Resolve to reflect on teaching in 2015!

The New Year often brings with it an invitation to reflect on past actions and future prospects. We make resolutions aimed at self-improvement for the year ahead (for me, it’s getting back on my exercise regimen, doing more recreational reading, and blogging more regularly!). Introspective reflection can also be a vital component of successful teaching.

In Reflective Teaching and Learning, Jennifer Harrison explains the roots of “reflective practice” in John Dewey’s examination of though and problem solving in the classic 1910 volume How We Think: “Dewey’s view was that reflective action stems from the need to solve a problem and involves ‘the active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it’” (Harrison 9, citation omitted).  Harrison continues to explain that reflective practice can be considered as occurring at three levels, each succeeding level being less instinctual than the previous:

1. technical reflection: examining events and action to determine what worked and what didn’t, and why;
2. practical reflection: examining “the interpretative assumptions you are making in your work” (Harrison 8);
3. critical reflection: examining “the ethical and political dimensions of educational goals and the consensus about their ends” (Harrison 8).

While each level is important, the second — practical reflection — is what draws me to blog this New Year.

As I have worked with colleagues in interpreting their student evaluation data from the IDEA Center Student Evaluations instrument we use at Augustana, one of the matters we discuss is the selection of learning objectives that is central to the process. IDEA SRIs focus on student reports of progress on specific learning objectives selected as “essential” or “important” by the instructor. So, the instructor’s selection of priority objectives is obviously crucial. There are a couple of areas in the summary report to which I draw their attention: the reported progress on their selected objectives, of course, and also the raw data on objectives they did not select. If the scores on selected objectives is lower than expected, and/or the scores on unselected objectives is higher, at least one important question for practical reflection arises: Are the objectives you’ve selected really the focus of your teaching practice? Or is there a disconnect between your assumptions about teaching goals and your actual practice in the classroom? For instance, you may hold firmly to the notion that Objective #8, “developing skill in expressing oneself orally or in writing,” is important to your class. But do you actually spend time and energy instructing in this skill area in the class? Do your assignments clearly reflect and articulate that learning objective? If not, there may be a disconnect between what you believe or intend in teaching and your actual action in the classroom.

These three components of teaching practice — beliefs, intentions, and actions — are at the heart of the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI), a free self-assessment instrument developed by Daniel D. Pratt and Associates based on extensive research into teaching beliefs, intentions and actions. The TPI is a 45-item survey that analyzes these three dimensions across five key teaching perspectives:

• transmission: “Effective teaching requires a substantial commitment to the content or subject matter”;
• apprenticeship:  “Effective teaching is a process of socializing students into new behavioral norms and ways of working”;
• developmental:  “Effective teaching must be planned and conducted ‘from the learner’s point of view'”;
• nurturing: “Effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head”;
• social reform: “Effective teaching seeks to change society in substantive ways” (Pratt and Collins 2001-2014).

Any teacher will have varying levels of all five perspectives; some will be dominant, some recessive, and the levels may well change over time based on changes in knowledge, experience… and reflection!  I took the TPI last fall — here’s how it shook out:

Developmental  teaching reached above the upper line, indicating a dominant perspective. Apprenticeship, Nurturing, and Social Reform all fall below the lower line, indicating recessive perspectives. Overall, the results in the 30s suggest that these perspectives are held moderately. The emphasis on developmental teaching makes sense to me, although I note a bit of a disconnect between my intentions and my actions — something I’ve been pondering about my practice since I took this survey. I was a bit surprised that the three recessive perspectives were at these levels, considering the emphasis on disciplinary analysis of communication as political and social agency that I (think I?) stress in my classes. More fodder for reflection!

The TPI doesn’t assume that some perspectives are “better” than others. And it’s not a perfect instrument, to be sure. Rather, the results provide one lens for practical reflection: what assumptions about teaching drive your practice at a given time? And is there any disconnect between what you believe, what you intend, and/or how you act as a teacher?

So, as we move into 2015, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on the work we do, and resolve to be more reflective practitioners in order to match our actions to our intentions and serve our students well.

For more resources on reflective practice, check out the following:

• Stephen Brookfield, “The Getting of Wisdom: What Critically Reflective Teaching is and Why It’s Important” (from Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, Jossey-Bass, 1995)
• Karen F. Osterman and Robert B. Kottkamp, Reflective Practice for Educators: Improving Schooling Through Professional Development (Corwin Press, 1993)
• Sue Clegg, Jon Tan & Saeideh Saeidi, “Reflecting or Acting? Reflective Practice and Continuing Professional Development in Higher Education,” Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives 3.1, 2002

Happy New Year!

 

Work Cited

Harrison, Jennifer. “Professional Development and the Reflective Practitioner.” In Sue Dymoke and Jennifer Harrison (Eds.), Reflective Teaching and Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008. 7-44. Print.

 

It’s that time again!!! “What Do You Do on the First Day of Class?”

If you’re a school geek like me — not to mention if you’re a parent — the first day of school is a magical time.

But for us teachers, it can also be a nerve-wracking time… there are a number of goals we have for kicking off our class in the right way: establishing our own persona, introducing the course in a way that whets the students’ appetites, establishing clear expectations, and establishing a welcoming and warm yet serious classroom environment. [Maryellen Weimer blogged a short yet dead-useful summary of goals and tips last year in the Teaching Professor.] Yeah, yeah, we introduce the syllabus, but what then?

Just in time, Josh Boldt at the University of Georgia shares a great idea — both for building a welcoming classroom culture and for helping you learn names and faces! — in Vitae. Boldt also gives a shout-out to Augustana’s own David Gooblar, who provides tips on this subject and much, much more on his Pedagogy Unbound website (which you should check out ASAP).

Enjoy that first day!

_________________________________________________________

What Do You Do on the First Day of Class?

Image: Oregon State U. Special Collections & Archives.

August 21, 2014

A huge proportion of Vitae members identify themselves either as graduate students or faculty members—which means that a pretty significant number of people here will be teaching at least one section this semester. And of course for every section taught, there’s always a first day of class.

So I thought it might be fun to come up with some ideas for first-day lesson plans. David Gooblar has compiled an excellent database of teaching resources here at Vitae and at his website Pedagogy Unbound. We’ve also just created a new Teaching Tips group where teachers—beginners and veterans—can share more tips and ideas. Consider this post the beginning of that discussion.

Total Recall? Maybe not, but good enough?

OK, maybe I’ve got summer movies on the brain this month… but Total Recall was one year before I graduated college (yes, that means 1990 — I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Colin Farrell remake). Loved it.

For all of it’s cheese-covered popcorn empty calories, the film raises some provocative questions about the nature of the mind, memory, and reality. As educators, we know that the capacity to aid our students in deep learning that endures beyond the final exam is a powerful opportunity. We’re not always — or even frequently? — able to tap into this opportunity. But shouldn’t this be our aspiration?

Tyler J. Griffin from BYU contributed this brief piece on enabling long-term learning and memory to Faculty Focus. Griffin emphasizes the role of relevance and memory cues in achieving learning that sticks. Maybe our students won’t achieve Total Recall, but they might be more satisfied with the course, and you might be more gratified by the results.

__________________________________________________________

JULY 14, 2014

Learning That Lasts: Helping Students Remember and Use What You Teach

By: Tyler J. Griffin, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies

How often do you hear the following sentiments from students?

• “I won’t ever use anything I am learning in this class, but I have to take it to graduate.”
• “I don’t care about this class. I just need a passing grade.”
• “I can’t remember anything I learned in that class.”

Granted, not all classes cover interesting material all the time. While we can’t change what needs to be taught, we can change how we deliver it. If we make the right adjustments to our course design and teaching methodologies, we will hear less complaining in our classes. So, what can we do to achieve higher levels of student satisfaction and long-term learning that lasts far beyond the end of our class?

Begin by realizing that you don’t usually need a complete course re-design to teach more students at higher levels of engagement and retention. You can start making simple yet strategic changes that improve learning right away in the courses you already teach. Here are two simple yet effective techniques you can use in your courses to improve learning and retention: frontload the relevance and engage their memory.

Suggestions for your summer reading list

How's this for a summer agenda?

As I prepare to take on a new role at Augie as the Director of the Center for Faculty Enrichment, I’m starting to look into the possibility of building a professional development library for my colleagues, as well as locating some good options for faculty reading groups. So once summer school is over at the end of June, I’m looking forward to a good month and a half of reading. (Actually, this will get to extend into the next school year, as my new post corresponds with a fall sabbatical. Good books instead of student essays for a couple of months? Yes please!) So this blog post from James M. Lang in the Chronicle of Higher Education has fortuitous timing… for you as well as for me, I expect.

Summer is a good time for catching up on the reading we might not enjoy as frequently during the academic year — rich literary texts to nourish us, pulpy beach reads for a tasty fix of mental junk food.  And lots of us read to advance our scholarly project, of course. But this is also a great opportunity to take in some fascinating research and useful advice on teaching and learning… because course prep in August will hit us before we know it, and why not kick off the next year by trying something new?

A few of these books have been featured in previous Augustana faculty retreats and reading groups — so I can recommend the volumes by Ken Bain and Susan A. Ambrose et al. For myself, after taking a great webinar with him, I can’t wait to dig into José Bowen’s Teaching Naked (no, I’m not a pervert).

If you have any suggestions for good reading on the scholarship and practice of teaching and learning, please share them in the comments below. I’m always looking for another addition to the library!

_________________________________________

June 11, 2014

Top 10 Books on Teaching

Spend some time this summer with at least one book about improving your college classroom

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user Raoul Luoar.]

By James M. Lang

In The Vocation of a Teacher, Wayne Booth, the literary critic and longtime English professor, posed a question that floats into my mind every May: “Why, if I claim to love teaching so much, am I so relieved when it’s over?”

I was especially glad this May because I will be on sabbatical from my teaching responsibilities for the 2014-15 academic year. I have two book projects I hope to complete over the course of the next 15 months. That might sound like an overly ambitious agenda, but the last time I was on leave, my wife and I couldn’t afford full-time child care for our 2-year-old twins on my reduced sabbatical salary. Now that all of our children are in school, I am counting on a major increase in my productive writing time.

Before diving into those writing projects, though, I will spend a little time reflecting on the semester that has come and gone, and looking to discover at least one great new book on teaching and learning in higher education. As much as I love what I do, and seek ways to improve the learning experiences I shape for my students, I find little or no time for substantial professional reading during the academic year. The summer offers me the opportunity to catch up.

I have been trying to stay current in small doses. Colleagues on Twitterhave been especially useful in pointing me to articles, blogs, and resources that are worth my attention for the first 10 or 15 minutes of my working day. And I will confess that, as a result of that reading, I have been suffering from some revolution fatigue this year. I’m not sure I can stand to read one more warning about how the entire system of higher education is about to collapse, or yet another celebration of the fact that it has begun collapsing already and we should help it along.

Big changes are both coming and necessary, no doubt about it—especially in terms of the financial model of higher education, and its increasing exploitation of adjunct labor. But in the meantime, the work of teaching our students, as many of us do on heavy teaching loads, has to continue. And I firmly believe that if every teaching faculty member could carve out the time to read one or two great books on teaching and learning every year, we would collectively serve our students much better than we do already.

In service to that conviction, I offer below the top 10 books on teaching and learning in higher education that I have encountered over the course of my teaching career. Each of these books has shaped—or reshaped—my teaching in some substantive and practical way: the construction of my syllabus, the nature of my assignments, the way I conduct class,the feedback I give to students. All of these books deserve a wide readership among faculty members, and any one of them represents a great place to start or continue your professional development.

Don’t check out yet; check in… with yourself.

I know, it’s close to the end, you’re ready for the beach. I get it.  This late in the academic year, with finals looming (or, for some of you, finals completed! you people can shut up now), it’s easy to check out and get some well-deserved rest.

But my colleague David Gooblar at Augustana College, blogger for Pedagogy Unbound (featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Vitae career website) suggests that the investment of just a little time at the conclusion of a course can reap serious benefits for your formative assessment and self-improvement as a teacher (as well as for more effective learning outcomes for your future students). This kind of self-reflection is also handy to form a basis for an eventual self-reflection report that may be part of a faculty review in your future.

Following his short piece below are reflection prompts from the self-evaluation form he references.

Best of luck to all of us at the end!

________________________________________

The Semester’s Just About Over! Now Grade Your Own Teaching. 

It’s been a long semester. We’ve all worked hard, tried out new things, adapted on the fly, managed to keep our heads above an ocean of work while still being present for our students. We’ve made it through the mid-semester doldrums. Depending on how much grading we’ve got left, we’re now within sight of the end. If you’re anything like me, to say that you’re looking forward to the end is an understatement. Does anyone else visualize entering that last grade, closing your folder of class notes, and then throwing that folder into the sea?

Today I’d like to suggest that you not be so quick to move on from this term, no matter how desperately you long for a summer away from teaching.

I learn a lot every semester: Trying out ideas in the crucible of the classroom is really the only way to improve as a teacher. I always feel better about my pedagogy at the end of the term than I do at the beginning. Curiously, though, these gains don’t always carry over from semester to semester. By the time that next semester rolls around—particularly if it’s the fall term—the lessons I’ve learned have been mostly forgotten. Did that new approach to a familiar text produce the results I’d hoped for? How did that new topic go over with the students? Was the multi-part assignment too much of a headache, or was it worth it? A few months later, it can all get kind of hazy.

Of course, some of you may have better recall than I do. But I think it’s valuable to take note of the semester’s gains and losses while they are still fresh in our minds. I’m suggesting giving yourself a course evaluation at the end of every term.

[details after the jump!]

Where does the time go? TAWKS might know…

A number of my colleagues, especially those involved in significant service commitments, have recently observed how the looming end of the academic year feels like such a time crunch: not only are we continuing our ongoing work in teaching, meetings and research (when we can fit it in), but the “needs doing by the end of year” deadline for bigger projects looms large, putting pressure on everyone. This is just one of the more salient moments that feature a plaintive refrain of all academic professionals — where does the time go?

Some new research on this issue at Boise State University was recently featured in Inside Higher Ed. Consider the findings of TAWKS: does this profile of faculty work-time feel familiar? How different might it be at a different sort of institution (say, a residential liberal arts college like mine)? What patterns are familiar?

________________________________________

So Much to Do, So Little Time

April 9, 2014

By

Colleen Flaherty

Professors work long days, on weekends, on and off campus, and largely alone. Responsible for a growing number of administrative tasks, they also do research more on their own time than during the traditional work week. The biggest chunk of their time is spent teaching.

Those are the preliminary findings of an ongoing study at Boise State University — a public doctoral institution — of faculty workload allocation, which stamps out old notions of professors engaged primarily in their own research and esoteric discussions with fellow scholars.

“The ivory tower is a beacon — not a One World Trade Center, but an ancient reflection of a bygone era — a quasar,” John Ziker, chair of the anthropology department at Boise State University, says in a new scholarly blog post in which he discusses his faculty workload findings. “In today’s competitive higher-education environment, traditional universities and their faculty must necessarily do more and more, and show accomplishments by the numbers, whether it be the number of graduates, the number of peer-reviewed articles published or the grant dollars won.”

Ziker’s Blue Review post continues: “It is harder to count — and to account for — service and administrative duties. These are things we just do because of the institutional context of Homo academicus, and it’s hard to quantify the impact of these activities or the time spent, but they are exceedingly important for intellectual progress of the larger Homo clans.”

But of course just how professors spend their time has major implications for faculty, students and their institutions, he says – especially as Boise State has recently adopted a policy that professors should spend 60 percent of their time teaching. Hence the need for the Time Allocation Workload Knowledge Study, or “TAWKS.”

[more after the jump!]

Use this year’s lessons to improve next year: Free webinar!

FYI, folks… the end of the academic year will be here before you know it. We will all want to sprint toward the beach, the bookstore and/or the bars, but how are you planning to use the aftermath of the year to your advantage for a better next year?

I’m not sure, either: that’s why I’m going to check out “Effective Strategies To Help Faculty Achieve New Semester Goals & Improve Their Teaching“, a free webinar from Innovative Educators (who, while a source of expensive paid webinars, has generous offerings of free resources to check out!).  It’s on Friday, April 11 at 2:00 PM CDT.

Check out the description after the jump!

 

It’s OK to be “less-than”: When professional humility is helpful

As you may have read on my “About” page, I am finishing up six years at my college’s tenure and promotion committee, and preparing to start a position next year as a faculty development director. So I have read countless faculty portfolios, observed numerous classrooms, and discussed pedagogy with scores of colleagues. I am now reading lots of stuff on teaching practices, attending webinars, and thinking about how to share state-of-the-art with my colleagues (and faithful readers).

I have discovered that there are lots of teachers who are better than me. There are lots of scholars who are better than me. Of course, I always had a sense of this, but the past six years have made the realization more, well, “real,” concrete and humbling.

But it has also been an invaluable learning experience that will help me be more effective as a teacher and researcher. Nicola Winstanley from Humber College shares a similar sentiment, as well as good advice on how to make “self-doubt” work for you, in Faculty Focus.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSPaXgAdzE]

————————————-
What Can We Learn from Self Doubt?

by Nicola Winstanley, Humber College

March 17, 2014

I would like to be able say of my teaching: this is clearly good; this is clearly not good. I would like to be able to think: I always do things right. I would like to be certain.

I would like to watch exemplary teachers and think: I do that! That’s me! I know exactly what I’m doing! Look how great this class is—mine is just as engaging.

Certainty is comfortable, after all—a soft cushion to sink into and relax.

But I don’t think those things. Instead observation magnifies my self-doubt, self-questioning, constant anxiety. Is this right? Is this good enough? The feeling I get in my stomach immediately after the intense transaction of the class itself is over: I’m not sure.

Observing Exemplary Teachers
As part of my professional development, I observed two classes. They were great classes—the students were learning; the teachers clearly liked the students; the students were engaged; the teachers were prepared. I could see the correctness of the structure, methods, and atmosphere. First-year students worked together to understand a Browning poem and, despite its complexity, recognized and named pathetic fallacy, enjambment, and misogyny. I was impressed. I could see their learning; it was clear, concrete. And, it felt good to be in the classroom. Comfortable.

Except that …

It felt terrible.

[resolve the cliffhanger after the break!]