Abstract:
Most adult, vocational students enrolled in tertiary institutions now see themselves as
clients or customers of the institution rather than merely as students. It would appear,
therefore, to be reasonable to ascertain what their real expectations are as clients or
customers of their teachers. While there have been a number of studies within the school
system on this issue there is much less current data available from the tertiary sector. This paper
describes a study of vocational student expectations of university teachers, conducted on 5
different student cohorts all studying for an education degree. The study showed that vocational
student expectations of their teachers are mostly concerned with the traditional teaching and
delivery functions. The students regarded communication skills, subject matter expertise, delivering
relevant and current content, enthusiasm and professionalism as being highly important to
them. The results of this study are congruent with those of recent studies of other types of
tertiary students.
