Adult vocational university students: what do they want from their teachers?

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.