learning

ndash your colleagues stimulated your learning and

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3681

ndash you have applied what you learned in the course in yourown teaching activities

Both surveys were conducted online (Lime Survey 2011)anonymously but using a token-based control system so thatonly invitees could respond There was no opportunity formultiple responses from the same invitee

3 Results

31 Survey 1

UNESCO-IHE has around 100 academic staff of which some90 are significantly involved in teaching Out of the totalof 68 people that responded ten responses were incompleteand therefore 58 records were available for analysis The op-tional questions on gender and educational background wereskipped by seven and eight respondents respectively ndash mak-ing the sample size somewhat smaller for those variablesThe results were analysed using a statistical analysis tool(GRETL Cottrell and Lucchetti 2011) The answers to theforty questions in the Grasharsquos teaching-style part were usedto compute the degree of belonging to each of the five stylesexpert formal authority personal model facilitator and del-egator Category choices for teaching experience and cur-rent level of teaching engagement were converted to intervalvariables (Table A1) The multi-choice for previous didac-tic experience was added up giving weights of 1 2 and 4for seminarsworkshops once more than once and longerUTQ type certification trainings respectively For example ifa responded has attended multiple seminars a workshop andUTQ she would be assigned 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 All rating scales(eg would you like to undergo in didactic training in the fu-ture) were five choice (ranging from ldquostrongly-disagreerdquo toldquostrongly-agreerdquo) and were converted to interval values rang-ing from 1 to 5

The educational background questions were used to de-rive four categorical variables Only-EUR whether or not arespondent was exclusively educated in Europe Only-Westexclusively in the ldquowestrdquo (here ldquowestrdquo defined as EuropeNorth America and Oceania) Only-NW exclusively ldquoNon-Westrdquo and West + NW mixed

Figure 1 shows the distributions of important variables inthe sample Approximately 50 of the sample had more than10 yr of teaching experience (Fig 1a) Forty were teachingmore than 25 contact hours per year out of which 18 didmore than 70 contact hours (Fig 1b) The field of educa-tion of the sample was largely engineering followed by sci-ence (Fig 1c) Among those who indicated the gender therewere twice as many men than women (Fig 1d) The sampleconsisted of predominantly European educated (school un-dergraduate and post-graduate) teachers (37 out of 58) Onlytwo respondents had had exclusively non-western education(Fig 1e) Slightly more than 50 of the sample had un-dergone significant didactic training sometime during their

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

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Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

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1 year1 to 2 years

2 to 5 years5 to 10 years

More than 10

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(a) Teaching Experience

NumberofCases

lt 10 10 to 25 25 to 70 gt 70 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(b) Teaching hours per year

NumberofCases

Science Engineering Other0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(c) Field of Education

NumberofCases

Male Female Unspecified0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

(d) Gender

NumberofCases

Only Eur Only West Only NWest West+NWest0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

(e) Where Studied

NumberofCases

Significant Not Significant0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(f) Didactic Training

NumberofCases

UTQ

Other

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample (a) Number of years of teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year (c) Field of undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender (e) Region where educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate) (f) Didactictraining Significant who have undergone significant didactic training (includes UTQ graduatesand those who responded as possessing significant didactic training from other sources) NonSignificant those who do not have undergone significant didactic training

25

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample(a) Number of yearsof teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year(c) Fieldof undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender(e) Regionwhere educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate)(f) Di-dactic training Significant who have undergone significant didac-tic training (includes UTQ graduates and those who responded aspossessing significant didactic training from other sources) Non-significant those who do not have undergone significant didactictraining

career out of which 17 had completed the UTQ program(Fig 1f)

We examined the correlations between all interval vari-ables (all except gender and educational background whichwere categorical) For the sample size of 58p = 5 criticalvalue for correlation is 026 We observed strong correlationsamong some of the five teaching styles Given the fact thatmany teachers demonstrate a combination of several of thesestyles ndash referred to as ldquoclustersrdquo (Grasha 1996 Lucas 2005Lucas and Wright 2009) this is to be expected (details aboutcor-relation analysis are given in Appendix A)

Next we examined whether there are statistically signifi-cant differences in teaching-styles between UTQ graduatesand faculty who were not significantly subjected to didac-tic training In this analysis we ignored the respondents whohad significant didactic training other than UTQ due to thefact that we did not have adequate information on the natureof such training to classify them to the same group as UTQgraduates

Due to the difficulty of making the normality assump-tion for all the variables in the survey outcome we se-lected Mann-Whitney U (MWU) test (also known as theMann-Whitney-Wilcoxon or Wilcoxon rank-sum test) to testthe differences of various categories of respondents MWUis a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test for assessing

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3682 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

whether one of two samples of independent observationstends to have larger values than the other and can be appliedfor unequal samples (Mann and Whitney 1947) GRETLrsquosMWU test reports the p-value of the test and U statistic(among other parameters) The results of the MWU tests aregiven in Table A2

Figure 2 shows the differences between UTQ trained fac-ulty vs those who did not have significant didactic trainingIt confirms that UTQ trained faculty belongs significantlymore to the facilitator (p lt 10 ) and delegator (p lt 1 )types No significant differences were found for the othercategories

Interestingly partitioning based on gender also showedsignificant differences in teaching styles Figure 3 showsthe differences between male (M) and female (F) respon-dents for the five teaching-styles and their inclination to un-dergo didactic training Female respondents had a lesser de-gree of ldquoformal authorityrdquo (p lt 1 ) and ldquopersonal modelrdquo(p lt 5 ) traits compared to male respondents Female re-spondents also liked to have didactic training significantly(p lt 5 ) more than the male respondents

We also found that the years of experience in teachingdid not have a significant (p lt 20 ) impact on teaching-styles although more experience significantly reduced (p lt

5 ) the inclination to have didactic training Further theeducational background of the faculty (exclusively westernvs mixed + non-Western) did not have any significant (p lt

10 ) impact on teaching-styles or the inclination to have di-dactic training

32 Survey 2

The key finding of the first survey towards our hypothesiswas that the degree of belonging to the facilitator and dele-gator style is significantly higher amongst UTQ trained fac-ulty compared to those who did not (yet) undergo significantdidactic training We conducted the second survey to corrob-orate this finding

First we used respondentsrsquo own assessment of their de-gree of belonging to each of the five teaching-styles beforeand after UTQ While the styles expert formal authority andpersonal model did not show statistically significant differ-ences those of facilitator and delegator did show signifi-cant (p = 0016 andp = 0007 respectively) increases (theMann-Whitney U-tests results are given in Table A5) Fig-ure 4 shows the five teaching-styles pre and post UTQ

We also did a compilation of answers to the descriptivequestions of the survey (provided as a Supplement to thismanuscript) which also showed similar opinions about whathas changed In general all staff members who participatedin the UTQ programme evaluated it as a positive experienceTeachers have become more aware of the fact that teach-ing should be primarily about what students learn and muchless about what they teach As one teacher indicated (see

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

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Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Pa

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Faculty with No Significant Didactic Training

Faculty with UTQTraining

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respondents and those who did nothave significant didactic training lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and 7th percentile

26

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respon-dents and those who did not have significant didactic traininglowast

indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and7th percentile

Supplement) ldquoI can teach as much as I like but if this doesnot lead to learning then it is all in vainrdquo

4 Discussion

41 Major findings

The first survey clearly showed that the degree of belong-ing to the facilitator and delegator teaching styles is signif-icantly higher among UTQ graduates compared to facultywho were not significantly trained in didactics The secondsurvey which was conducted using a completely differentapproach (and was therefore independent of the first survey)showed that according to the judgment of the UTQ graduatestheir degree of belonging to the facilitatordelegator styles in-creased significantly after UTQ training Therefore we canaccept the hypothesis that UTQ training significantly influ-ences teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE faculty enhancingtheir facilitator and delegator styles

Is is interesting to compare this findings with the sim-ilar study of Postareff et al (2007) They did a statisticalstudy of impact of university teachersrsquo pedagogical train-ing on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs us-ing some 200 faculty members of University of HelsinkiThe found that even when the effect of teaching experienceis held constant there was a positive impact of a siginfi-cant level of didactic training (of more than 30 EuropeanCredit Transfer System credits) in shifting the focus of teach-ing from information transmissionteacher-focused approachto teaching towards a more ldquoconceptual changestudent-focusedrdquo approach While the terminology used in that study

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3683HESSD

9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Male Faculty

Female Faculty

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Like Tr

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have didactic training between male andfemale respondents lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1

27

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have di-dactic training between male and female respondentslowast indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1

are different from the current one the findings are similar ina generic sense

The first survey also revealed some other interesting traitsFirst women showed a significantly lesser degree of be-longing to the formal authority and personal model teach-ing styles than men They also showed a significantly higherdegree of interest to follow didactic training Lastly theeducational background of teaching staff (West vs Non-westMixed) did not influence the teaching styles

42 Learning ndash the flip side

The teaching style is one of the many important parametersthat determine success of an educational program in otherwords the degree to which the students achieve the learningobjectives Ultimately what matters is the quality and effec-tiveness of learning which has a lot to do with the attitudesof the students These attitudes in-turn are largely governedby their background experiences habits and expectationsIn an organization like UNESCO-IHE the heterogeneity ofthe student background in terms of geographic origin edu-cation system professional experience etc is only reason-able to assume that there are considerable differences amongindividual studentsrsquo attitudes towards learning (Uhlenbrookand de Jong 2012) A majority of UNESCO-IHE studentsare mid-career professionals who have been working in thesector (industry government academia etc) for a minimumperiod of years (often much longer) after their bachelorrsquos de-gree (Pathirana et al 2012) They are of considerably higheraverage age than the post-graduate students of a classical uni-versity and therefore largely experienced only in the tradi-tional teacher-led mode of education The need for changingteaching styles is driven by the needs of the profession of hy-drology (Sect 21) attempting to address the nature of prob-lems that future professional have to solve and the skills theyneed to effectively do that We are of firm opinion that the

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

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Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

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03

04

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07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Before UTQ training

After UTQ Training

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in their teaching-styles after UTQ com-pared to before lowastlowastlowastplt1 lowastlowastplt5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

28

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in theirteaching-styles after UTQ compared to beforelowastlowastlowast p lt 1 lowastlowast

p lt 5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

employment of more facilitator and delegator traits by teach-ers will improve ability of the graduates to face up to thesechallenges However it is extremely important for the educa-tor to be aware of the fact that by doing so they may be forc-ing some students to get out of their ldquocomfort zonerdquo Gradualintroduction of change with careful monitoring of achievingthe learning outcomes and effective mentoring programs aretherefore recommended It is also not expected that an im-provement of immediate student feedback (eg student eval-uations) as a result of such a shift may be observed ndash in theshort-term even the opposite might happen

43 Limitations

The study has some limitations In the first survey we implic-itly assumed that the sample of faculty that had followed andcompleted the UTQ program was largely random and thattherefore existing traits of the faculty did not influence thedifferences that we observed We discussed this issue withthe department heads who were responsible for the selectionof staff for following UTQ In almost all cases the teachingperformance of the faculty or their teaching styles had notbeen considered in the selection process The final decision tofollow the course was however a joint one This could haveimplied that those that followed UTQ were inherently moreopen to didactic training However the inclination to followdidactic training was not significantly different (p = 30 )between the groups UTQ trained and other faculty Note thatwe do not have adequately large samples to conduct a non-parametric similarity (eg Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test

We need to question whether the statistically significantdifferences of teaching styles do imply a significant practicalimportance For example the mean value of delegator styleincreases from 052 to 075 due to UTQ training (Fig 4) a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3679

several dimensions Many or most engineering students arevisual sensing inductive and active and some of the mostcreative students are global most engineering education isauditory abstract (intuitive) deductive passive and sequen-tial These mismatches often lead to poor student perfor-mance professorial frustration and a loss to society of manypotentially excellent engineersrdquo This study and others since(eg Grasha and Yangarber-Hicks 2000) have emphasizedthe importance of understanding the teaching and learningstyles to gain more insights into their interplay in the processof university education

12 Appropriate mix of teaching styles for hydrology

Effective education in the fields of hydrology needs a com-bination of teaching styles of expert formal authority per-sonal model facilitator and delegator Take the example ofdesign of urban storm drainage systems the students shouldbe able to understand the physical processes theories govern-ing the flow of water in conduits and methods of calculation(eg computer models) They may also need to understandthe engineering practice norms regulation and standardsLast but not least there are skills beyond the technical as-pects that may best be conveyed by demonstrating to the stu-dents how some things are done successfully through study-ing real-world cases Expert formal-authority and personal-model aspects of teaching-styles could be useful for achiev-ing these However even for achieving these ldquobasicrdquo knowl-edge and skills in addition to traditional teaching facilitat-ing students to explore construct and internalize knowledgecould be effective (Felder and Silverman 1988) Facilitatorand delegator traits could be useful in this context Facilitat-ing and delegation can also work for stimulating students forlearning by developing their interest to the subject Howeverthe real need for these traits comes into play when the educa-tor is faced with the problem of helping students develop theadvanced skills to effectively apply what they have learnedIn the case of design of urban storm drainage systems thesemay include critically analyse a design communicate theessential aspects of a design to a multidisciplinary team ofexperts develop a ldquofeelingrdquo for accuracy of modelling re-sults These skills are also important when the students moveto the next stage of their academic programme namely con-ducting scientific research towards writing a masters thesis(Pathirana et al 2012) Encouraging the students to take ini-tiative in a supporting environment can help substantially indeveloping such skills In this context we argue that whileone teaching-style is not inherently superior to others it isimportant for hydrology educators to also learn to be facili-tators and delegators This is particularly important owing tothe fact that hydrology educators were historically not verygood at either

13 University teaching qualification (UTQ) atUNESCO-IHE

Each year UNESCO-IHE enrols some two hundred MSc stu-dents largely from developing countries in Asia Africa andLatin America in its master programmes in the field of wa-ter and environment The programmes and specialisations aremainly engineering oriented although some focus more onsciences or have significant social sciences components Thevast majority of these students are mid-career professionalswho upon graduation return to their countries and often playimportant roles in shaping the policy and practice in the wa-ter sector in these countries The fact that the graduates ofUNESCO-IHE end up in working in diverse geographicaleconomic and cultural settings makes it even more impor-tant to focus their education on the development of skills andcompetencies (cf Uhlenbrook and de Jong 2012) as opposedto merely delivering knowledge The breadth and nature ofthe water problems they may have to solve in their profes-sions are so large and diverse that it is practically impossibleto equip them during their education with all the knowl-edge and techniques needed to solve them It is important forUNESCO-IHE graduates to develop the ability to face un-derstand and solve water problems that are novel and chal-lenging It is therefore our belief that in order to foster stu-dent development in this direction a shift of focus amongstteaching staff from expertformal authority traits towards fa-cilitatordelegator traits is necessary While this may be seenas a universal requirement in higher education it is partic-ularly important for the learning environment at UNESCO-IHE due to its thematic-focus (water) and global mission andits heterogeneous student population that is characterized bya large cultural ethnic religious and language diversity

In order to achieve this shift and starting from 2010 fac-ulty of UNESCO-IHE is currently offered a didactic cer-tification program named university teaching qualification(UTQ) a programme aimed to develop didactic skills of theteaching staff in the direction of facilitating active learningin higher education The UTQ programme focuses on ldquocon-structive alignmentrdquo where the student constructs herhisown learning through relevant learning activities It stimu-lates the lecturer to create a learning environment that sup-ports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the de-sired learning outcomes In other words the UTQ training in-tends to stimulate UNESCO-IHE faculty to develop facilita-tordelegator teaching styles A programme aimed to developdidactic skills of the teaching staff in the direction of facil-itating active learning in higher education UTQ candidatesafter an introductory meeting with the UTQ coach ndash who isa qualified educationalist ndash participate in a refresher courseon didactics (total about 10ndash12 h of contact time) Then withthe help of the coach they plan the UTQ portfolio activitiesThey spend around 130 h typically spread over a one yearperiod compiling the portfolio which is then assessed by a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3680 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

portfolio committee The UTQ programme is described indetail in Appendix B

The UTQ program is based on the theory of construc-tive alignment ndash a type of outcome based education usedfor devising teaching and learning activities and assessmenttasks that directly address the learning outcomes intended ina way not typically achieved in traditional lectures tutorialclasses and examinations (Biggs and Tang 2011) Construc-tive alignment is a combination of two principles first con-structivism which states that learning is an active construc-tive process where the learner actively constructs knowledgeThen there is the concept of ldquoAligned Teachingrdquo stating thatfor effective learning the stated learning objectives activi-ties for achieving those objectives and the assessment of thelevel of achievement should be consistent ndash or aligned ndash witheach other It stimulates the lecturer to create a learning en-vironment that supports the learning activities appropriate toachieving the desired learning outcomes rather than focusingon transferring on knowledge In other words the UTQ train-ing intends to stimulate UNESCO-IHE faculty to develop fa-cilitatordelegator teaching styles

After running the UTQ program for two years and pro-ducing about 20 graduates we were interested to know theimpact of the program An important logical step in this di-rection is to understand the profile of the faculty in relationto UTQ and didactic training in general Our working hy-pothesis in this study was that UTQ training will signifi-cantly alter the teaching-styles of faculty at UNESCO-IHEin a direction that fosters learning styles that lead to thedevelopment of necessary skills to solve the broad multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary problems in the water sec-tor We based our study on Grasharsquos (1996) teaching styleclassification The hypothesis translates then into a questionwhether the UTQ program was instrumental in shifting theteaching styles from the expertformal authority towards fa-cilitatordelegator traits

In the next section we discuss the approach we used totest our hypothesis Then we present the statistical analysisof the data and the results Finally we discuss the resultsand arrive at conclusions We also discuss the limitationsof our approach the possible peculiarities of the population(ldquoUNESCO-IHE facultyrdquo) and the validity of the conclusionsbeyond the population studied

2 Methodology

The most straightforward method for testing our hypothesisis to examine the population before and after UTQ (treat-ment) However in the present case there are several prob-lems in using this approach Unless the participants weretested before UTQ (which had not been done) there is noway of objectively ascertaining the changes between be-fore and after It is of course possible to question the UTQgraduates about their personal ldquobeforerdquo and ldquoafterrdquo situation

However this type of survey instrument is prone to be influ-enced by issues related to personal judgment of individualsThe other alternative is to examine the differences betweenfaculty who have undergone UTQ and those who did notThis approach has the weakness that any non-randomness ofselectionvolunteering of staff for UTQ might have an im-pact on the results After careful consideration of both ap-proaches we decided to apply a combination of the two

First we conducted a detailed survey on all faculty ofUNESCO-IHE and examined whether there are statisticallysignificant differences among the two classes (UTQ vs oth-ers) Then we used a follow up survey among UTQ graduatesto see if the outcome validates the results of the first survey

We based our analysis of teaching-style on the five stylesdefined by Grasha (1996) In the first survey we used the val-idated survey instrument comprising of 40 questions (Teach-ing Styles Inventory Version 30 Grasha 1996) We alsoquestioned the participants on their academic background(teaching experience in years current level of engagement inteaching as number of hours per year field of expertise (un-dergraduate major) of the respondent previous experience indidactic training including UTQ other programs like UTQseminars and workshops) Further we also asked them to rate(on a five point scale) their inclination to have future didac-tic training and belief whether they will benefit from suchtraining Optionally the respondents could state their gen-der and geographical area where they did (a) most of theirschooling (b) their undergraduate degree and (c) their high-est post-graduate degree

In the second survey after describing the nature of eachstyle (after Grasha 1996 p 154 Table 4-1) we invited theUTQ graduates to assess their ldquolevel of belongingrdquo to eachclass before and after UTQ training Further we asked themto provide descriptive answers to the following questions

ndash What were the most important things you learned

ndash What (if any) did you change in your classroom behav-ior and interaction with students compared to what youdid before you followed the UTQ course

ndash If yes has your new way of teaching lead to improve-ments ndash for yourself and for the students (YesNo) Inwhat way

ndash If nothing substantially changed why not

Further we also asked the respondents to rate on a fivepoint scale whether they disagreedagreed to the followingpropositions

ndash The UTQ program was useful to you

ndash you learned new things during the course

ndash the UTQ trainer stimulated your learning

ndash your colleagues stimulated your learning and

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3681

ndash you have applied what you learned in the course in yourown teaching activities

Both surveys were conducted online (Lime Survey 2011)anonymously but using a token-based control system so thatonly invitees could respond There was no opportunity formultiple responses from the same invitee

3 Results

31 Survey 1

UNESCO-IHE has around 100 academic staff of which some90 are significantly involved in teaching Out of the totalof 68 people that responded ten responses were incompleteand therefore 58 records were available for analysis The op-tional questions on gender and educational background wereskipped by seven and eight respondents respectively ndash mak-ing the sample size somewhat smaller for those variablesThe results were analysed using a statistical analysis tool(GRETL Cottrell and Lucchetti 2011) The answers to theforty questions in the Grasharsquos teaching-style part were usedto compute the degree of belonging to each of the five stylesexpert formal authority personal model facilitator and del-egator Category choices for teaching experience and cur-rent level of teaching engagement were converted to intervalvariables (Table A1) The multi-choice for previous didac-tic experience was added up giving weights of 1 2 and 4for seminarsworkshops once more than once and longerUTQ type certification trainings respectively For example ifa responded has attended multiple seminars a workshop andUTQ she would be assigned 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 All rating scales(eg would you like to undergo in didactic training in the fu-ture) were five choice (ranging from ldquostrongly-disagreerdquo toldquostrongly-agreerdquo) and were converted to interval values rang-ing from 1 to 5

The educational background questions were used to de-rive four categorical variables Only-EUR whether or not arespondent was exclusively educated in Europe Only-Westexclusively in the ldquowestrdquo (here ldquowestrdquo defined as EuropeNorth America and Oceania) Only-NW exclusively ldquoNon-Westrdquo and West + NW mixed

Figure 1 shows the distributions of important variables inthe sample Approximately 50 of the sample had more than10 yr of teaching experience (Fig 1a) Forty were teachingmore than 25 contact hours per year out of which 18 didmore than 70 contact hours (Fig 1b) The field of educa-tion of the sample was largely engineering followed by sci-ence (Fig 1c) Among those who indicated the gender therewere twice as many men than women (Fig 1d) The sampleconsisted of predominantly European educated (school un-dergraduate and post-graduate) teachers (37 out of 58) Onlytwo respondents had had exclusively non-western education(Fig 1e) Slightly more than 50 of the sample had un-dergone significant didactic training sometime during their

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

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1 year1 to 2 years

2 to 5 years5 to 10 years

More than 10

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(a) Teaching Experience

NumberofCases

lt 10 10 to 25 25 to 70 gt 70 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(b) Teaching hours per year

NumberofCases

Science Engineering Other0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(c) Field of Education

NumberofCases

Male Female Unspecified0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

(d) Gender

NumberofCases

Only Eur Only West Only NWest West+NWest0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

(e) Where Studied

NumberofCases

Significant Not Significant0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(f) Didactic Training

NumberofCases

UTQ

Other

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample (a) Number of years of teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year (c) Field of undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender (e) Region where educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate) (f) Didactictraining Significant who have undergone significant didactic training (includes UTQ graduatesand those who responded as possessing significant didactic training from other sources) NonSignificant those who do not have undergone significant didactic training

25

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample(a) Number of yearsof teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year(c) Fieldof undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender(e) Regionwhere educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate)(f) Di-dactic training Significant who have undergone significant didac-tic training (includes UTQ graduates and those who responded aspossessing significant didactic training from other sources) Non-significant those who do not have undergone significant didactictraining

career out of which 17 had completed the UTQ program(Fig 1f)

We examined the correlations between all interval vari-ables (all except gender and educational background whichwere categorical) For the sample size of 58p = 5 criticalvalue for correlation is 026 We observed strong correlationsamong some of the five teaching styles Given the fact thatmany teachers demonstrate a combination of several of thesestyles ndash referred to as ldquoclustersrdquo (Grasha 1996 Lucas 2005Lucas and Wright 2009) this is to be expected (details aboutcor-relation analysis are given in Appendix A)

Next we examined whether there are statistically signifi-cant differences in teaching-styles between UTQ graduatesand faculty who were not significantly subjected to didac-tic training In this analysis we ignored the respondents whohad significant didactic training other than UTQ due to thefact that we did not have adequate information on the natureof such training to classify them to the same group as UTQgraduates

Due to the difficulty of making the normality assump-tion for all the variables in the survey outcome we se-lected Mann-Whitney U (MWU) test (also known as theMann-Whitney-Wilcoxon or Wilcoxon rank-sum test) to testthe differences of various categories of respondents MWUis a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test for assessing

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3682 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

whether one of two samples of independent observationstends to have larger values than the other and can be appliedfor unequal samples (Mann and Whitney 1947) GRETLrsquosMWU test reports the p-value of the test and U statistic(among other parameters) The results of the MWU tests aregiven in Table A2

Figure 2 shows the differences between UTQ trained fac-ulty vs those who did not have significant didactic trainingIt confirms that UTQ trained faculty belongs significantlymore to the facilitator (p lt 10 ) and delegator (p lt 1 )types No significant differences were found for the othercategories

Interestingly partitioning based on gender also showedsignificant differences in teaching styles Figure 3 showsthe differences between male (M) and female (F) respon-dents for the five teaching-styles and their inclination to un-dergo didactic training Female respondents had a lesser de-gree of ldquoformal authorityrdquo (p lt 1 ) and ldquopersonal modelrdquo(p lt 5 ) traits compared to male respondents Female re-spondents also liked to have didactic training significantly(p lt 5 ) more than the male respondents

We also found that the years of experience in teachingdid not have a significant (p lt 20 ) impact on teaching-styles although more experience significantly reduced (p lt

5 ) the inclination to have didactic training Further theeducational background of the faculty (exclusively westernvs mixed + non-Western) did not have any significant (p lt

10 ) impact on teaching-styles or the inclination to have di-dactic training

32 Survey 2

The key finding of the first survey towards our hypothesiswas that the degree of belonging to the facilitator and dele-gator style is significantly higher amongst UTQ trained fac-ulty compared to those who did not (yet) undergo significantdidactic training We conducted the second survey to corrob-orate this finding

First we used respondentsrsquo own assessment of their de-gree of belonging to each of the five teaching-styles beforeand after UTQ While the styles expert formal authority andpersonal model did not show statistically significant differ-ences those of facilitator and delegator did show signifi-cant (p = 0016 andp = 0007 respectively) increases (theMann-Whitney U-tests results are given in Table A5) Fig-ure 4 shows the five teaching-styles pre and post UTQ

We also did a compilation of answers to the descriptivequestions of the survey (provided as a Supplement to thismanuscript) which also showed similar opinions about whathas changed In general all staff members who participatedin the UTQ programme evaluated it as a positive experienceTeachers have become more aware of the fact that teach-ing should be primarily about what students learn and muchless about what they teach As one teacher indicated (see

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Pa

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Discussion

Pa

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Faculty with No Significant Didactic Training

Faculty with UTQTraining

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respondents and those who did nothave significant didactic training lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and 7th percentile

26

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respon-dents and those who did not have significant didactic traininglowast

indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and7th percentile

Supplement) ldquoI can teach as much as I like but if this doesnot lead to learning then it is all in vainrdquo

4 Discussion

41 Major findings

The first survey clearly showed that the degree of belong-ing to the facilitator and delegator teaching styles is signif-icantly higher among UTQ graduates compared to facultywho were not significantly trained in didactics The secondsurvey which was conducted using a completely differentapproach (and was therefore independent of the first survey)showed that according to the judgment of the UTQ graduatestheir degree of belonging to the facilitatordelegator styles in-creased significantly after UTQ training Therefore we canaccept the hypothesis that UTQ training significantly influ-ences teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE faculty enhancingtheir facilitator and delegator styles

Is is interesting to compare this findings with the sim-ilar study of Postareff et al (2007) They did a statisticalstudy of impact of university teachersrsquo pedagogical train-ing on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs us-ing some 200 faculty members of University of HelsinkiThe found that even when the effect of teaching experienceis held constant there was a positive impact of a siginfi-cant level of didactic training (of more than 30 EuropeanCredit Transfer System credits) in shifting the focus of teach-ing from information transmissionteacher-focused approachto teaching towards a more ldquoconceptual changestudent-focusedrdquo approach While the terminology used in that study

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3683HESSD

9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Male Faculty

Female Faculty

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Like Tr

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have didactic training between male andfemale respondents lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1

27

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have di-dactic training between male and female respondentslowast indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1

are different from the current one the findings are similar ina generic sense

The first survey also revealed some other interesting traitsFirst women showed a significantly lesser degree of be-longing to the formal authority and personal model teach-ing styles than men They also showed a significantly higherdegree of interest to follow didactic training Lastly theeducational background of teaching staff (West vs Non-westMixed) did not influence the teaching styles

42 Learning ndash the flip side

The teaching style is one of the many important parametersthat determine success of an educational program in otherwords the degree to which the students achieve the learningobjectives Ultimately what matters is the quality and effec-tiveness of learning which has a lot to do with the attitudesof the students These attitudes in-turn are largely governedby their background experiences habits and expectationsIn an organization like UNESCO-IHE the heterogeneity ofthe student background in terms of geographic origin edu-cation system professional experience etc is only reason-able to assume that there are considerable differences amongindividual studentsrsquo attitudes towards learning (Uhlenbrookand de Jong 2012) A majority of UNESCO-IHE studentsare mid-career professionals who have been working in thesector (industry government academia etc) for a minimumperiod of years (often much longer) after their bachelorrsquos de-gree (Pathirana et al 2012) They are of considerably higheraverage age than the post-graduate students of a classical uni-versity and therefore largely experienced only in the tradi-tional teacher-led mode of education The need for changingteaching styles is driven by the needs of the profession of hy-drology (Sect 21) attempting to address the nature of prob-lems that future professional have to solve and the skills theyneed to effectively do that We are of firm opinion that the

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

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iscussionP

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Before UTQ training

After UTQ Training

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in their teaching-styles after UTQ com-pared to before lowastlowastlowastplt1 lowastlowastplt5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

28

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in theirteaching-styles after UTQ compared to beforelowastlowastlowast p lt 1 lowastlowast

p lt 5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

employment of more facilitator and delegator traits by teach-ers will improve ability of the graduates to face up to thesechallenges However it is extremely important for the educa-tor to be aware of the fact that by doing so they may be forc-ing some students to get out of their ldquocomfort zonerdquo Gradualintroduction of change with careful monitoring of achievingthe learning outcomes and effective mentoring programs aretherefore recommended It is also not expected that an im-provement of immediate student feedback (eg student eval-uations) as a result of such a shift may be observed ndash in theshort-term even the opposite might happen

43 Limitations

The study has some limitations In the first survey we implic-itly assumed that the sample of faculty that had followed andcompleted the UTQ program was largely random and thattherefore existing traits of the faculty did not influence thedifferences that we observed We discussed this issue withthe department heads who were responsible for the selectionof staff for following UTQ In almost all cases the teachingperformance of the faculty or their teaching styles had notbeen considered in the selection process The final decision tofollow the course was however a joint one This could haveimplied that those that followed UTQ were inherently moreopen to didactic training However the inclination to followdidactic training was not significantly different (p = 30 )between the groups UTQ trained and other faculty Note thatwe do not have adequately large samples to conduct a non-parametric similarity (eg Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test

We need to question whether the statistically significantdifferences of teaching styles do imply a significant practicalimportance For example the mean value of delegator styleincreases from 052 to 075 due to UTQ training (Fig 4) a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3680 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

portfolio committee The UTQ programme is described indetail in Appendix B

The UTQ program is based on the theory of construc-tive alignment ndash a type of outcome based education usedfor devising teaching and learning activities and assessmenttasks that directly address the learning outcomes intended ina way not typically achieved in traditional lectures tutorialclasses and examinations (Biggs and Tang 2011) Construc-tive alignment is a combination of two principles first con-structivism which states that learning is an active construc-tive process where the learner actively constructs knowledgeThen there is the concept of ldquoAligned Teachingrdquo stating thatfor effective learning the stated learning objectives activi-ties for achieving those objectives and the assessment of thelevel of achievement should be consistent ndash or aligned ndash witheach other It stimulates the lecturer to create a learning en-vironment that supports the learning activities appropriate toachieving the desired learning outcomes rather than focusingon transferring on knowledge In other words the UTQ train-ing intends to stimulate UNESCO-IHE faculty to develop fa-cilitatordelegator teaching styles

After running the UTQ program for two years and pro-ducing about 20 graduates we were interested to know theimpact of the program An important logical step in this di-rection is to understand the profile of the faculty in relationto UTQ and didactic training in general Our working hy-pothesis in this study was that UTQ training will signifi-cantly alter the teaching-styles of faculty at UNESCO-IHEin a direction that fosters learning styles that lead to thedevelopment of necessary skills to solve the broad multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary problems in the water sec-tor We based our study on Grasharsquos (1996) teaching styleclassification The hypothesis translates then into a questionwhether the UTQ program was instrumental in shifting theteaching styles from the expertformal authority towards fa-cilitatordelegator traits

In the next section we discuss the approach we used totest our hypothesis Then we present the statistical analysisof the data and the results Finally we discuss the resultsand arrive at conclusions We also discuss the limitationsof our approach the possible peculiarities of the population(ldquoUNESCO-IHE facultyrdquo) and the validity of the conclusionsbeyond the population studied

2 Methodology

The most straightforward method for testing our hypothesisis to examine the population before and after UTQ (treat-ment) However in the present case there are several prob-lems in using this approach Unless the participants weretested before UTQ (which had not been done) there is noway of objectively ascertaining the changes between be-fore and after It is of course possible to question the UTQgraduates about their personal ldquobeforerdquo and ldquoafterrdquo situation

However this type of survey instrument is prone to be influ-enced by issues related to personal judgment of individualsThe other alternative is to examine the differences betweenfaculty who have undergone UTQ and those who did notThis approach has the weakness that any non-randomness ofselectionvolunteering of staff for UTQ might have an im-pact on the results After careful consideration of both ap-proaches we decided to apply a combination of the two

First we conducted a detailed survey on all faculty ofUNESCO-IHE and examined whether there are statisticallysignificant differences among the two classes (UTQ vs oth-ers) Then we used a follow up survey among UTQ graduatesto see if the outcome validates the results of the first survey

We based our analysis of teaching-style on the five stylesdefined by Grasha (1996) In the first survey we used the val-idated survey instrument comprising of 40 questions (Teach-ing Styles Inventory Version 30 Grasha 1996) We alsoquestioned the participants on their academic background(teaching experience in years current level of engagement inteaching as number of hours per year field of expertise (un-dergraduate major) of the respondent previous experience indidactic training including UTQ other programs like UTQseminars and workshops) Further we also asked them to rate(on a five point scale) their inclination to have future didac-tic training and belief whether they will benefit from suchtraining Optionally the respondents could state their gen-der and geographical area where they did (a) most of theirschooling (b) their undergraduate degree and (c) their high-est post-graduate degree

In the second survey after describing the nature of eachstyle (after Grasha 1996 p 154 Table 4-1) we invited theUTQ graduates to assess their ldquolevel of belongingrdquo to eachclass before and after UTQ training Further we asked themto provide descriptive answers to the following questions

ndash What were the most important things you learned

ndash What (if any) did you change in your classroom behav-ior and interaction with students compared to what youdid before you followed the UTQ course

ndash If yes has your new way of teaching lead to improve-ments ndash for yourself and for the students (YesNo) Inwhat way

ndash If nothing substantially changed why not

Further we also asked the respondents to rate on a fivepoint scale whether they disagreedagreed to the followingpropositions

ndash The UTQ program was useful to you

ndash you learned new things during the course

ndash the UTQ trainer stimulated your learning

ndash your colleagues stimulated your learning and

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3681

ndash you have applied what you learned in the course in yourown teaching activities

Both surveys were conducted online (Lime Survey 2011)anonymously but using a token-based control system so thatonly invitees could respond There was no opportunity formultiple responses from the same invitee

3 Results

31 Survey 1

UNESCO-IHE has around 100 academic staff of which some90 are significantly involved in teaching Out of the totalof 68 people that responded ten responses were incompleteand therefore 58 records were available for analysis The op-tional questions on gender and educational background wereskipped by seven and eight respondents respectively ndash mak-ing the sample size somewhat smaller for those variablesThe results were analysed using a statistical analysis tool(GRETL Cottrell and Lucchetti 2011) The answers to theforty questions in the Grasharsquos teaching-style part were usedto compute the degree of belonging to each of the five stylesexpert formal authority personal model facilitator and del-egator Category choices for teaching experience and cur-rent level of teaching engagement were converted to intervalvariables (Table A1) The multi-choice for previous didac-tic experience was added up giving weights of 1 2 and 4for seminarsworkshops once more than once and longerUTQ type certification trainings respectively For example ifa responded has attended multiple seminars a workshop andUTQ she would be assigned 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 All rating scales(eg would you like to undergo in didactic training in the fu-ture) were five choice (ranging from ldquostrongly-disagreerdquo toldquostrongly-agreerdquo) and were converted to interval values rang-ing from 1 to 5

The educational background questions were used to de-rive four categorical variables Only-EUR whether or not arespondent was exclusively educated in Europe Only-Westexclusively in the ldquowestrdquo (here ldquowestrdquo defined as EuropeNorth America and Oceania) Only-NW exclusively ldquoNon-Westrdquo and West + NW mixed

Figure 1 shows the distributions of important variables inthe sample Approximately 50 of the sample had more than10 yr of teaching experience (Fig 1a) Forty were teachingmore than 25 contact hours per year out of which 18 didmore than 70 contact hours (Fig 1b) The field of educa-tion of the sample was largely engineering followed by sci-ence (Fig 1c) Among those who indicated the gender therewere twice as many men than women (Fig 1d) The sampleconsisted of predominantly European educated (school un-dergraduate and post-graduate) teachers (37 out of 58) Onlytwo respondents had had exclusively non-western education(Fig 1e) Slightly more than 50 of the sample had un-dergone significant didactic training sometime during their

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

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1 year1 to 2 years

2 to 5 years5 to 10 years

More than 10

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(a) Teaching Experience

NumberofCases

lt 10 10 to 25 25 to 70 gt 70 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(b) Teaching hours per year

NumberofCases

Science Engineering Other0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(c) Field of Education

NumberofCases

Male Female Unspecified0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

(d) Gender

NumberofCases

Only Eur Only West Only NWest West+NWest0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

(e) Where Studied

NumberofCases

Significant Not Significant0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(f) Didactic Training

NumberofCases

UTQ

Other

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample (a) Number of years of teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year (c) Field of undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender (e) Region where educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate) (f) Didactictraining Significant who have undergone significant didactic training (includes UTQ graduatesand those who responded as possessing significant didactic training from other sources) NonSignificant those who do not have undergone significant didactic training

25

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample(a) Number of yearsof teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year(c) Fieldof undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender(e) Regionwhere educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate)(f) Di-dactic training Significant who have undergone significant didac-tic training (includes UTQ graduates and those who responded aspossessing significant didactic training from other sources) Non-significant those who do not have undergone significant didactictraining

career out of which 17 had completed the UTQ program(Fig 1f)

We examined the correlations between all interval vari-ables (all except gender and educational background whichwere categorical) For the sample size of 58p = 5 criticalvalue for correlation is 026 We observed strong correlationsamong some of the five teaching styles Given the fact thatmany teachers demonstrate a combination of several of thesestyles ndash referred to as ldquoclustersrdquo (Grasha 1996 Lucas 2005Lucas and Wright 2009) this is to be expected (details aboutcor-relation analysis are given in Appendix A)

Next we examined whether there are statistically signifi-cant differences in teaching-styles between UTQ graduatesand faculty who were not significantly subjected to didac-tic training In this analysis we ignored the respondents whohad significant didactic training other than UTQ due to thefact that we did not have adequate information on the natureof such training to classify them to the same group as UTQgraduates

Due to the difficulty of making the normality assump-tion for all the variables in the survey outcome we se-lected Mann-Whitney U (MWU) test (also known as theMann-Whitney-Wilcoxon or Wilcoxon rank-sum test) to testthe differences of various categories of respondents MWUis a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test for assessing

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3682 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

whether one of two samples of independent observationstends to have larger values than the other and can be appliedfor unequal samples (Mann and Whitney 1947) GRETLrsquosMWU test reports the p-value of the test and U statistic(among other parameters) The results of the MWU tests aregiven in Table A2

Figure 2 shows the differences between UTQ trained fac-ulty vs those who did not have significant didactic trainingIt confirms that UTQ trained faculty belongs significantlymore to the facilitator (p lt 10 ) and delegator (p lt 1 )types No significant differences were found for the othercategories

Interestingly partitioning based on gender also showedsignificant differences in teaching styles Figure 3 showsthe differences between male (M) and female (F) respon-dents for the five teaching-styles and their inclination to un-dergo didactic training Female respondents had a lesser de-gree of ldquoformal authorityrdquo (p lt 1 ) and ldquopersonal modelrdquo(p lt 5 ) traits compared to male respondents Female re-spondents also liked to have didactic training significantly(p lt 5 ) more than the male respondents

We also found that the years of experience in teachingdid not have a significant (p lt 20 ) impact on teaching-styles although more experience significantly reduced (p lt

5 ) the inclination to have didactic training Further theeducational background of the faculty (exclusively westernvs mixed + non-Western) did not have any significant (p lt

10 ) impact on teaching-styles or the inclination to have di-dactic training

32 Survey 2

The key finding of the first survey towards our hypothesiswas that the degree of belonging to the facilitator and dele-gator style is significantly higher amongst UTQ trained fac-ulty compared to those who did not (yet) undergo significantdidactic training We conducted the second survey to corrob-orate this finding

First we used respondentsrsquo own assessment of their de-gree of belonging to each of the five teaching-styles beforeand after UTQ While the styles expert formal authority andpersonal model did not show statistically significant differ-ences those of facilitator and delegator did show signifi-cant (p = 0016 andp = 0007 respectively) increases (theMann-Whitney U-tests results are given in Table A5) Fig-ure 4 shows the five teaching-styles pre and post UTQ

We also did a compilation of answers to the descriptivequestions of the survey (provided as a Supplement to thismanuscript) which also showed similar opinions about whathas changed In general all staff members who participatedin the UTQ programme evaluated it as a positive experienceTeachers have become more aware of the fact that teach-ing should be primarily about what students learn and muchless about what they teach As one teacher indicated (see

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Pa

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Discussion

Pa

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Discussion

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Faculty with No Significant Didactic Training

Faculty with UTQTraining

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respondents and those who did nothave significant didactic training lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and 7th percentile

26

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respon-dents and those who did not have significant didactic traininglowast

indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and7th percentile

Supplement) ldquoI can teach as much as I like but if this doesnot lead to learning then it is all in vainrdquo

4 Discussion

41 Major findings

The first survey clearly showed that the degree of belong-ing to the facilitator and delegator teaching styles is signif-icantly higher among UTQ graduates compared to facultywho were not significantly trained in didactics The secondsurvey which was conducted using a completely differentapproach (and was therefore independent of the first survey)showed that according to the judgment of the UTQ graduatestheir degree of belonging to the facilitatordelegator styles in-creased significantly after UTQ training Therefore we canaccept the hypothesis that UTQ training significantly influ-ences teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE faculty enhancingtheir facilitator and delegator styles

Is is interesting to compare this findings with the sim-ilar study of Postareff et al (2007) They did a statisticalstudy of impact of university teachersrsquo pedagogical train-ing on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs us-ing some 200 faculty members of University of HelsinkiThe found that even when the effect of teaching experienceis held constant there was a positive impact of a siginfi-cant level of didactic training (of more than 30 EuropeanCredit Transfer System credits) in shifting the focus of teach-ing from information transmissionteacher-focused approachto teaching towards a more ldquoconceptual changestudent-focusedrdquo approach While the terminology used in that study

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3683HESSD

9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

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iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Male Faculty

Female Faculty

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Like Tr

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have didactic training between male andfemale respondents lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1

27

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have di-dactic training between male and female respondentslowast indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1

are different from the current one the findings are similar ina generic sense

The first survey also revealed some other interesting traitsFirst women showed a significantly lesser degree of be-longing to the formal authority and personal model teach-ing styles than men They also showed a significantly higherdegree of interest to follow didactic training Lastly theeducational background of teaching staff (West vs Non-westMixed) did not influence the teaching styles

42 Learning ndash the flip side

The teaching style is one of the many important parametersthat determine success of an educational program in otherwords the degree to which the students achieve the learningobjectives Ultimately what matters is the quality and effec-tiveness of learning which has a lot to do with the attitudesof the students These attitudes in-turn are largely governedby their background experiences habits and expectationsIn an organization like UNESCO-IHE the heterogeneity ofthe student background in terms of geographic origin edu-cation system professional experience etc is only reason-able to assume that there are considerable differences amongindividual studentsrsquo attitudes towards learning (Uhlenbrookand de Jong 2012) A majority of UNESCO-IHE studentsare mid-career professionals who have been working in thesector (industry government academia etc) for a minimumperiod of years (often much longer) after their bachelorrsquos de-gree (Pathirana et al 2012) They are of considerably higheraverage age than the post-graduate students of a classical uni-versity and therefore largely experienced only in the tradi-tional teacher-led mode of education The need for changingteaching styles is driven by the needs of the profession of hy-drology (Sect 21) attempting to address the nature of prob-lems that future professional have to solve and the skills theyneed to effectively do that We are of firm opinion that the

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

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iscussionP

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Discussion

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Before UTQ training

After UTQ Training

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in their teaching-styles after UTQ com-pared to before lowastlowastlowastplt1 lowastlowastplt5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

28

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in theirteaching-styles after UTQ compared to beforelowastlowastlowast p lt 1 lowastlowast

p lt 5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

employment of more facilitator and delegator traits by teach-ers will improve ability of the graduates to face up to thesechallenges However it is extremely important for the educa-tor to be aware of the fact that by doing so they may be forc-ing some students to get out of their ldquocomfort zonerdquo Gradualintroduction of change with careful monitoring of achievingthe learning outcomes and effective mentoring programs aretherefore recommended It is also not expected that an im-provement of immediate student feedback (eg student eval-uations) as a result of such a shift may be observed ndash in theshort-term even the opposite might happen

43 Limitations

The study has some limitations In the first survey we implic-itly assumed that the sample of faculty that had followed andcompleted the UTQ program was largely random and thattherefore existing traits of the faculty did not influence thedifferences that we observed We discussed this issue withthe department heads who were responsible for the selectionof staff for following UTQ In almost all cases the teachingperformance of the faculty or their teaching styles had notbeen considered in the selection process The final decision tofollow the course was however a joint one This could haveimplied that those that followed UTQ were inherently moreopen to didactic training However the inclination to followdidactic training was not significantly different (p = 30 )between the groups UTQ trained and other faculty Note thatwe do not have adequately large samples to conduct a non-parametric similarity (eg Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test

We need to question whether the statistically significantdifferences of teaching styles do imply a significant practicalimportance For example the mean value of delegator styleincreases from 052 to 075 due to UTQ training (Fig 4) a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3681

ndash you have applied what you learned in the course in yourown teaching activities

Both surveys were conducted online (Lime Survey 2011)anonymously but using a token-based control system so thatonly invitees could respond There was no opportunity formultiple responses from the same invitee

3 Results

31 Survey 1

UNESCO-IHE has around 100 academic staff of which some90 are significantly involved in teaching Out of the totalof 68 people that responded ten responses were incompleteand therefore 58 records were available for analysis The op-tional questions on gender and educational background wereskipped by seven and eight respondents respectively ndash mak-ing the sample size somewhat smaller for those variablesThe results were analysed using a statistical analysis tool(GRETL Cottrell and Lucchetti 2011) The answers to theforty questions in the Grasharsquos teaching-style part were usedto compute the degree of belonging to each of the five stylesexpert formal authority personal model facilitator and del-egator Category choices for teaching experience and cur-rent level of teaching engagement were converted to intervalvariables (Table A1) The multi-choice for previous didac-tic experience was added up giving weights of 1 2 and 4for seminarsworkshops once more than once and longerUTQ type certification trainings respectively For example ifa responded has attended multiple seminars a workshop andUTQ she would be assigned 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 All rating scales(eg would you like to undergo in didactic training in the fu-ture) were five choice (ranging from ldquostrongly-disagreerdquo toldquostrongly-agreerdquo) and were converted to interval values rang-ing from 1 to 5

The educational background questions were used to de-rive four categorical variables Only-EUR whether or not arespondent was exclusively educated in Europe Only-Westexclusively in the ldquowestrdquo (here ldquowestrdquo defined as EuropeNorth America and Oceania) Only-NW exclusively ldquoNon-Westrdquo and West + NW mixed

Figure 1 shows the distributions of important variables inthe sample Approximately 50 of the sample had more than10 yr of teaching experience (Fig 1a) Forty were teachingmore than 25 contact hours per year out of which 18 didmore than 70 contact hours (Fig 1b) The field of educa-tion of the sample was largely engineering followed by sci-ence (Fig 1c) Among those who indicated the gender therewere twice as many men than women (Fig 1d) The sampleconsisted of predominantly European educated (school un-dergraduate and post-graduate) teachers (37 out of 58) Onlytwo respondents had had exclusively non-western education(Fig 1e) Slightly more than 50 of the sample had un-dergone significant didactic training sometime during their

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

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1 year1 to 2 years

2 to 5 years5 to 10 years

More than 10

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(a) Teaching Experience

NumberofCases

lt 10 10 to 25 25 to 70 gt 70 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

(b) Teaching hours per year

NumberofCases

Science Engineering Other0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(c) Field of Education

NumberofCases

Male Female Unspecified0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

(d) Gender

NumberofCases

Only Eur Only West Only NWest West+NWest0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

(e) Where Studied

NumberofCases

Significant Not Significant0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

(f) Didactic Training

NumberofCases

UTQ

Other

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample (a) Number of years of teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year (c) Field of undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender (e) Region where educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate) (f) Didactictraining Significant who have undergone significant didactic training (includes UTQ graduatesand those who responded as possessing significant didactic training from other sources) NonSignificant those who do not have undergone significant didactic training

25

Fig 1 Basic statistics of the survey sample(a) Number of yearsof teaching experience(b) Current hours taught per year(c) Fieldof undergraduate degree of the respondent(d) Gender(e) Regionwhere educated (school undergraduate and postgraduate)(f) Di-dactic training Significant who have undergone significant didac-tic training (includes UTQ graduates and those who responded aspossessing significant didactic training from other sources) Non-significant those who do not have undergone significant didactictraining

career out of which 17 had completed the UTQ program(Fig 1f)

We examined the correlations between all interval vari-ables (all except gender and educational background whichwere categorical) For the sample size of 58p = 5 criticalvalue for correlation is 026 We observed strong correlationsamong some of the five teaching styles Given the fact thatmany teachers demonstrate a combination of several of thesestyles ndash referred to as ldquoclustersrdquo (Grasha 1996 Lucas 2005Lucas and Wright 2009) this is to be expected (details aboutcor-relation analysis are given in Appendix A)

Next we examined whether there are statistically signifi-cant differences in teaching-styles between UTQ graduatesand faculty who were not significantly subjected to didac-tic training In this analysis we ignored the respondents whohad significant didactic training other than UTQ due to thefact that we did not have adequate information on the natureof such training to classify them to the same group as UTQgraduates

Due to the difficulty of making the normality assump-tion for all the variables in the survey outcome we se-lected Mann-Whitney U (MWU) test (also known as theMann-Whitney-Wilcoxon or Wilcoxon rank-sum test) to testthe differences of various categories of respondents MWUis a non-parametric statistical hypothesis test for assessing

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3682 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

whether one of two samples of independent observationstends to have larger values than the other and can be appliedfor unequal samples (Mann and Whitney 1947) GRETLrsquosMWU test reports the p-value of the test and U statistic(among other parameters) The results of the MWU tests aregiven in Table A2

Figure 2 shows the differences between UTQ trained fac-ulty vs those who did not have significant didactic trainingIt confirms that UTQ trained faculty belongs significantlymore to the facilitator (p lt 10 ) and delegator (p lt 1 )types No significant differences were found for the othercategories

Interestingly partitioning based on gender also showedsignificant differences in teaching styles Figure 3 showsthe differences between male (M) and female (F) respon-dents for the five teaching-styles and their inclination to un-dergo didactic training Female respondents had a lesser de-gree of ldquoformal authorityrdquo (p lt 1 ) and ldquopersonal modelrdquo(p lt 5 ) traits compared to male respondents Female re-spondents also liked to have didactic training significantly(p lt 5 ) more than the male respondents

We also found that the years of experience in teachingdid not have a significant (p lt 20 ) impact on teaching-styles although more experience significantly reduced (p lt

5 ) the inclination to have didactic training Further theeducational background of the faculty (exclusively westernvs mixed + non-Western) did not have any significant (p lt

10 ) impact on teaching-styles or the inclination to have di-dactic training

32 Survey 2

The key finding of the first survey towards our hypothesiswas that the degree of belonging to the facilitator and dele-gator style is significantly higher amongst UTQ trained fac-ulty compared to those who did not (yet) undergo significantdidactic training We conducted the second survey to corrob-orate this finding

First we used respondentsrsquo own assessment of their de-gree of belonging to each of the five teaching-styles beforeand after UTQ While the styles expert formal authority andpersonal model did not show statistically significant differ-ences those of facilitator and delegator did show signifi-cant (p = 0016 andp = 0007 respectively) increases (theMann-Whitney U-tests results are given in Table A5) Fig-ure 4 shows the five teaching-styles pre and post UTQ

We also did a compilation of answers to the descriptivequestions of the survey (provided as a Supplement to thismanuscript) which also showed similar opinions about whathas changed In general all staff members who participatedin the UTQ programme evaluated it as a positive experienceTeachers have become more aware of the fact that teach-ing should be primarily about what students learn and muchless about what they teach As one teacher indicated (see

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Pa

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Discussion

Pa

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Discussion

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Faculty with No Significant Didactic Training

Faculty with UTQTraining

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respondents and those who did nothave significant didactic training lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and 7th percentile

26

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respon-dents and those who did not have significant didactic traininglowast

indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and7th percentile

Supplement) ldquoI can teach as much as I like but if this doesnot lead to learning then it is all in vainrdquo

4 Discussion

41 Major findings

The first survey clearly showed that the degree of belong-ing to the facilitator and delegator teaching styles is signif-icantly higher among UTQ graduates compared to facultywho were not significantly trained in didactics The secondsurvey which was conducted using a completely differentapproach (and was therefore independent of the first survey)showed that according to the judgment of the UTQ graduatestheir degree of belonging to the facilitatordelegator styles in-creased significantly after UTQ training Therefore we canaccept the hypothesis that UTQ training significantly influ-ences teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE faculty enhancingtheir facilitator and delegator styles

Is is interesting to compare this findings with the sim-ilar study of Postareff et al (2007) They did a statisticalstudy of impact of university teachersrsquo pedagogical train-ing on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs us-ing some 200 faculty members of University of HelsinkiThe found that even when the effect of teaching experienceis held constant there was a positive impact of a siginfi-cant level of didactic training (of more than 30 EuropeanCredit Transfer System credits) in shifting the focus of teach-ing from information transmissionteacher-focused approachto teaching towards a more ldquoconceptual changestudent-focusedrdquo approach While the terminology used in that study

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3683HESSD

9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

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iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Male Faculty

Female Faculty

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Like Tr

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have didactic training between male andfemale respondents lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1

27

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have di-dactic training between male and female respondentslowast indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1

are different from the current one the findings are similar ina generic sense

The first survey also revealed some other interesting traitsFirst women showed a significantly lesser degree of be-longing to the formal authority and personal model teach-ing styles than men They also showed a significantly higherdegree of interest to follow didactic training Lastly theeducational background of teaching staff (West vs Non-westMixed) did not influence the teaching styles

42 Learning ndash the flip side

The teaching style is one of the many important parametersthat determine success of an educational program in otherwords the degree to which the students achieve the learningobjectives Ultimately what matters is the quality and effec-tiveness of learning which has a lot to do with the attitudesof the students These attitudes in-turn are largely governedby their background experiences habits and expectationsIn an organization like UNESCO-IHE the heterogeneity ofthe student background in terms of geographic origin edu-cation system professional experience etc is only reason-able to assume that there are considerable differences amongindividual studentsrsquo attitudes towards learning (Uhlenbrookand de Jong 2012) A majority of UNESCO-IHE studentsare mid-career professionals who have been working in thesector (industry government academia etc) for a minimumperiod of years (often much longer) after their bachelorrsquos de-gree (Pathirana et al 2012) They are of considerably higheraverage age than the post-graduate students of a classical uni-versity and therefore largely experienced only in the tradi-tional teacher-led mode of education The need for changingteaching styles is driven by the needs of the profession of hy-drology (Sect 21) attempting to address the nature of prob-lems that future professional have to solve and the skills theyneed to effectively do that We are of firm opinion that the

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

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03

04

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08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Before UTQ training

After UTQ Training

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in their teaching-styles after UTQ com-pared to before lowastlowastlowastplt1 lowastlowastplt5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

28

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in theirteaching-styles after UTQ compared to beforelowastlowastlowast p lt 1 lowastlowast

p lt 5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

employment of more facilitator and delegator traits by teach-ers will improve ability of the graduates to face up to thesechallenges However it is extremely important for the educa-tor to be aware of the fact that by doing so they may be forc-ing some students to get out of their ldquocomfort zonerdquo Gradualintroduction of change with careful monitoring of achievingthe learning outcomes and effective mentoring programs aretherefore recommended It is also not expected that an im-provement of immediate student feedback (eg student eval-uations) as a result of such a shift may be observed ndash in theshort-term even the opposite might happen

43 Limitations

The study has some limitations In the first survey we implic-itly assumed that the sample of faculty that had followed andcompleted the UTQ program was largely random and thattherefore existing traits of the faculty did not influence thedifferences that we observed We discussed this issue withthe department heads who were responsible for the selectionof staff for following UTQ In almost all cases the teachingperformance of the faculty or their teaching styles had notbeen considered in the selection process The final decision tofollow the course was however a joint one This could haveimplied that those that followed UTQ were inherently moreopen to didactic training However the inclination to followdidactic training was not significantly different (p = 30 )between the groups UTQ trained and other faculty Note thatwe do not have adequately large samples to conduct a non-parametric similarity (eg Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test

We need to question whether the statistically significantdifferences of teaching styles do imply a significant practicalimportance For example the mean value of delegator styleincreases from 052 to 075 due to UTQ training (Fig 4) a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3682 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

whether one of two samples of independent observationstends to have larger values than the other and can be appliedfor unequal samples (Mann and Whitney 1947) GRETLrsquosMWU test reports the p-value of the test and U statistic(among other parameters) The results of the MWU tests aregiven in Table A2

Figure 2 shows the differences between UTQ trained fac-ulty vs those who did not have significant didactic trainingIt confirms that UTQ trained faculty belongs significantlymore to the facilitator (p lt 10 ) and delegator (p lt 1 )types No significant differences were found for the othercategories

Interestingly partitioning based on gender also showedsignificant differences in teaching styles Figure 3 showsthe differences between male (M) and female (F) respon-dents for the five teaching-styles and their inclination to un-dergo didactic training Female respondents had a lesser de-gree of ldquoformal authorityrdquo (p lt 1 ) and ldquopersonal modelrdquo(p lt 5 ) traits compared to male respondents Female re-spondents also liked to have didactic training significantly(p lt 5 ) more than the male respondents

We also found that the years of experience in teachingdid not have a significant (p lt 20 ) impact on teaching-styles although more experience significantly reduced (p lt

5 ) the inclination to have didactic training Further theeducational background of the faculty (exclusively westernvs mixed + non-Western) did not have any significant (p lt

10 ) impact on teaching-styles or the inclination to have di-dactic training

32 Survey 2

The key finding of the first survey towards our hypothesiswas that the degree of belonging to the facilitator and dele-gator style is significantly higher amongst UTQ trained fac-ulty compared to those who did not (yet) undergo significantdidactic training We conducted the second survey to corrob-orate this finding

First we used respondentsrsquo own assessment of their de-gree of belonging to each of the five teaching-styles beforeand after UTQ While the styles expert formal authority andpersonal model did not show statistically significant differ-ences those of facilitator and delegator did show signifi-cant (p = 0016 andp = 0007 respectively) increases (theMann-Whitney U-tests results are given in Table A5) Fig-ure 4 shows the five teaching-styles pre and post UTQ

We also did a compilation of answers to the descriptivequestions of the survey (provided as a Supplement to thismanuscript) which also showed similar opinions about whathas changed In general all staff members who participatedin the UTQ programme evaluated it as a positive experienceTeachers have become more aware of the fact that teach-ing should be primarily about what students learn and muchless about what they teach As one teacher indicated (see

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Pa

per|

Discussion

Pa

per|

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper

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03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Faculty with No Significant Didactic Training

Faculty with UTQTraining

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respondents and those who did nothave significant didactic training lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and 7th percentile

26

Fig 2 Differences of teaching-style between UTQ trained respon-dents and those who did not have significant didactic traininglowast

indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1 Horizontal barindicates mean and the cross the median Boxes show 25th and7th percentile

Supplement) ldquoI can teach as much as I like but if this doesnot lead to learning then it is all in vainrdquo

4 Discussion

41 Major findings

The first survey clearly showed that the degree of belong-ing to the facilitator and delegator teaching styles is signif-icantly higher among UTQ graduates compared to facultywho were not significantly trained in didactics The secondsurvey which was conducted using a completely differentapproach (and was therefore independent of the first survey)showed that according to the judgment of the UTQ graduatestheir degree of belonging to the facilitatordelegator styles in-creased significantly after UTQ training Therefore we canaccept the hypothesis that UTQ training significantly influ-ences teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE faculty enhancingtheir facilitator and delegator styles

Is is interesting to compare this findings with the sim-ilar study of Postareff et al (2007) They did a statisticalstudy of impact of university teachersrsquo pedagogical train-ing on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs us-ing some 200 faculty members of University of HelsinkiThe found that even when the effect of teaching experienceis held constant there was a positive impact of a siginfi-cant level of didactic training (of more than 30 EuropeanCredit Transfer System credits) in shifting the focus of teach-ing from information transmissionteacher-focused approachto teaching towards a more ldquoconceptual changestudent-focusedrdquo approach While the terminology used in that study

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3683HESSD

9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Male Faculty

Female Faculty

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Like Tr

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have didactic training between male andfemale respondents lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1

27

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have di-dactic training between male and female respondentslowast indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1

are different from the current one the findings are similar ina generic sense

The first survey also revealed some other interesting traitsFirst women showed a significantly lesser degree of be-longing to the formal authority and personal model teach-ing styles than men They also showed a significantly higherdegree of interest to follow didactic training Lastly theeducational background of teaching staff (West vs Non-westMixed) did not influence the teaching styles

42 Learning ndash the flip side

The teaching style is one of the many important parametersthat determine success of an educational program in otherwords the degree to which the students achieve the learningobjectives Ultimately what matters is the quality and effec-tiveness of learning which has a lot to do with the attitudesof the students These attitudes in-turn are largely governedby their background experiences habits and expectationsIn an organization like UNESCO-IHE the heterogeneity ofthe student background in terms of geographic origin edu-cation system professional experience etc is only reason-able to assume that there are considerable differences amongindividual studentsrsquo attitudes towards learning (Uhlenbrookand de Jong 2012) A majority of UNESCO-IHE studentsare mid-career professionals who have been working in thesector (industry government academia etc) for a minimumperiod of years (often much longer) after their bachelorrsquos de-gree (Pathirana et al 2012) They are of considerably higheraverage age than the post-graduate students of a classical uni-versity and therefore largely experienced only in the tradi-tional teacher-led mode of education The need for changingteaching styles is driven by the needs of the profession of hy-drology (Sect 21) attempting to address the nature of prob-lems that future professional have to solve and the skills theyneed to effectively do that We are of firm opinion that the

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Before UTQ training

After UTQ Training

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in their teaching-styles after UTQ com-pared to before lowastlowastlowastplt1 lowastlowastplt5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

28

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in theirteaching-styles after UTQ compared to beforelowastlowastlowast p lt 1 lowastlowast

p lt 5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

employment of more facilitator and delegator traits by teach-ers will improve ability of the graduates to face up to thesechallenges However it is extremely important for the educa-tor to be aware of the fact that by doing so they may be forc-ing some students to get out of their ldquocomfort zonerdquo Gradualintroduction of change with careful monitoring of achievingthe learning outcomes and effective mentoring programs aretherefore recommended It is also not expected that an im-provement of immediate student feedback (eg student eval-uations) as a result of such a shift may be observed ndash in theshort-term even the opposite might happen

43 Limitations

The study has some limitations In the first survey we implic-itly assumed that the sample of faculty that had followed andcompleted the UTQ program was largely random and thattherefore existing traits of the faculty did not influence thedifferences that we observed We discussed this issue withthe department heads who were responsible for the selectionof staff for following UTQ In almost all cases the teachingperformance of the faculty or their teaching styles had notbeen considered in the selection process The final decision tofollow the course was however a joint one This could haveimplied that those that followed UTQ were inherently moreopen to didactic training However the inclination to followdidactic training was not significantly different (p = 30 )between the groups UTQ trained and other faculty Note thatwe do not have adequately large samples to conduct a non-parametric similarity (eg Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test

We need to question whether the statistically significantdifferences of teaching styles do imply a significant practicalimportance For example the mean value of delegator styleincreases from 052 to 075 due to UTQ training (Fig 4) a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3683HESSD

9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

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|D

iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Male Faculty

Female Faculty

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Like Tr

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have didactic training between male andfemale respondents lowastindicates plt10 lowastlowastplt5 and lowastlowastlowastplt1

27

Fig 3 Differences in teaching-style and inclination to have di-dactic training between male and female respondentslowast indicatesp lt 10 lowastlowast p lt 5 andlowastlowastlowast p lt 1

are different from the current one the findings are similar ina generic sense

The first survey also revealed some other interesting traitsFirst women showed a significantly lesser degree of be-longing to the formal authority and personal model teach-ing styles than men They also showed a significantly higherdegree of interest to follow didactic training Lastly theeducational background of teaching staff (West vs Non-westMixed) did not influence the teaching styles

42 Learning ndash the flip side

The teaching style is one of the many important parametersthat determine success of an educational program in otherwords the degree to which the students achieve the learningobjectives Ultimately what matters is the quality and effec-tiveness of learning which has a lot to do with the attitudesof the students These attitudes in-turn are largely governedby their background experiences habits and expectationsIn an organization like UNESCO-IHE the heterogeneity ofthe student background in terms of geographic origin edu-cation system professional experience etc is only reason-able to assume that there are considerable differences amongindividual studentsrsquo attitudes towards learning (Uhlenbrookand de Jong 2012) A majority of UNESCO-IHE studentsare mid-career professionals who have been working in thesector (industry government academia etc) for a minimumperiod of years (often much longer) after their bachelorrsquos de-gree (Pathirana et al 2012) They are of considerably higheraverage age than the post-graduate students of a classical uni-versity and therefore largely experienced only in the tradi-tional teacher-led mode of education The need for changingteaching styles is driven by the needs of the profession of hy-drology (Sect 21) attempting to address the nature of prob-lems that future professional have to solve and the skills theyneed to effectively do that We are of firm opinion that the

HESSD9 1ndash28 2012

On teaching styles ofwater educators and

the impact of didactictraining

A Pathirana et al

Title Page

Abstract Introduction

Conclusions References

Tables Figures

J I

J I

Back Close

Full Screen Esc

Printer-friendly Version

Interactive Discussion

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

Discussion

Paper

|D

iscussionP

aper|

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

Expert FormalAuthority

PersonalModel Facilitator

Deligator

02

01

00

10

Before UTQ training

After UTQ Training

Attribute

Affi

nity

To

Attr

ibut

e(-

)

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in their teaching-styles after UTQ com-pared to before lowastlowastlowastplt1 lowastlowastplt5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

28

Fig 4 UTQ graduates beliefs on what has changed in theirteaching-styles after UTQ compared to beforelowastlowastlowast p lt 1 lowastlowast

p lt 5 Y-axis is on a scale from 0 to 10

employment of more facilitator and delegator traits by teach-ers will improve ability of the graduates to face up to thesechallenges However it is extremely important for the educa-tor to be aware of the fact that by doing so they may be forc-ing some students to get out of their ldquocomfort zonerdquo Gradualintroduction of change with careful monitoring of achievingthe learning outcomes and effective mentoring programs aretherefore recommended It is also not expected that an im-provement of immediate student feedback (eg student eval-uations) as a result of such a shift may be observed ndash in theshort-term even the opposite might happen

43 Limitations

The study has some limitations In the first survey we implic-itly assumed that the sample of faculty that had followed andcompleted the UTQ program was largely random and thattherefore existing traits of the faculty did not influence thedifferences that we observed We discussed this issue withthe department heads who were responsible for the selectionof staff for following UTQ In almost all cases the teachingperformance of the faculty or their teaching styles had notbeen considered in the selection process The final decision tofollow the course was however a joint one This could haveimplied that those that followed UTQ were inherently moreopen to didactic training However the inclination to followdidactic training was not significantly different (p = 30 )between the groups UTQ trained and other faculty Note thatwe do not have adequately large samples to conduct a non-parametric similarity (eg Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test

We need to question whether the statistically significantdifferences of teaching styles do imply a significant practicalimportance For example the mean value of delegator styleincreases from 052 to 075 due to UTQ training (Fig 4) a

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3684 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table A1 The scales used to convert some choices to intervalvariables for statistical analysis

IntervalOption in the survey variable

value

How many years have you been engaged in teaching atuniversitypost-graduateequivalent level by now

Less than a year 1Between a year and two 2Between two years and five years 4Between five to ten years 6More than ten years 8

Are you currently engaged in teachingChoose one of the following answers

No 0Yes less than 10 h a year 1Yes between 10 and 25 h a year 2Yes between 25 and 70 h a year 4Yes More than 70 h 6

Have you undergone training on teaching

A seminarsworkshop (one2 or more) (+1+2)Certification courses (UTQ or similar) +4

Table A2 Correlations among teaching styles for the total sampleof Survey 1 (58 samples significant (5 lowast) correlationsgt 026)

Formal PersonalFacilitator Delegator

authority model

Expert 048 062 013 004Formal authority 054 030 004Personal model 034 037Facilitator 073

45 increase However it is difficult to explain what exactlythis 45 increase implies in practice and what the implica-tions are of the learning outcomes for the students

Our study was limited to a single educational institute Al-though UNESCO-IHE faculty consists of a diverse group ofindividuals from various backgrounds (Fig 1) it may not berepresentative for the wider hydrology teaching profession

5 Conclusions

The results of this study have confirmed that the UTQ didac-tic training of UNESCO-IHE staff is producing the desiredresults in as far as it concerns a shift towards the sense of be-longing to the desired teaching style namely one that empha-sizes facilitator and delegator traits To what extent this shiftin the sense of belonging translates into a shift in the teach-ing style actually applied in practice remains to be seen It istherefore the intention of the authors to conduct a follow-up

Table A3 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) for UTQgraduates (27 samples significant (10 lowast) correlationsgt 0389)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 056 073 022 017Formal authority 065 041 017Personal model 039 027Facilitator 082

Table A4 Correlations among teaching styles (Survey 1) forfaculty without significant didactic training (27 samplessignificant (5 ) correlationsgt 0367)

Formal authorityPersonal

Facilitator Delegatormodel

Expert 044 060 052 051Formal authority 037 032 006Personal model 027 057Facilitator 066

study into the actual teaching styles of UNESCO-IHE staffpre- and post-UTQ

Appendix A

Correlation analysis

We examined the correlations between the five teach-ing style scores Grasha (1996) identifies four clustersof teaching-styles ndash (a) expertformal authority (b) per-sonal modelexpertformal authority (c) facilitatorpersonalmodelexpert (d) delegatorfacilitatorexpert ndash of universityfaculty If this type of clustering applies to UNESCO-IHEfaculty then we should expect significant correlations amongthe five categories There are significant correlations of per-sonal model with all remaining four categories apart fromthat correlation of expert with (formal authority) formal au-thority with (expert facilitator) and facilitator with (formalauthority and delegator) The significant correlation pairs aredifferent in the case of faculty with UTQ training and withoutsignificant didactic training (Table A1) However we laterdemonstrate these differences using other statistical tests

Other interesting significant correlations are the negativecorrelation (minus039) between experience and inclination tofollow UTQ type of training Similar correlation (minus033) ex-ists between perceived benefit from UTQ and experienceExperienced teachers tend to teach more time at UNESCO-IHE (045) and values additional didactical training lessThere is a positive correlation (033) between didactic train-ing and delegator style

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3685

Table A5 Results of the Mann-Whitney U-test

SURVEY 1

Gender p-value U statistic

Expert 0128 1765Formal authority 0007 1220Personal model 0025 1430Facilitator 0206 1885Delegator 0206 1885Like to have didactic training 0013 1325

UTQ vs non-didactic-trained

Expert 0323 1885Formal authority 0323 1885Personal model 0268 1835Facilitator 0081 1570Delegator 0009 1205Like to have Didactic training 0294 1860

High experience vs low

Like to have Didactic training 0036 820All other variables hadp gt 20Exclusively western trained vs Did not have anyothers (mixed + non-western) significant differencesAll variables hadp gt 10 SURVEY 2Before vs after UTQFacilitator 0016 375Delegator 0007 320All other variables hadp gt 10

Active learning and aligned teaching university teachingqualification programme for lecturers at UNESCO-IHE

Appendix B

Active learning and aligned teaching

B1 University Teaching Qualification programme forlecturers at UNESCO-IHE

This document describes a programme designed to pro-vide senior lecturers at UNESCO-IHE with the opportu-nity to obtain theirUTQ (University Teaching Qualification)certificate

Introduction

Teaching and learning take place in an environment of class-rooms buildings and labs In a good educational systemall aspects of teaching learning and assessment are tuned tosupport high level learning so that students are encouragedto use higher-order learning processes ldquoConstructive align-mentrdquo (CA) is such a system It is an approach to curriculumdesign that optimises the conditions for quality learning

ldquoConstructive alignmentrdquo starts with the notion that thelearner constructs his or her own learning through relevantlearning activities The teacherrsquos job is to create a learning

environment that supports the learning activities appropri-ate to achieving the desired learning outcomes The key isthat all components in the teaching system ndash the curriculumand its intended outcomes the teaching methods used theassessment tasks ndash are aligned to each other All are tuned tolearning activities addressed in the desired learning outcomes(Biggs and Tang 2011)

University Teaching Qualification programme (UTQ)isoffered to UNESCO-IHE faculty as an aid to improving theirteaching in general and specifically to apply CA in theirteaching activities Each participating faculty member is re-quired to invest a total ofabout 130 hover the course of ap-proximately one year

Method

The UTQ program is facilitated by a qualified educational-ist (coach) Participating teachers work independently overthe course of the programme on putting together a UTQportfolio During the programme they discuss their interimportfolio products with each other and their coach in feed-back meetings The products consist of teaching materi-als that lend insight into their didactic competencies self-assessments and evaluations by third parties The portfolio isfinally assessed by a UTQ portfolio examination committeeThe UTQ certificate will be issued upon obtaining a positiveassessment

The programme involves the following components

1 An Introductory meetingwith the aim to create a feelingof fellowship to fully inform participants of the plansand to ensure that expectations are in general agree-ment It is important to plan a collective starting pointThe 2 h course consists of an information session anddiscussing and answering questions In preparation par-ticipants have to fill in an intake form and read the pro-gramme setup

2 Refresher courseThis module about active teaching and constructivelyaligned teaching covers basic concepts such as learninggoals teaching methods and testing all of which are ap-plied in the training of the participants by means of prac-tical assignments and exercises The assignments andexercises are input for the portfolio The course is in theform of a 3times 35-h workshops interpretation assign-ments exercises self-motivation feedback question-and-answer sessions and discussion Participants haveto do homework assignments

3 Compiling a portfolioEach participant has to compile a portfolio by col-lecting teaching material and validations and writingself-assessments They have to peruse and respond to(parts of) the portfolios of other participants and pro-cess the feedback of colleagues The total workload of

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3686 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

Table B1UTQ Competence profile with final achievement levels

A Developing teaching the lecturer can

1 re(develop) a course using specifically formulated learning objectives

2 develop effective efficient and Active learning methods and also choose andor developsuitable study materials in order to achieve the learning objectives

3 take the teaching context of the institutefaculty into account

4 take the entry levels of the students into account

5 take the specific didactic requirements of the discipline into account

6 demonstrate a relationship between the content of the course components heshe teachesand the academic research performed in hisher discipline

7 design a test plan including assessment criteria and using this develop tests to checkwhether the students have met the learning objectives sufficiently well

B Implementing teaching the lecturer can

1 provide insight into the formulated learning objectives or competences

2 use the formulated learning objectives and the studentsrsquo entry levels to choose effectiveand efficient teaching methods and offer suitable study materials

3 motivate students to interpret and design their own learning process

4 use technical aids in a didactically suitable manner

5 supervise groups of and individual students and give them effective feedback during thelearning process

6 support students in their development of academic skills

7 assess the learning process in groups of and individual students

8 use student test results to assess whether learning objectives have been achieved

C Organising and coordinating teaching the lecturer can

1 work in a team (eg course committees semesterannual meetings) to agree on activitiesand to collaborate with colleagues

2 plan teaching materials exams integration of administrative tasks and completion ofteaching activities so they are logistically feasible and are implemented on time

3 describe university and faculty regulations that are relevant to the teaching process such asthe Course and Examination Regulations and the role of relevant bodies such as the Boardof Examiners Board of Studies and the department administration

D Evaluating teaching the lecturer can

1 compile an evaluation plan implement and analyse the evaluation results and drawconclusions about hisher teaching quality

2 analyse test results and draw conclusions on the quality of learning teaching and testing

3 formulate and implement enhancements that have been recommended for both teachingprocesses and products

E Professionalisation the lecturer can

1 acquire an understanding of developments in the didactics of higher education and alsoapply them in such a way that the methods used match established learning objectives orcompetences

2 reflect on hisher own work and the studentsrsquo work and is aware of any problem areas in theway heshe performs

3 reflect on hisher own performance and then formulate resolutions to improve activities andpersonal objectives relating to professional development

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training 3687

compiling a portfolio is about 80 h A full descriptionon the content of a portfolio is given below

4 Feedback meetingsTeachers learn well and willingly from each other Ev-ery 6 weeks 2 h feedback meetings are held so that theycan help each other to compile their portfolios In thesethey are assisted by a UTQ coach They are able to ex-plain their teaching material self-assessments and diffi-cult situations and process the tips and solutions theyreceive into their critical self-assessments They haveto read and formulate feedback on portfolios of fellowparticipants

5 Observing and delivering lecturesThe aim of this activity is learning to reflect on lecturesgiven by colleagues awareness of important points inthe delivery of a good lecture discovering what suc-ceeds and what requires improvement and identifyingand formulating points for improvement Use is made ofan observation form and when possible making a videorecording followed by a discussion and reporting by theteacher who gave the lecture

6 Optional taking a didactic courseIn order to write a good self-assessment and have suf-ficient didactic material to take to the feedback meet-ings participants may take a didactic course on a sub-ject that best suits their experience interests and tasksThis course could deliver products that can be includedin the participantrsquos portfolio

7 Optional coaching on the jobIf lecturers would like to receive more feedback on theirteaching practice they can ask the UTQ coach to attendtheir class Afterwards the coach will discuss the teach-ing activity

Portfolio

The compilation of a (digital) portfolio is the core activityof this programme the portfolio should reflect the didacticcompetencies of the participant in the programme and willbe assessed as such

Competences are demonstrated by means of the teachingportfolio which contains three sorts of products for three dif-ferent type of teaching teaching materials validation reportsand self-reflection reports

The participants may take three thematic areas out of thefollowing list to base their portfolio work on

1 Classroom teaching

2 Individual teaching (thesis supervision)

3 International teaching

4 Online teaching

Each theme presented in the portfolio should cover threeaspects

1 Evidence These are documents being developed Theyhave to demonstrate that the lecturer has acquired cer-tain didactic competences (eg a lesson plan design as-signments video recording tests etc)

2 Validation Validation means that others reflect criti-cally on parts of the portfolio and activities both interms of content and the manner in which the lecturerdescribed implemented them Validation can be doneby students colleagues the coach management fellowUTQ participants etc

3 Reflection These documents contain descriptions of theown point of view on how the whole process of ac-quiring a certain competence has gone The lectureranalyses hisher own strong and weak points in termsof didactic competences Which choices were madeand why What went well What was difficult Wouldthings have to be doen differently in the future

In addition to the above described components the portfolioalso contains an explanation of how the products in the port-folio are related This explanation should make clear whatthe materials consist of how much heshe contributed to thematerials or their development why this piece of evidence isincluded and what the context of this material is (place in theacademic yearcurriculum)

Assessment

The portfolios of the participants are submitted to an inde-pendentportfolio commission to be appointed and consist-ing of three individuals This committee will assess the port-folios in accordance with a specially established procedureand using the assessment criteria established for the purposeThe committee is expected to come to a consensus in mutualconsultation

Supplementary material related to this article isavailable online athttpwwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012hess-16-3677-2012-supplementzip

AcknowledgementsThe authors thank the staff members ofUNESCO-IHE who anonymously participated in the surveys

Edited by J Seibert

wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012 Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012

3688 A Pathirana et al On teaching styles of water educators and the impact of didactic training

References

Ashby E The structure of higher education A world view HighEduc 2 142ndash151doi101007BF00137744 1973

Bennett N Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress Open Books Pub-lishing Ltd p 216 1976

Biggs J and Tang C Teaching for Quality Learning at Univer-sity Society for Research Into Higher Education Open Univer-sity Press 480 2011

Cottrell A and Lucchetti R Gretl Userrsquos Guide available athttpricardoecnwfuedupubgretlmanualengretl-guidepdf lastaccess 15 November 2011

Eble K E (Ed) Teaching styles and faculty behavior in Improv-ing teaching styles Jossey-Bass San Francisco CA 1980

Felder R M and Silverman L K Learning and teaching styles inengineering education available athttpwinbevpbworkscomfLS-1988pdf(last access 7 March 2012) Eng Educ 78 674ndash681 1988

Grasha A F A matter of style The teacher as expert formal au-thority personal model facilitator and delegator College Teach42 142ndash149 1994

Grasha A F Teaching With Style The Integration of Teach-ing and Learning Styles in the Classroom Alliance Publish-ersPittsburgh USA 1996

Grasha A F and Yangarber-Hicks N Integrating Teaching Stylesand Learning Styles with Instructional Technology CollegeTeach 48 2ndash10 2000

Jury W A and Vaux H The role of science in solving the worldrsquosemerging water problems P Natl Acad Sci USA 102 15715ndash15720doi101073pnas0506467102 2005

Kleinhans M G Bierkens M F P and van der Perk M HESSOpinions On the use of laboratory experimentation ldquoHydrolo-gists bring out shovels and garden hoses and hit the dirtrdquo Hy-drol Earth Syst Sci 14 369ndash382doi105194hess-14-369-2010 2010

LimeSurvey user manual (nd) available athttpdocslimesurveyorgEnglish+Instructions+for+LimeSurveyampstructure=English+Instructions+for+LimeSurvey last access 21 November 2011

Lucas S B Who am I The influence of teacher beliefs on theincorporation of instructional technology by higher educationfaculty Chemistry amp biodiversity The University of AlabamaTuscaloosa retrieved fromhttpsusanlucascomdissertationpdf (last access 16 October 2012) 2005

Lucas S B and Wright V H Who am I The influence of teacherbeliefs on instructional technology incorporation J Excell Col-lege Teach 20 77ndash95 2009

Mann H B and Whitney D R On a Test of Whether one of TwoRandom Variables is Stochastically Larger than the Other AnnMath Stat 18 50ndash60doi101214aoms1177730491 1947

Pathirana A Gersonius B and Radhakrishnan M Web 20collaboration tool to support student research in hydrol-ogy ndash an opinion Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 2499ndash2509doi105194hess-16-2499-2012 2012

Postareff L Lindblom-Ylanne S and Nevgi A The effect ofpedagogical training on teaching in higher education TeachTeach Educ 23 557ndash571doi101016jtate2006110132007

Quirk M E How to Learn and Teach in Medical School CharlesC Thomas Springfield IL 1994

Short E C Knowledge and the educative functions ofa university designing the curriculum of higher educa-tionavailable athttpwwwtandfonlinecomdoiabs10108000220270110069181(last access 7 March 2012) J CurriculumStud 34 139ndash148 2002

Solomon D Teacher Behavior Dimensions Course Character-istics and Student Evaluations of Teachers Daniel SolomonAmerican Educational Research Journal 3 35ndash47 1966

Uhlenbrook S Catchment hydrology ndash a science in which all pro-cesses are preferential Hydrol Process Today 20 3581ndash3585doi101002hyp6564 2006

Uhlenbrook S and de Jong E T-shaped competency profile forwater professionals of the future Hydrol Earth Syst Sci Dis-cuss 9 2935ndash2957doi105194hessd-9-2935-2012 2012

Wagener T Sivapalan M Troch P A McGlynn B L Har-man C J Gupta H V Kumar P Rao P S C Basu N Band Wilson J S The future of hydrology An evolving sci-ence for a changing world Water Resour Res 46 W05301doi1010292009WR008906 2010

Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16 3677ndash3688 2012 wwwhydrol-earth-syst-scinet1636772012