A Study on Teaching Style Preferences of Students and

Teachers in Management Education

By Manerikar, Sumeet; Rangnekar, Rita

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Article excerpt
Management education lays great emphasis on the style that a teacher uses in a formal post-
graduate programme in management. A teacher's style of teaching and its link with the expected
style that a student's wants out of his teacher is very critical to the learning effectiveness of any
educational programme and more so with management education. While management teachers
are encouraged to use innovative methods of teaching, a teachers' style is based on various
factors such as the teacher's personality, orientation towards the subject, past experience,
personal inclinations, and also student related factors, such as the student's readiness and ability
to learn and benefit from the teacher's style of teaching. While a teacher may want to go beyond
the normal limits of the curriculum in order to enable the student to get more knowledge than the
curriculum prescribes, learning will be effective only if the student is willing to learn through the
particular style used by the teacher. While some teachers push their students to stretch
themselves and go beyond the boundaries prescribed in the syllabus, some teachers approach the
curriculum by putting together all the information and sticking to it. Another style used by
teachers is the counsellor style, whereby a teacher develops a personal rapport with the students
and also involved in solving student's issues and problems individually and may not stick only to
the curriculum.

There is debate and research (Richardson, 1998) on whether teachers perpetuate the teaching
style that was used by their teachers in their learning period. Richardson states that teachers do
change based on the learning style and the personality of the student learner.

Some researchers have classified teaching styles as studentcentric and teacher centric, learner
centric and teacher- centric styles. A random survey of various models of teaching referred from
Joyce and Weil (1986, 1992), two dozen models of teaching have been grouped into four distinct
families. They are informational teaching (e.g. 'advance-organizer' model (Ausubel), social
teaching (e.g. 'group-investigation' model (Thelen), personal teaching (e.g., 'non-directive' model
(Rogers) and behavioral teaching (e.g. 'contingency-management' model (Skinner). Teaching
styles have also been grouped as 'the executive', 'the therapist', and 'the liberationist' (Approaches
to Teaching (Fenstermacher & Soltis, 1992)

For the sake of the current study, teaching styles have been categorized as Challenger, Compiler
and Counsellor Teaching Styles Challenger Teaching Style: Used in the context of a teaching
and learning style, a teacher who can be called a challenger pushes the students to question and
compete for knowledge; to take on new or difficult assignments and makes them learn by testing
their skills and abilities beyond the normal.
Compiler Teaching Style: A compiler is a person who compiles something by bringing together
different items, articles, songs,. For the sake of the research, a teacher who delivers the course by
including all possible facets of a course and sticks to the curriculum can be said to use a compiler
style.

Counsellor Teaching Style: In teaching approaches, the counselor style includes advising
students on problems, even personal; being there to solve their problems, for help and guidance,
providing a supportive learning environment, providing solutions to an extent guiding the
students about what to do and knowing each and every student personally.

People differ in the way they can best learn new information or skills.. Each teaching style has its
strength and weaknesses. In order to gain competence most efficiently, it is helpful for every
teacher to be aware of his/her style. It is also useful for teachers to know the preferences of their
students.

The current study explores which style of teaching, i.e. challenger, counsellor and compiler, is
preferred most by students and teachers of management. …