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University Teachers' Experienced Failures and Successes during Teaching Process

One challenge in experiential learning is how to scientifically research and testify learning through experiences, because there are difficulties measuring learning at work. The aim is to explore how university teachers construe their learning experiences during teaching processes. The data analysis shows that experiences of teachers' failures and successes during the teaching periods are meaningful and create learning. The purpose, therefore, is to explore those experiences in detail.

There are fourteen informants who work in different scientific areas at the University of Tampere in Finland. They participated in and completed a training program in university pedagogy 1990-2000 and 2001-2002. The data consists of personal learning plans, portfolios, learning diaries, other independent tasks, and theme interviews, which were conducted about one year after the program and 5-7 years later in the year 2008. The coded data uses the NViVo program and is categorized using qualitative content analysis.

The data and the meanings, which emerged from it, are interpreted according to the narrative analysis method within the social constructivism paradigm. The research is based on the premise that there are several truths, and the truth depends on the observer’s standpoint. The verisimilitude, which are the rules that construct social realities as well as the meanings given to them, is essential, not the historical truth.

Identity is always a result of self-reflection and interpretation, constructing and negotiating through interaction with students as well as with other teachers and researchers. Developing as a teacher is to find ones ‘self’ as a teacher together with the others. Experiences and their reflection and meanings given to them are essential in this process, especially experiences, which are intense emotions, such as in failures and successes. These have caused learning experiences and furthered the role and identity of the university teacher. The theme interviews, learning diaries and portfolios show teachers creating and recreating narrations. These experiences are related to each other, and situations have emerged, reflecting the informants’ relationship to counter roles for both students and colleagues. The paper will illustrate how university teachers have experienced their failures and successes to create learning and, advance their identity work.