At many post-secondary institutions, faculty is encouraged to form teaching triangles or teaching squares to sharpen practice.
With a teaching triangle, three instructors would form a mini “Community of Practice” in which they might meet regularly (once or twice a month), visit each other’s classrooms, and share discoveries and learnings with each other. I know of several departments at NorQuest that have used such a model as part of their FED work with faculty. At some colleges, such as Thompson Rivers University, teaching triangles are facilitated through their Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. I like what they explain the concept on their webpage. The educational developers from TRU are careful to point out that “the goal of each observation is not to critique the faculty member being observed, but for the two faculty members in attendance to reflect on what they have learned about teaching from observing their colleague. Over the course of a semester, each member of the triangle will be observed once and be an observer twice. These classroom visits will be preceded by an opening meeting with a CELT team member to discuss your group’s goals for the triangle and a follow-up debriefing once the observation process is complete.” More information can be found on their page The Teaching Triangles Program . Other institutions, like the University of Calgary or the University of Alberta, use a variation on this called “Teaching Squares”. In an article for Faculty Focus, Teaching Squares Bring Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, Neil Haave (from the University of Alberta) suggests that teaching squares are an “opportunity for faculty to reflect on their own teaching in light of colleagues’ teaching examples. Could I do something like that? Would that approach work with the content I teach? I might be able to use that, but what would I need to change so that it better fits with my teaching style? Are my students ready for a strategy like that?” At both U of C and U of A, these teaching squares are meant to be cross-disciplinary. In our context that might mean that each of the four members might come from a different faculty. Variations on this might include faculty members with a wide range of experience or very different roles (teaching, curricula development, librarian, WIL support, etc.) or teaching in a different modality (face-to-face, synchronous online, Hyflex, asynchronous online). So why am I sharing this? Well, at Norquest we encourage instructors to participate in peer observations as part of your FED reflections. The FED support pages on the Academic Hub contain all kinds of resources and observation guides to help instructors do these kinds of observations. But all too often these observations are done be close colleagues who may be too close to see the big picture in your teaching. Or they might be done by someone who feels that peer observation is really another phrase for “peer evaluation”, and that would be a bit of an issue too. Observations and consultations should avoid evaluative language and critiques like “you should have…” and instead focus on “how might we…”. The rationale behind the NorQuest peer observation process is to facilitate growth and reflection on the part of both the instructor being observed and the colleague doing the observation. Perhaps teaching squares or triangles could be a natural extension of our already ongoing Communities of Practice? If you want to know more about teaching squares, I found two very helpful guides, one from Dupage Faculty Development, The Teaching Squares Handbook , and another from the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning (University of Calgary), Teaching Squares; Observe and Reflect on Teaching and Learning . Both publications are creative Commons and downloadable.
0 Comments
|
AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|