Higher Education 36: 353–381, 1998.
© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
353
Lack of clarity in university teaching: A case study
NIRA HATIVA
School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel (Fax: 972-3-640-9477;
E-mail: nira@post.tau.ac.il)
Abstract. Correlational studies suggest that clarity in teaching plays a crucial role in student
learning and satisfaction from instruction. Other quantitative studies identify low-inference
teacher behaviors that are components of clear instruction. The present study used qualitative
methods to examine unclarity in teaching of a physics undergraduate course for non-science
majors. Teaching clarity was measured both as a high- and low-inference behavior. Evidence
of several data sources converge and reveal very low level of understanding of the material
presented, strong dissatisfaction with instruction, and a good match between high- and low-
inference teacher clarity behaviors. This is explained by the instructor’s insufficient pedagog-
ical knowledge, by his inability to apply those pedagogical principles he does know in actual
classroom instruction, by his misconceptions regarding teaching and student learning, and by
his detachment from his students and the subsequent lack of adjustment of instruction to them.
Introduction
The term clarity is frequently mentioned in the context of teaching. Every so
often we hear students complain of unclear teachers and we hear instruc-
tors state that they have explained a difficult concept clearly. Clarity in
instruction has, however, received only little attention as compared with
other teaching characteristics and research has concentrated primarily on the
pre-college level. Correlational studies found strong connections between
teaching clarity and student learning and their satisfaction from instruction
for all school levels, at all inference levels of clarity (high, intermediate,
and low – as explained below) and across all providers of measurement
(observers, learners, and teachers through self-ratings – Evans and Guymon
1978; Frey, Leonard and Beatty 1975; Good and Grouws 1977; Hines 1981;
Hines, Cruickshank and Kennedy 1985; Rosenshine and Furst 1971).
Among the few studies done at the college level, Hativa and Raviv
(1996) identified teacher ratings on clarity to be consistent across time
and courses, suggesting that students have a good perception of the nature
of clear teaching. In a review of studies on college instructors’ classroom
behavior, Feldman (1989) coded teaching behaviors and characteristics into
22 instructional dimensions and compared these dimensions on four indica-
tors of importance: correlation with student achievement; correlation with