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The study outlined in this book explores the conceptions of learning and teaching brought by a group of students and their lecturers in their everyday introductory Business courses at a university. Data was gathered through interviews and analysed using the phenomenographic approach. The overall purpose of the study was to offer a more defined explanation of the students early conceptions of their learning and the lecturers conceptions of teaching those students. More specifically the research aimed to develop an understanding of how students in their initial courses conceive learning and how this affects their studies and academic achievement. The findings also showed that the majority of the participants developed comparatively traditional conceptions of both learning and teaching in a limited range of categories. Relationships between the categories indicated very interesting results.

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Despina Varnava-Marouchou,BA,MEd,PhD,studied Education and Business Studies.She has presented and written many papers concerning teaching and learning in universities,including several chapters in books.She has taken part in a number of projects and has also developed various workshops on qualitative research methods in education.

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