We welcome Professor Gerlese Akerlind, Professor Emerita at the Australian National University, who will speak about both phenomenology as a research method and the insights into learning that it can provide.

Speaker: Gerlese Åkerlind, Professor Emerita, Australian National University

Date: Friday, 28^th November, 2025, 12:00-1.00pm, followed by light refreshments

Location: Room 227, St Andrews Building, 11 Eldon St, Glasgow G3 6NH

Abstract

Phenomenography provides a unique approach to thinking about the nature of teaching, learning, and students’ understanding of subject matter.  From a phenomenographic perspective, all subject matter is seen as inherently multidimensional in nature, and poor vs sophisticated understandings of subject topics may be thought of in terms of differential awareness of key dimensions of those topics.  From this perspective, poor understandings can be reframed as partial understandings, resulting from noticing some dimensions of a topic but not others.

Research has shown that these dimensions are not necessarily obvious to teachers, and are best derived from a phenomenographic study of variation in understandings amongst students. Individual understandings are grouped into categories of qualitatively similar understandings, and each category analysed for awareness and non-awareness of different dimensions of a topic.  In this way, phenomenographic research identifies what dimensions students need to become aware of in order to develop the desired understanding of a topic, plus the order in which the dimensions should be highlighted.

Phenomenography has also been used to study teaching itself, in terms of variation amongst teachers in their understanding of teaching, and the key dimensions of teaching and learning highlighted by different ways of understanding it.  This has led to an approach to teacher development that moves away from a focus on theory and methods to a focus on changing teachers’ personal understandings of what teaching is.

This seminar will present empirical examples from various disciplines and levels of education to illustrate the nature of phenomenographic research and its potential for improving student learning.  Empirical examples of different ways of understanding teaching will also be presented, including a study of variation in understandings amongst doctoral students in education.

About the speaker

Gerlese Åkerlind, PhD, is Professor Emerita at the Australian National University (ANU) and Fellow of the Society for Research in Higher Education.  She was previously Director of the Centre for Educational Development and Academic Methods at the ANU, Director of the Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of Canberra, and a long-term honorary Research Associate of the Oxford Learning Institute at Oxford University.  She has convened graduate courses in university teaching and learning at all three institutions, and her research has focused on the nature of academic practice, including teaching and teaching development.

Gerlese has particular expertise in phenomenography, with numerous publications on phenomenographic theory and methods, including her 2025 book, Phenomenography in the 21^st Century.