ABSTRACT
Universities in the UK are under pressure to change their approach to teaching. I want to describe those pressures, argue that they derive from lack of attention to a model of teaching and learning and describe an appropriate model. It is clear that changes in university teaching can be attributed in part to increases in student numbers. Successive governments in the UK have pursued a policy of expansion for higher education so that, currently, around 30 per cent of school-leavers continue studying beyond the age of 18 (planned to rise to 50 per cent). This expansion has created new challenges for teachers in universities who now have to work with less homogeneous groups of students. The situation is made more difficult by reduced funding with its consequent larger teaching groups.
