This study explored instructors' conceptions of teaching in view of the existing calls for improving the quality of teaching at higher education in Ethiopia. Twenty university instructors were interviewed using a phenomenographic approach, a popular research procedure to explore variation in the ways instructors experience and understand teaching. The study revealed categorization and conceptualization of conceptions that substantiate recent investigations. From the analysis, categories of conceptions that are related hierarchically from the more teacher-centred to the more student-centred emerged. A higher category in a hierarchy hence included the awareness of the lower category but not vice versa. From this, it is concluded that instructors in the higher category are likely to adopt alternative conceptions in teaching whereas instructors in the lower category are unlikely to adopt conceptions of teaching beyond their category unless their conceptions are developed. Therefore, academic development programmes that expand instructors' conceptions of teaching are needed.