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Through the eyes of instructors: a phenomenographic investigation of student success

Published: 15 September 2007 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper we present a phenomenographic analysis of computer science instructors' perceptions of student success. The factors instructors believe influence student success fell into five categories which were related to: 1) the subject being taught, 2) intrinsic characteristics of the student, 3) student background, 4) student attitudes and behaviour and 5) instructor influence on student development. These categories provide insights not only into how instructors perceive students, but also how they perceive their own roles in the learning process. We found significant overlap between these qualitative results, obtained through analysis of semi-structured interviews, and the vast body of quantitative research on factors predicting student success. Studying faculty rather than students provides an alternative way to examine these questions, and using qualitative methods may provide a richer understanding of student success factors.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ICER '07: Proceedings of the third international workshop on Computing education research
    September 2007
    172 pages
    ISBN:9781595938411
    DOI:10.1145/1288580
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    Published: 15 September 2007

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    Author Tags

    1. instructor perceptions
    2. phenomenography
    3. qualitative analysis
    4. student performance

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    ICER07: International Computing Education Research Workshop
    September 15 - 16, 2007
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    ICER '07 Paper Acceptance Rate 14 of 24 submissions, 58%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 189 of 803 submissions, 24%

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