EXPLORING ACADEMICS’ ESPOUSED AND ACTUAL TEACHINGORIENTATIONS AT A SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY

Academics have aresponsibility of ensuring that teaching achieves its purpose.They areentrusted with the responsibility of ensuring students’ personaldevelopment, acquisition of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It isimportant that by the end of the coursethe students have the capacity to solveindividual and societal problems. This can only be realised if the academics’teaching orientations support learning. However, whilst academics espouseteaching orientations that support learning,in practice they employorientationsthat impede meaningful learning. Thisstudy explores the concepts oflearning andteaching and links them to the espoused and actual teaching orientations ofacademics at a university in South Africa,explaining why academics’ espousedorientations differ from orientations in use.The study adopted an inductiveresearch paradigm that followed a qualitative research approach. Data werecollected through semi-structured interviews from selected academicsat theuniversity and iteratively and reflexively analysed.Inadequate time, lack of skills,demotivated students and academics inability to reflect on their teachingorientations emerged as important factors to explainthediscrepancybetweenacademics’ espoused and actual teaching orientations.It also emerged thatacademics’ interpretation of the concepts ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ influencedtheir espoused teaching orientations.The studyrecommends among several otherthings professional training of the academics