faculty misunderstanding of Teaching Squares

Teaching squares are a faculty development tool that I have used in the past when I was Associate Dean (Teaching) at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta. I have published a short description of this tool as have others  (Haave 2014, Rhem2003, Berry 2011, Oberlies et al 2020). Teaching Squares was developed by Anne Wessely at St. Louis Community College and has been used by many colleges and universities. You can read the details of how to set it up in any of the articles listed in the resources below. 

The key to implementing Teaching Squares to develop the teaching praxis of post-secondary faculty is that it is a tool with which faculty reflect on their own teaching. Thus, the point is not to critique the teaching you are observing in a colleague's class. This includes critiquing both the negative and positive aspects of your colleague's teaching. The point is for Teaching Squares participants to reflect on their own teaching praxis. Thus, when participants see something different in a colleagues' class that should prompt them to think "hmmm... how would I do that in my class?" Or a participant might ask themselves "I wonder if how my colleague is engaging in their class would work in my class?" Or "I don't think I would feel comfortable doing that in my class. I wonder why?"

As you can see from the sample reflective questions above, it is not at all about critiquing (positive or negative) your colleagues' classes but rather Teaching Squares is a means to prompt critiquing your own class and your own approach to teaching. Thus, after participants in a Teaching Square have visited each other's classes at least once and they get together to debrief the experience, they discuss what they have started thinking about their own teaching, not about their colleagues' teaching. 

Unfortunately, many Teaching Squares participants make the mistake of using the after-class group meeting to discuss what they think their colleagues are doing well or correctly in their teaching. Hence, it is disappointing to read a recently published article that perpetuates this mistake stating that in the Teaching Squares debriefing discussion my article (Haave 2014) is cited as advocating that "Observations exclusively focus on positive features in the teaching sessions" (Lemus-Martinez et al 2021). I suspect that the authors misunderstood the statement in my article "The intention of the square is not to criticize each other’s teaching" to mean that only positive aspects of the observed teaching are discussed. A good critique involves a robust discussion of both the strong and weak aspects of whatever is being criticized. I wish that Lemus-Martinez et al (2021) had instead focused on the subsequent sentence in my Teaching Professor article that states "Rather, it’s an opportunity for faculty to reflect on their own teaching in light of colleagues’ teaching examples."

Hopefully, the authors read this blog and can correct their misunderstanding going forward as they continue to use the effective faculty development tool of Teaching Squares.

Resources

Berenson, C. (2017). Teaching squares: Observe and reflect on teaching and learning. Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning Guide Series, Calgary, AB. https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/teaching-squares-observe-and-reflect-teaching-and-learning

Berry, D. (2011). Learning by observing our peers. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, 1, 99. https://doi.org/10.22329/celt.v1i0.3186

CTLT. (ND). Teaching squares. Centre for Teaching, Learning & Technology, University of British Columbia. https://wiki.ubc.ca/images/c/c5/Teaching-squares.pdf

Haave, N. (2014). Teaching squares: A teaching development tool. The Teaching Professor, 28(10), 1. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/faculty-development/teaching-squares-cross-disciplinary-perspectives/

Lemus-Martinez, S. M., Weiler, T., Schneider, G. W., Moulik, S., & Athauda, G. (2021). “Teaching squares”: A grassroots approach to engaging medical educators in faculty development. Medical Teacher, 43(8), 910–911. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2021.1929903

Oberlies, M. K., Buxton, K., & Zeidman-Karpinski, A. (2020). Adapting evidence-based practices to improve library instruction: Using customized tools to support peer mentoring and observation. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 26(1), 6–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614533.2019.1628078

Rhem, J. (2003). Teaching squares. National Teaching and Learning Forum, 13(1), 1–3. https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/535

Berenson, C. (2017). Teaching squares: Observe and reflect on teaching and learning. Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning Guide Series, Calgary, AB. https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/teaching-squares-observe-and-reflect-teaching-and-learning

learning from colleagues’ perceptions

Chapter 7 provides some very useful techniques for when faculty learning communities gather and I will need to regularly consult it when I set up my FLC. The reflective conversation techniques range from rather simple for FLCs that are just starting to those that have developed a relationship among themselves with trust. The critical reflection conversation techniques are designed to enable participants to uncover the assumptions of power and hegemony and to initiate a conversation without judgement on those sharing their own experiences. What Brookfield correctly identifies is that all too often faculty conversations typically degenerate into complaints about our students and administration. Students “these days” don’t know how to read, focus, work, (insert your own student stereotype here). Or we often accuse our administration that they don’t understand the demands of teaching or are expecting too much from our service and research to properly attend to our teaching. There are many additional stereotypes that faculty raise when discussing teaching. The critical reflection techniques among colleagues that Brookfield reviews in this chapter are designed to consider our assumptions and what the alternative perspective might be for a given situation or experience.

The simpler ones start with each colleagues completing a particular sentence such as “I know teaching happens when…” or “ I feel like I have not lived up to my teaching potential when…” And out of these responses, a conversation develops. The more complicated techniques involve rules and roles that different colleagues play. The one I like is where one is the storyteller and explains their experience, with another playing umpire who ensures comments are nonjudgemental with the remainder being detectives who ask questions to clarify the situation and offer alternative perspectives. Only once all perspectives are considered and the situation well understood are colleagues invited by the umpire to offer solutions.

These techniques are designed to ensure that critical reflection occurs between identifying the issue and offering solutions. Brookfield’s experience suggests that faculty tend to jump from identifying the issue to providing solutions without the intervening reflection phase. This feels like how my in-class discussions of course material unfold. I have students solve a problem and then I tend to immediately jump to explaining the solution rather than letting them explain and justify their answers to each other. I have had some success in having student teams justify their choices to each other, but I tend to get too uptight during this phase of the TBL apps. I wonder if it is because I myself do not feel comfortable with the ambiguous phase of students figuring things out for themselves? I am a problem solver - I want to solve their problem for them! But of course, this is not how learning works...

But back to the learning from colleague’s perspectives, I know that jumping from problem to solution often happens when I engage in teaching discussions with my colleagues.

So, a faculty learning community is what I think I have in mind when considering creating a venue for faculty to come and talk about their teaching. This is such a great idea. I hope I can implement it both at Augustana and on the North Campus. And I think I just have to be courageous to try it without completely knowing what I am doing. But this chapter has given me a foothold - I now have some ideas of how to start.

I am intrigued…

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Learning from colleagues’ perceptions. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 115-134. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

seeing ourselves through students’ eyes

Some very useful suggestions in chapter six for assessing how students are perceiving and coping in our classes. Brookfield advocates for doing this at the end of each week or even during class using a back channel via social media.  Using something like TodaysMeet students are able to anonymously post their questions or concerns and the instructor is able to check the commentary every quarter hour or so. He suggests that many online technologies can do this - he is not adverse to students using their smartphones to do this. I suspect that a Twitter feed or PollEverywhere could accomplish something similar to TodaysMeet. He advocates for the use of social media because it makes students’ positions and thinking public and transparent enabling introverts and students for whom English is a second language to have another venue for their voice such that it is not only public speaking that is available to them. Finally, he continually advocates throughout this book (at least for these first six chapters) the importance of democratizing the classroom. This is the basis for his other two points: social media as a back channel prevents the few students from monopolizing the classroom. I like that - give other avenues for students’ voices. Brookfield admits that there is a risk in giving students anonymous voices - it can enable crass, profane comments and risks bullying of other students and the instructor. But his experience suggests that other students will actually patrol the potential vitriol and has the benefit that the bullies or even the monopolizers may realize that their voice is not the majority opinion or viewpoint.

Clickers are also discussed. Note that he indicates that it is the discussion that debriefs the question that is most critical and useful to this technique. I still have not mastered this post-PRS question approach. I find that I am too concerned with ensuring that students understand the rationale behind the correct answer rather than having students discuss what they think. In addition, I find that students are willing to discuss the question in their teams but are reluctant to discuss their team’s thinking with the rest of the class. On the other hand, there is very robust intra-team discussion of the TBL apps (Plickers - my version of a PRS) so maybe that is sufficient.

Other suggestions made in this chapter I have heard mentioned before in other venues such as the muddiest point and the one-minute paper. The learning audit is a new one for me and is interesting. It consists of three questions:

• What do I know now that I didn’t know this time last week?
• What can I do now that I couldn’t do this time last week?
• What could I teach others to know or do that I couldn’t teach them last week?

Clearly, this is something that is done on a weekly basis and helps to make explicit to students themselves that learning is occurring incrementally/developmentally. Brookfield likes to use this to circumvent students’ feeling that they are not learning anything. Sometimes they just don’t realize that the little victories are summing up to something significant.

But the student feedback system that Brookfield likes the most and strongly advocates is the Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ). He has mentioned this a couple of times in previous chapters and I have been both interested in learning about it but have had some trepidation about what it entails and what it may solicit from students. For whatever reason collecting feedback during the course makes me uncomfortable. I think it is because solicited feedback requires a response from the instructor and I am not confident that I can respond in a way that students will appreciate. There are some things that students want (e.g. more passive learning) that I know is not in their best interests and am unwilling to acquiesce to these demands. But what Brookfield suggests is that receiving this kind of feedback allows instructors to again explain their rationale for a particular teaching strategy and why it is in their best interests to persist. Also, CIQs over a few weeks can give an instructor a forewarning about brewing revolts to a teaching strategy and thus gives instructors a heads-up to prepare a response. I guess I am not confident that I can provide a sufficiently robust response to quell a student revolt. But on the other hand, if I don’t give students a venue to voice their concerns it can boil over into distrust and disrespect of the instructor and result in class resistance to learning and worse yet appeals to administration - which has happened to me before.

However, despite my misgivings, the CIQ list of questions is quite benign and I can see how it can foster a classroom climate of communication between students and instructor. These are the questions:

• At what moment in class, this week did you feel most engaged with what was happening?
• At what moment in class, this week were you most distanced from what was happening?
• What action that anyone (student or teacher) took this week did you find most affirming or helpful?
• What action that anyone took this week did you find most puzzling or confusing?
• What about the class this week surprised you the most? (This could be about students' own reactions to what went on, something that someone did, or anything else that occurs.)

Brookfield has students write this anonymously on a paper form and has student volunteers gather them up to ensure anonymity. For large classes (>50) he has student volunteers summarize/consolidate the summaries into the top 10 comments that he then reads (e.g. 5 students each read 10 CIQs and provides their top 2 consolidated comments). For smaller classes, Brookfield simply looks at them all himself.

I like these questions. Our LMS (Moodle) has the capability to run anonymous surveys, so I think this would be a good way to collect these. Brookfield administers these CIQs during the last 5 minutes of the last class of each week. And then he changes what he can, what is reasonable, what is pedagogically sound. For the other comments, he uses those as an opportunity to again reiterate the rationale for why he teaches the way he does and how it promotes students' learning.

I can do this.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Seeing ourselves through students’ eyes. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 97-113. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.