An integral part of any teacher professional growth process is in participating in teaching triangles or teaching squares. These professional triangles are squares formed with your colleagues are used as a foundation to do some collective reflection and facilitate the visiting of each other's classes, either online or in person. This kind of collaboration allows for informal exploration of teaching practices and provides a non-threatening way of securing feedback so we can improve our practices. If you have never participated in this kind of process before, here is how it is explained at Washington University in St. Louis:
Teaching Triangles is a semester-long, reciprocal classroom observation and reflection program geared towards helping faculty think through their teaching practices in a supportive, structured environment. In Teaching Triangles, faculty observe and are observed by two colleagues. Observations are meant to stimulate personal self-reflection on teaching practice (not meant to provide direct commentary on colleagues’ performances). Participants engage in non-judgmental, formative feedback and discussion throughout the semester with other members of their Triangle following the observations. The CTL forms triangles and provides a structure for observation and reflection. Each Teaching Triangle consists of three faculty members committed to working together on their teaching for the semester. Triangle participants will agree to visit each other’s courses at least once during the semester to observe their colleagues teach. This observation will not be evaluative; direct commentary on colleagues’ performance is not part of this process. Instead, colleagues will write down their observations of the class session, and, following the class, reflect on their own practice having experienced what it’s like to be in another faculty member’s classroom. Following the observation and the initial reflections, triangle colleagues will convene to discuss their teaching, using some guiding questions provided by the CTL. From: https://ctl.wustl.edu/programs/teaching-triangles/#:~:text=In%20Teaching%20Triangles%2C%20faculty%20observe,commentary%20on%20colleagues'%20performances). Bowdoin College also uses teaching triangles and suggests these questions as a conversation/reflection guide: What happens in a teaching triangle? Each teaching triangle consists of three faculty members. After an initial meeting early in the semester to discuss logistics and establish expectations, each triangle member commits to visiting the other members’ classes at least once. Following all the class visits, the triangle reconvenes to reflect on teaching utilizing some of the questions below.
From: https://www.bowdoin.edu/baldwin-center/pdf/teaching-triangles-overview.pdf As you can see, the emphasis is on reflection and exploration not evaluation or judgment. In our NorQuest professional growth process resources there are several documents that might help you to facilitate such discussions and help you gather your thoughts. If you are from a small department or would rather get feedback from someone other than your close colleagues, the Educational Developers are always available to come, visit and chat! Several years ago, we published a blog on how this is done at NorQuest. Here is the link: Arranging a visit with an Educational Developer.
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Early conceptions of mentorship When I was younger, I had a very narrow view of mentorship. I think this view was rooted in my knowledge of literature and popular culture. Mentors were sages, who dripped with wisdom while they led you to discover inner truths about your purpose in life and how to fulfill the role you were predestined for. In my mind, mentors were individuals like Merlin was to young Wart (future King Arthur), or Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi were to Luke. I didn’t really think I had mentors, and I certainly never thought that I would be in a position to mentor anyone. This conception of mentoring started to change once I became a teacher (38 years ago!). I needed mentorship! As a young educator, far from family (3000 kms) and what I considered to be home, I struggled in isolation with the demands of teaching, and with providing instruction and guidance to teens. In my first week of teaching I had one student tell me that “My dad says I don’t really have to listen to you; you’re only a kid!” (To be fair, I was pretty young looking and only 21.). I also had a parent tell me: “If my kid steps out of line, just cuff him across the back of the head. You have my permission. It’s the only thing that seems to work.” This was not something I was going to do. Complicating matters even more, I was the new English and French teacher. There were those in the small community who viewed the young teacher from the big city university with suspicion: “Just what outlandish ideas and viewpoints will he be telling our kids? And who really needs French anyways?” At first, I thought that my principal, John, would be the best mentor. He was a skilled educator and he was taking his Master’s in Educational Leadership while he provided direction to our small school. However, very soon I learned that I could not be totally open and vulnerable with John. While he had his role as educational leader on our campus, he was also responsible for assessing his cadre of teachers. And every time I came to him with my challenges in classroom management, he could not help but make “mental notes” about my struggles, which somehow ended up on my teacher evaluations. As well, his notion of discipline (leaning towards intimidation and the threat of corporal punishment) did not mesh with my desire to create a learning climate based upon engagement rather than compliance. It was hard to navigate, especially when I was uncertain in my own approach and the culture of the school was out of synch from my own experience. Soon I learned to come to John only with my deeper, philosophical questions about the whys and wherefores in teaching and chose not to discuss classroom dynamics with him. John liked to “hold forth”; he had much to share in terms of effective planning and assessment. I’d sit in his office and take in his wisdom, while he pondered pedagogy, puffing on his pipe. (Yes, back then they did smoke in the schools!) I learned a lot from John. As for mentorship about classroom routines, rules and relationships, I went to another colleague, Jake. Jake taught Science and Math, and he was easy to talk to. He was not prescriptive but self-deprecating and collaborative. Jake had taught off and on, taking some years off to work as a bricklayer to make some “real money” (Christian schools didn’t pay very well…) before jumping back into the profession he loved. Jake had had his struggles with classroom management and could relate to many of the challenges I was going through. He was/is a gentle, kind soul, and sometimes the students could take advantage of that. Jake’s wife was also a teacher, and they would invite the young guy to their house for dinner and conversation. It was a great place to visit, to play games with their kids and feel comfortable and listened to. At that time, I could only hope that someday I might pass on the same kind of mentorship that I received from both John and Jake. Mentorship in its many forms Fast forward 38 years! Last week Miranda Hui and I attended a virtual conference on mentorship hosted by the Taylor Institute (the University of Calgary). As Faculty Developers, we were looking at the possibility of starting some kind of cross-faculty, interdisciplinary, mentorship program at NorQuest. What could we learn from other post-secondary institutions? How might a program be structured or supported? How could the program be encouraged and yet voluntary, allowing participants to make a match based upon need, personality and perspective? What kinds of activities and conversations might mentor and mentee engage in? How might such an endeavor help our faculty and ultimately, our students? And privately–we wondered–could effective mentorship ever be organized? Or does mentorship happen organically, when professionals find “kindred spirits” or go searching for “critical friends” so they can grow in practice and pedagogy? I’m not sure that we found answers to all our questions, but we did make a lot of great contacts and we discovered some wonderful resources to share with our faculty and guide whatever plan we might come with. Some of the things that we learned or further affirmed at the conference are that:
Anyways, that’s the thought. Now I need to check with my mentors, to see what they think! Reference Barrette-Ng, N., Nowell, L., Anderson, S.J., Arcellana-Panlilio, M., Brown, B., Chalhoub, S., Clancy, T.L., Desjardine, P., Dorland, A.M., Dyjur, P., Mueller, K., Reid, L., Squance, R., Towers, J., & Wilcox, G. (2019). The Mentorship Guide for Teaching and Learning. Calgary, AB: Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning Guide Series. Measuring student engagement? Quite a number of years ago, I was asked to champion a classroom walkthroughs program in a large school district. In this program school administrators would conduct “walkthroughs” as a way to assess how their school was implementing improvement goals. These administrators would get real data and a “feel” for how things were going in a quick and simple way. Principals and associate principals were to quickly pop into classrooms while teaching was taking place and, using a checklist with certain look-fors, make a five-minute assessment based on their observations of the lesson:
These and a number of other questions were all organized on a one-pager with checkboxes that administrators could quickly fill out. At the end of each day (or week) they would be expected to enter the data into an online database so they could combine all of their quick snapshots (crunch the numbers) and see “the big picture” for their school. A walkthrough mosaic, if you will. While I sympathized with the intent of the walkthroughs and was happy to get principals out of their offices and into the classrooms, I didn’t especially like the tool. It’s hard to reduce something as complex as a teaching environment into a series of “Yes I saw it!”, or “No I didn’t!” checklists. One question especially rankled me: Determine levels of class engagement:
The question was based upon a model for describing classroom engagement from the Phillip Schlechty (2002) which has five different levels of engagement: 1) Authentic Engagement, 2) Ritual Compliance, 3) Passive Compliance, 4) Retreatism, and 5) Rebellion. (for short summary of these levels check this document from Stockton University Center for Learning Design: levels) This question always bothered me. While the model professed to illustrate levels of “engagement”, there really was only one level where student were really engaged – the other levels just showed how disengaged they might be. The question elicited many questions from me. How do we know exactly what engagement looks like? Is it about eye-contact, question-asking, discussion, and busyness? Or could quiet students, who might be judged as day-dreamers, perhaps be more engaged than students who know how to “play the game”? Is a classroom of students quietly doodling as a teacher reads a story to them less engaged than those down the hall conducting a science experiment? Which group is merely compliant? I began to think about the types of engagement and considered a model of my own: 1) causing chaos, 2) confused or disconnected, 3) simple compliance, 4) making connections (personal or real world), 5) consolidating learning (building a frame for understanding), 6) challenging assumptions, and 7) creating new understandings or interpretations. Of course, most of this kind of engagement happens where we can’t observe it – inside the mind of the student. So, it wouldn’t work very well as a tool for quick observation (although it might work when reviewing student responses, written or recorded). After working with our district administrators for six months with what I thought was a flawed tool, I managed to convince the website builders to remake our walkthrough tool to expand the choices for observable engagement, and to better reflect our district improvement goals (for assessment, inquiry, and critical literacy). Then, only a year into the process, the district decided to drop the contract with the educational website designer, and walkthroughs - at least in our district - became a thing of the past. My fuss and bother about defining “student engagement” was put on hold. Student engagement as it is understood on college campuses After making the transition over ten years ago from k-12 education to post-secondary contexts, I quickly became re-acquainted with the term “student engagement”. I learned that the term “student engagement” is one that has taken on a lot of territory in and around the college scene in the past decade or so. As a result, the term itself has become rather “fuzzy”. On college and university campuses, student engagement is referred to when:
In our present post-secondary context, “student engagement” is something that is often used as a justification for many decisions made by learning institutions, but it is rarely defined and more often only fleetingly understood. More work is necessary in this field to clarify just what the students are to be engaged with and how, to help clear away the misconceptions and make decisions that most benefit our institutions, our students and our instructors. However, for the purposes of this series of blog entries, we will be focusing on only the first of those four notions of student engagement; engagement as it pertains to the kind of connection students make when involved in learning activities. Our immediate context at NorQuest At NorQuest, we currently have a faculty learning team considering how we might better engage our students in online activities, but even in this group of highly interested educators, we have had trouble pinning down what exactly we mean by student engagement. Just this past week we wrestled with a few critical questions:
Several of the instructors on the faculty learning team expressed frustration with their current online – Covid necessitated – teaching context. They lamented the loss of engagement from face-to-face contexts and the connection they always felt with their students. Now, because many students choose not to attend regularly (but might watch the recordings later), keep their cameras off, and only ask questions or use the chat box feature infrequently, these instructors feel like there is little to no engagement. And this feeling raised several more questions:
These six questions are going to become very important as we look to the future in teaching and learning at NorQuest. In next couple of blog entries, we’ll try to work though these questions with an eye to the college learning context. References: Schlechty, P.C. (2002) Working on the work: An action plan for teachers, principals, and superintendents. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Education Series. Ashwin P., McVitty D. (2015) The Meanings of Student Engagement: Implications for Policies and Practices. In: Curaj A., Matei L., Pricopie R., Salmi J., Scott P. (eds) The European Higher Education Area. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20877-0_23 In this musing I would like to share a discussion strategy I learned quite some years ago, it is called a “Focused Conversation”. I picked up this strategy by attending a full day workshop from Jo Nelson, who at the time, was working for the Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs. The workshop was great, and I ended up leaving with a copy of her book and a new approach to guiding conversations towards actionable decisions. Over the years I have used Focused Conversations in many different contexts:
These aren’t all the times that I have used a Focused Conversation, but they should convey just how versatile the strategy is. What is a Focused Conversation? (ORID) A Focused Conversation is a strategy that uses four rounds of questioning to guide participants through information and help them reach some their own conclusions about the data. Facilitators (teachers, leaders, workshop coordinators) skillfully guide the participants through:
Ground rules for ORID conversation participants (which should be shared at the outset):
What follows is a bare bones summary of the four steps. Whenever I use this model I tailor the accompanying questions to the educational or leadership purpose for the discussion (literary analysis, issue investigation, program review, curriculum mapping, etc.). The example questions are geared towards a focused discussion on a data set (like year-end surveys). You would need to make questions that suit the needs of your discussion. 1. Objective - What do you see? Concerned with data, facts, and the ‘truths’ that everyone can agree on, such as what was seen, heard, touched, etc. It is important to spend a considerable amount of time on this step so that all aspects and angles are explored. Example questions:
2. Reflective – How do you feel about this? Focused on reactions, moods, memories, associations. Examples:
3. Interpretative – What might this all mean? Concerned with meaning, purpose, significance, implications. Examples:
4. Decisional – What should we do? Focus on resolution, agreement, and possible new directions or actions. Examples:
Focused Conversations in Online Teaching I was thinking about the online applications of this strategy, especially in a teaching context. Here’s a possible scenario: One of our instructors in environmental education is guiding her students through an examination of the current controversies regarding pipelines from Alberta (eastward, westward and southward). Instead of assigning a number of readings or video clips to her students, she has asked them to do the research. Over several days of time, the class is assembling their ideas on a Padlet. The students post their own observations, paste in images (of the oil sands, of unemployment lines, of graphs regarding pollutants, etc.), and provide links (to news articles, websites and video clips). This “Pipeline Padlet” becomes the muse, artefact or data set from which to proceed through a focused conversation. After providing enough time for students to explore and peruse the posts on the Pipeline Padlet, the instructor asks her students to share their observations. What do the students see on that Padlet? Which images, words or angles emerge? Can they specifically identify the various kinds of environmental or economic impacts? How might this dats set be grouped or classified according to themes (environmental, economic, political, jurisdictional, or community factors/viewpoints), credibility (reliability of sources/voices), historical development (timelines) or environmental impact and urgency? What do the students notice about the kinds of information, the way it is shared, and how it is shared? This first phase (observation) often takes the longest. It is important not to rush the process. A skillful facilitator will make sure that every item is touched upon and considered. Hopefully, such facilitation will help stem the impulse to just jump on one line of thinking (the first or loudest voice) and help students to see that the issue is a complex one with many stakeholders – including themselves (as residents, as stewards of the earth, as those seeking employment). After giving enough time to do this review (I often spent over an hour in this phase), the instructor moves to the reflection part of the process. How do the students feel about what they are reading, seeing and hearing? Do the pipeline deliberations cause sadness, frustration, anger – or hope and potential? Are these emotions generated by concern over the environment, economy, or a sense of fairness and human rights? How do the students feel about the ways in which information is shared or viewpoints expressed? Which aspects or concerns generate the most emotion? In the second step, the instructor is helping the students move past a simple knowledge of the issues and is pushing them to question their established assumptions and beliefs, develop empathy and perspective taking, and come to a richer understanding of the context, the stakeholders, and the ramifications. This step should not be rushed, and students should have an opportunity to express their own perspectives through discussion (small group or classroom) or forums (written or video). Once the emotions have been shared and named, the group is ready to look at making sense of the issue. What does all of this mean? The instructor challenges the students to make sense of the observations and their feelings. What have we learned about the issue? What seems to be the central issue in all of these pipeline deliberations? How can we make decisions that are truly the best for the environment and for the people, animals and plant life in it? Where might we start? What would give us the most “bang for the buck”? How might we address misinformation, bias and political factors? Often, this is where an instructor wants to start. We have a passion for our subject area and we assume that our students share this passion and have some background knowledge and investment in the topic. However, many of our students have had very different life experiences and are immersed in a very different context than we might have. So, while some of the students can follow and partake in our “class discussions”, many others become disconnected and “check-out”. Our students need the opportunity to become aware of the data, viewpoints, players and stakeholders, before we move to such a discussion. And if we have done this pre-work, the discussions will be richer and more productive. Finally, the instructor moves to the last phase of the ORID process. What should we do in response to this issue? This questioning phase pushes students to ideate directions, decisions and possible solutions both for themselves and perhaps also for society in general. What kinds of initiatives might be started that work towards helping the environment, the people and the economy? What might individual roles and collective responsibilities be in such change processes? How would you sequence actions and decisions in a responsible way? Where would you start? What kinds of timeline or constraints might there be? How would we know that we are making a difference (success indicators?). This last phase in the ORID process may lead to individual assignments, essay writing, or presentations. As is often the case when confronting big questions or a wealth of data, there may not be consensus and, in a teaching situation, there doesn’t need to be. However, if the application is for choosing a direction for a faculty department or solving an emergent issue, you may need to work towards consensus. ORID was developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs, a nonprofit organization with offices in Washington, DC. It was adapted from Winning through Participation: Meeting the Challenge of Corporate Change with the Technology of Participation by Laura Spencer (Dubuque: Kenndall/Hunt Publishing, 1989). Brian Stanfield further elaborated on the ORID model to show how it might be used in a variety of professional and intercultural contexts. Jo Nelson and the Canadian Institute for Cultural Affairs then built upon ORID model and describe how it might could be applied to teaching and leadership contexts. Stanfield, R. Brian, ed. (2000) The Art of Focused Conversation, New Society Publishing. Nelson, J., & Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs. (2007). The art of focused conversation for schools: Over 100 ways to guide clear thinking and promote learning. Toronto, Ont: The Canadian Institute for Cultural Affairs. Arranging a visit from a Faculty Development Advisor Before the onset of Covid, Joan, Sarah and I would often conduct numerous classroom visits to provide feedback, support and coaching to those instructors who were interested. It was one part of the job that all three of us loved to do. We were able to know individual staff a little better, we could see them in action and feel their passion for teaching, and we were left with a better sense of the programs and the learners we are supporting at the college. And we were able to learn such interesting things! I remember one busy day when I started the day watching nursing students insert IV lines, then learned about irony and voice in a University Transfer course, before finishing the day with business students who were sharing their ideas for a project plan. Since the move to online learning, we haven’t been experiencing the same volume of requests for visits. There may be a number of reasons for this:
However, I wonder if many of our faculty were even aware that such an opportunity exists. Are they aware that individual faculty can get clear and concrete feedback from someone outside their department? That they can get feedback from someone whose number one job is to support teachers in every phase of their career? From someone whose job is to encourage and coach and not to evaluate? So, I thought I might use this week’s musing to describe just how a faculty observation works, to demystify the process and provide assurances that it is a friendly and confidential way to get structured feedback. Step One: Arranging a Visit! Setting up a classroom observation with a NorQuest Faculty Development Advisor (FDA) is very easy to do. You just send an email to [email protected] and ask for a visit. Myra will forward your request to the team and we’ll figure out whose schedule works best with yours. Or, if you already have a relationship with one of the FDAs and feel quite comfortable with that person, can just send them an email. At the moment we only have two FDAs, Joan and myself. But, by the end of March we should have a third, Miranda. Step 2: Setting the Context The next step would be to arrange a quick “check in” with the FDA you are working with. Before Covid, we used to meet instructors informally for a coffee by Tim Horton’s, but I guess now it will have to happen via Teams. In this check in, your FDA will want to know a little more of the context for the observation:
We also might point you to some of the feedback observation guides that were developed by Kim Goebel a few years back for observations like this or for when colleagues observe each other. These are available on the Q on the Faculty tile of the Resources page. There are a number of forms to choose from. Several are for non-teaching roles but there are at least three with slightly different lenses from which to view a synchronous teaching situation from. You can choose which of the forms you would like to use. The one Joan and I prefer asks the instructor to suggest three areas for the FDA to give feedback on. So, if you ask for feedback on your pacing and tone, that’s just what you’ll get! Step 3: The Actual Visit If the visit takes place in real time, whether online or face-to-face, it is a good thing to prepare your students for the FDA visitor. Letting the students know that you’ve invited an instructional coach to your class to observe you in action, lets them know that they are not the ones being observed. When we would conduct these observations in physical classrooms, Joan, Sarah and I would just jump right into the lesson. I relished the part of playing the student, but I tried not to be the brat that I was in junior high. Typically, I sat amongst the students, participated in all the activities, jotted a few notes, and even asked nearby students why they were taking the course, how they learned best and where they were in the program. With the move to online, such participation has become easier and harder. No longer do I stick out among them like a thorn among the roses (Just who is that old guy anyways – and what is he doing here?). Nor do I have to hide my note-taking from the students. I’m free to take part in the chat, the breakouts and the discussions. But it is harder to accurately gauge the student experience. I can’t read their faces, see their body posture, or notice when they start to check out and surf the net. I can only relate my own experience of the lesson and make notes about the kinds of interactions going on through the chat, the discussion (in the main and breakout rooms), and the activity on in-class assignments (for instance working in shared documents). Step 4: The Debrief After the observation, the FDA will need a bit of time to process their notes and think carefully about the task you gave them. Their job is not to criticize, solve or direct. Their job is to describe what they saw and experienced and ask thoughtful questions about your choices in planning and practice. Does your sense of what transpired in that class align with the student experience or with what the observer noticed? If you were to adjust the lesson, what might you change? What other possibilities might there be that could support the students as they dig deeper into the content, or as they develop their skills and attitudes? Typically, I will compile a page or two of observations, questions, and considerations and I share this document with the instructor I am debriefing with. Together we walk through the document, pausing to reflect and discuss and explore. When the debrief is over, I leave the instructor with a copy of the notes/observation form. Then, as a matter of courtesy and privacy, I delete the file from my computer. The instructor should have the only copy. What and observation is... and what it is not!To allay any fears or misgivings, I thought I’d end this musing with some assurances.
An observation from an FDA is:
An observation from an FDA is not:
This last point is one that I want to comment on further. The role of an FDA is not to evaluate faculty or to “fix” them when they are broken! We are faculty and our primary responsibility is to encourage, support and stretch our colleagues. We are instructional coaches, not instructional supervisors! This simple distinction means that we will not report on our observations to your chairs or deans! Classroom visits are completely confidential. And this confidentiality should go both ways. You are free to use the feedback, ideas and observations when you write your annual growth plans, as a way of showing how you are working on your professional goals. Your chair or dean might be interested to know that you did invite and FDA to your classroom and that together you identified some learning goals for the current year. However, individual instructors should not turn around and use a visit from an FDA as evidence of their “exceptional teaching” to impress supervisors or prospective employers. In fact, the observation notes themselves will not support this. We try to refrain from using evaluative terms like excellent, good or mediocre. Instead, our notes will be full of simple observations, questions and considerations. These notes are meant to initiate reflection and dialogue, not grade or rank. The notes are for you; not for anyone else! So, as we continue to work through teaching from home, remember that support is still here! You don not have to face it all alone. In fact, online teaching has provided a little more flexibility. If your FDA cannot make it to the online class, you could still provide a link to the recording. Or, if you are more interested in reflecting on how your learning is structured, you could ask an FDA to give you feedback on how you’ve set up your course on Moodle and how you work to provide students multiple avenues for learning – through synchronous, blended and asynchronous lessons. Just how clear are the major learning outcomes to your students? Do they clearly know what they need to do to be successful? Have you provided support, but also allowed them the agency to make choices and learn even more than you might expect? Anyway, we’re just an email away! The NorQuest Teaching Competencies At NorQuest College we have an agreed upon set of six teaching competencies (quality standards). We have had this list of competencies since 2008, and the list was written after a good deal of research and consultation with both faculty and leadership. Over the years, the competencies have provided: 1) a starting point for supervisory conversations about proficiency and professional growth, 2) a justification for funding requests and changes in roles/responsibilities, 3) a lens for adjudication of the Jaye Fredrickson Award, and 4) an important tool for self-reflection. While some might say our competencies are a bit dated or quibble with the language (For example, choosing to swap out “Evaluation Expert” for “Assessment Expert” to reflect an increased emphasis on formative assessment techniques.), the overall thrust of these competencies and their descriptors is still very sound and worthwhile. At NorQuest College, we would like every instructor/faculty member to ask certain questions as they consider each competency.
What I like about this list of competencies is the acknowledgement that teaching is a multi-faceted endeavor. It is more than just being “a good storyteller” or an “effective classroom manager”. While many instructors may have some natural talents that aid in presenting content and forming relationships, quality practice takes commitment to improvement, ongoing solicited feedback (collegial and learner), regular focused reflection, and timely strategic adjustments. As Dylan William says: it requires a “culture of continual improvement” and a commitment to reflective practice. There is a lovely little clip from Dylan explaining why, in spite of ourselves, we have “the best job in the world”! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0glFJMYv1JY. If you get a chance, just watch the first 2 minutes! Other facets that might be considered, if we ever think of “refreshing the competencies” might include Instructional Leadership (How do I collaborate with, support and/or mentor my colleagues in their practice?), and Service (How do I support the college and its initiatives, or my professional organizations through service work?). In addition, with the very diverse nature of our college and our students, where might we more properly highlight the role of the instructor as a model/champion for diversity, inclusion, and equality? Nonetheless, I think the teaching competencies have held up very well in these past twelve years and I am happy to draw attention to them one more time in this musing! Have a wonderful week! Jeff What is SoTL?
One of my roles at the college is to encourage instructors to examine closely their teaching practice with an eye to what works and what might not be quite so effective. The thought is that every one of us, no matter how experienced and skillful we are, can get better at the practice of teaching. Instructors who are reflective practitioners plan their lessons thoughtfully, seek feedback from students and colleagues, review their lessons and sometimes watch them over again (handy to do in BBU!), and make timely and skillful adjustments to their ensuing lessons and units. Those who want to take reflective practice to the next level engage in something we call “the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (the NQ definition of SoTL is included at the end of this musing). By doing so, these educators move from reflection to research. Not only do they seek answers to questions they may have asked about their own teaching, they also look for learnings to be shared with colleagues and applied in wider contexts. SoTL is a relatively new wrinkle in post-secondary education, having been on the scene for only 30+ years or so. Before this time, the research focus for many instructors and professors seemed confined only to their area of teaching expertise; literature professors studied literature and health care instructors studied advances in the world of medicine and care. Teaching was just a vehicle for conveying what they learning in their studies and research; it didn’t merit study in itself. However, this changed in the 1990’s. Many post-secondary instructors started to realize that there the practice and pedagogy of post-secondary instruction was not something that could be taken for granted. Skillful use of teaching approaches, strategies and innovations could make learning more interactive, engaging and powerful. And so these post-secondary educators began to research not only what they taught, but how they taught. Since that time, SoTL has gained in popularity. There are now conferences and publications established so instructors from a wide array of academic, professional or vocational fields may share their questions and findings in working with students in post-secondary settings. One such conference is the STLHE conference (The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) and another is the Symposium on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (sponsored by Mount Royal University and held annually in Banff). Both of these conferences attract SoTL researchers from around the world! At NorQuest College, we have had quite a number of SoTL projects conducted in the last couple of years. Instructors have asked:
The NorQuest Research Showcase last year featured a number of these inquiries and several are now being prepared for presentation and publication. Just this week Viola Manakore and I hope to launch one more SoTL project. Our inquiry will ask instructors, from NorQuest College and from other colleges and institutes across Alberta to respond to a survey and perhaps participate in informal interviews. Our objective is to explore the experiences of post-secondary educators and students as they have transitioned from face-to-face learning to alternative forms of instruction during COVID 19 pandemic. More specifically, we would like to know:
Obviously, Viola and I are not the only researchers looking at this issue. There were some surveys and questionnaires sent out early in the pandemic that captured some of the confusion and quick thinking of the time. That said, I think we are in a very advantageous position to follow-up on some of this research. Instructors have had five months to make adjustments, explore technologies and get feedback. Now is the time to capitalize on what they have learned and consolidate it, so that it might be shared. So, I hope that, when the invite to participate in the study comes to your email this week, you will choose to jump in and share your learnings! If you have any questions about SoTL or are thinking of perhaps starting on a project of your own, please contact me. I will be running workshops later in this term, but a preliminary conversation is usually the best way to get started! The NQ SoTL definition: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) involves the close examination of the relationship between teaching and learning at the at the post secondary level. Faculty members who engage in SoTL conduct focused inquiries into their teaching practice with an eye to improving the engagement and achievement of their students. SoTL is primarily concerned with investigating and improving the “how” rather than the “what” of post-secondary teaching practice. Such inquiry necessitates the identification of an innovation, problem, or process to study; a review of previous research and seminal literature; the skilful and deliberate implementation of innovative teaching practices and strategies; a detailed reporting of success and failure; thoughtful analysis and reflection; and the eventual dissemination of findings through presentations or publications. SoTL may include inquiry into teaching aspects such as course design and implementation, classroom or online facilitation, review of assessments or assignments, innovative learning formats or systems, and/or program evaluation. Ultimately, SoTL adds to the growing body of knowledge related to post-secondary teaching and learning by providing practical applications for promising educational theories and innovations. References:
Reflective Practice
Are you a “reflective practitioner”? This was a question put forward to us on a regular basis when I was doing my undergraduate program in Education close to 40 years ago. At the time, there were countless articles written about the need for teachers to commit to regular reflection about their pedagogy, planning, and practice. When I did my practicum stints at McNally and Victoria (before it became a performing arts school), I had to keep a daily journal – tracking my lessons and the student response. It wasn’t easy. There was just too much to do, between lesson planning, marking, coaching and job hunting. I often resented the extra writing. I wasn’t sure what my profs and supervisors wanted, and I wasn’t all that great at going deep into my thoughts and feelings about my role as a teacher. I thought it was “fluffy”. I was only 21; I still had a lot to learn about teaching and life. Besides, I had places to go, movies to watch, and games to play. Nevertheless, I got those journal entries done and handed them in. Sometimes the reflections were very hard to write; at first they seemed very forced. I tried to give Professors what they wanted, and I thought they wanted name-dropping (As Heidegger once wrote…), buzzwords and jargon (edu-babble) and life-changing revelations. When I let that idea go, I suddenly could write six or seven of my “daily” reflections – all in one night. Procrastination and deadlines had forced my hand; I had to be simple and authentic. All the same, I think the practice of reflection did influence who I became as a teacher. Very early in my career I became fixated more on the “how” and “why” of teaching rather than the “what”. It didn’t matter if I was teaching grade five French or Hamlet to the grade 12’s, the questions were still the same: “What can teachers do to hook their students on learning?” “How do they keep students engaged?” “What do you do if learning breaks down?” “How do I know if my students are really learning?” and “How can I support and challenge learners so that they develop efficacy and ownership of their own learning?” As I said, in the early 1980’s “reflective practice” was one of the buzz phrases or fads around education. I thought it might fade away just as many other terms did – but it didn’t. In fact, committing to be a reflective practitioner is just as important today, in the world of online instruction, as it was many years ago when disco was in, the internet was just emerging (remember dial-up?), most of my female colleagues had big hair, big glasses and wore shoulder pads, and the Oilers were winning championships. So what is reflective practice? Well, on a very simple level, I would say that reflective practice is the development of self-awareness about your teaching. A kind of “metacognitive thing”. As Donald Schön wrote: The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. (Schön 1983: 68) For me, reflective practice involves: 1) commitment to growth, 2) a strategic focus, 3) skillful implementation, 4) data collection and feedback, 5) a willingness to be surprised, 6) reflection and 7) adaptation and re-alignment. Just thinking about how your lesson went and making a mental note to do things differently next time, is not reflective practice. There needs to be intentionality, targeted inquiry, a bit of soul-searching, and considered, thoughtful adjustment to practice. Reflective practice requires an open mindset, an awareness of gaps and growth areas (instructor and student), a recognition of the incredibly complex world of teaching and learning, and an unwavering a commitment to students and their learning. It follows that instructors, who are reflective practitioners, need to keep current on educational trends, display understanding and empathy, and focus on continuous improvement. Often these same instructors become hubs or champions in their departments – sharing discoveries and missteps with their colleagues. So how can one enact intentional, targeted, considered and responsive reflective practice? Well, as I was forced to do, you can keep a professional development journal – keeping track of some of the strategies you’ve tried and whether or not they were successful. You can also do this by writing notes on your lesson plans, especially if you return to these plans frequently and use them in subsequent semesters. Another avenue would be in regularly updating your professional growth plan (which we used to do in Halogen). PGPs help us set learning goals, challenge us to seek out literature and expertise, and commit to getting feedback from our students and colleagues. Other strategies include:
If you are interested in learning more about reflective practice, I will run several sessions in Week Of Welcome. I can also provide you with many resources from Dewey (1930’s) to Zeichner or Schön (1980’s), to current educators like Stephen Brookfield… just send me an email. Donald A. Schön, The reflective practitioner - how professionals think in action. Basic Books, 1983 ISBN 0465068782 |
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
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