Memory and Experience Recall

One of my original concerns when designing the research was memory and experience recall, particularly where memory of past experiences is subject to lapses or changes over time, since students’ experiences are a “retrospective recall of an event rather than a measure recorded at the time of the reported event” (Koenig‐Lewis, Asaad, Palmer, & Petersone, 2016, p. 63). Participants’ memory of events and experiences depended on how they encoded, stored and retrieved the information associated with their experience. The accuracy of such memory was also dependent on the dissonance between how new experiences were encoded in relation to the manner in which they captured past experiences through mental structures known as schemata (Roediger, Gallo, & Eisen, 2002). The narrower the dissonance, the greater the chance of

experience retention and accurate memory recall. Therefore, an important aspect of the validity of this research was the ability of the participants, who had graduated a year or more prior to the interviews, to be able to recall accurately their experiences and feelings about their teaching and learning interactions when they were part-time MBA students. However, it was also important to understand that these “memory events” were subject to various factors that either enhanced or reduced their ability to recall these experiences accurately (Roediger et al., 2002, p. 4).

A key factor is the part-time student status of my research participants. In full-time higher education, the university can be viewed as a “social milieu” where many interactions occur between students, their peers, faculty as well as administrative support staff (Koenig‐Lewis et al., 2016, p. 61). In such an environment, the students’ mood or affective state, both during actual experiences as well as in subsequent recall, has an enhancing or impeding impact on the accuracy of that memory recall depending on the state in which those experiences were coded and stored (Bower, 1981; Lewis & Critchley, 2003). However, the participants in this study were part-time postgraduate students holding full-time employment as industry practitioners. They did not experience the same level or intensity of full-time university social experiences, even as alumnus. These adults operated in two worlds; the classroom or the world of theory, and the workplace, or the world of practice. While straddling these worlds they contended with the dynamics of teaching and learning interactions with their Local Counsellors, and the associated congruence or dissonance of those experiences with the workplace. Therefore, their experiences of effective teaching and learning were shaped not just by teaching and learning interactions, but also their experiences

interacting with their peers in the classroom and in social settings. The latter, arguably, has a more enduring impact on students’ positive orientations towards conceptions of teaching and learning in a part-time MBA programme (Berger & Milem, 1999). An added dimension to this insight is the positive co-relation between the maturity of these students and their orientation towards their academic experiences because of the potential post-degree opportunities in career and personal development (Koenig‐ Lewis et al., 2016). Research seems to suggest that such a positive affective state raises the accuracy of memory recall, which then mitigates validity concerns of those recalled experiences stated in this study (Ahn, Liu, & Soman, 2009; Bower, 1981; Lewis & Critchley, 2003).

Research also suggests that sometimes, false memories occur. This means that the experience recalled either never occurred, or the experience occurred differently from the manner in which it was recalled. Such false memories occur quite readily because individuals also attempt to try to fill in gaps, by constructing meaning, as they proceed to recall experiences, or what is also known as “reconstructive memory” (Lewis & Critchley, 2003, pp. 803-812). Mood, at the time of the experience, may also result in “imaginative constructions” due to the associated bias with which that experience may have been coded and stored (Bower, 1981, p. 139). Hence, the need for these participants to contextualise their experiences through descriptive examples as part of the research interview.

Therefore, for the purpose of this study, students’ conceptions of teaching and learning interactions with their Local Counsellors being ‘effective’, was defined as the

process of teaching and learning that resulted in teaching and learning interactions being perceived as ‘effective’ or not, rather than the resultant qualification itself. The research focused on the experiences and feelings as a result of teaching and learning interactions. Therefore, when these students were asked to reflect on their experiences during teaching and learning interactions, it was important for me to understand that their conceptions of why they embarked on a specific action was likely to act as a filter for their recall of experiences, because retrospective recall of strategically selected moments affected how experiences were recalled from memory (Cowley, 2008). Since accuracy of memory recall was a universal occurrence with all the sample students interviewed, this research also accepted that the accuracy of memory recall would be a limitation that had to be understood within the context of the findings arising from the research.