Social constructivist teaching methods in Australian
universities - reported uptake and perceived
learning effects: A survey of lecturers

Pragmatic, social constructivist teaching methods require students to construct knowledge by engaging collaboratively with realistic problems, cases or projects. These methods are hypothesised to be more effective than traditional didactic teaching methods in developing pre-professional undergraduate students' (1) theoretical knowledge, (2) profession-specific problem solving skills and (3) knowledge creation capacity. These learning effects may be hypothesised from different - perhaps complementary - theories of learning: the first may be hypothesised as a constructivist learning effect, the second as either a cognitive or situative learning effect and the third as a sociocultural learning effect. This survey of 277 lecturers from 20 Australian universities compares the adoption of social constructivist teaching methods among lecturers in three profession-related faculty categories: business-related faculties (e.g. business, commerce, accounting), design-related faculties (e.g. architecture, engineering, IT) and human service-related faculties (e.g. medicine, nursing, education, social work). Survey results show that social constructivist teaching methods have reportedly been more widely adopted by lecturers in human service-related faculties and design-related faculties than by lecturers in business-related faculties. An explanation for these differing rates of adoption is offered, based on the learning effects of these teaching methods, as perceived by practitioners within each faculty category. Prospects and strategies for promoting the broader adoption of social constructivist teaching methods are then examined in relation to the survey data.