Teaching style of Malaysian teacher training college lecturers: do gender, subject specialty, and experience make a difference?

Abstract

Teaching style is a pattern that lecturers use to teach depending on their belief, knowledge, performance, and behaviour. Significant research has been conducted on the teaching styles of teachers at the secondary and primary schools. However, little research in this area has been conducted on teaching style of lecturers of teacher training college despite the importance of the teacher education training in determining the quality of teachers. This study aims to explore the teaching style profile of lecturers in teacher training colleges, known as Institut Pendidikan Guru (IPG) in Malaysia. A total of 472 lecturers from IPG Malaysia were involved in this study. Data were collected through a translated version of Grasha Teaching Style Inventory. Descriptive statistic and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were applied to analyse the finding. Results showed that lecturers use all five teaching styles in the Grasha model. The three teaching styles frequently used are facilitator style, personal model style, and expert style while delegator style is the least used. Significant differences were found in teaching style based on lecturer's gender and subject specialty. This study suggested that male lecturers are inclined to use formal authority, personal model and delegator style and the Physical Education lecturers favoured personal model and delegator style compared to lecturers in social studies departments. Therefore it is recommended that gender and subject specialty is taken into account in the planning of training for lecturers in IPG. Lecturers' teaching style was also not in line with the needs in the new digital and knowledge society that require the combination of facilitator and delegator teaching style.