Students and lecturers

We have examined some of the concepts that describe approaches to knowledge and learning in many universities in English-speaking cultures. The question now is how do these concepts influence the role of lecturers? We also need to explore what lecturers expect of students. But first we need to understand the titles that lecturers have, and this means that we also have to understand how universities are organised. Most universities are organised into a number of colleges, faculties and/or schools—different universities use different names and may have a different number of levels of organisation. A faculty or school groups together a number of departments. Your university may use different terms, but the general principle is the same. Each department or school involves one or more disciplines. An outline of the structure of a university with three levels of organisation would look something like Figure 2.1. So, for example, your university may have a College of Humanities and Social Sciences that includes the School of Business, within which sits the Department of Accounting. Alternatively, it may have fewer organisational levels and thus have a Faculty of Economics that includes departments of Accounting, Marketing, International Business and so on.