what is critically reflective teaching?

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). What is critically reflective teaching? In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 1-19. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

I started reading this book a few weeks ago and will be blogging each chapter as I work through it.

From the preface, it appears that his first edition from 30 years ago was wildly successfully speaking to many people. This 2nd edition has been entirely re-written taking into account the impact of social media on teaching. He advocates for using four lenses to critically reflect on our teaching praxis: students’ eyes, colleagues’ eyes, theory, and personal experience. What I am going to find interesting is how critical reflection will apparently reveal whatever assumptions we hold about ourselves and our teaching and also what ideas in our environment/culture hold hegemony over our thinking, actions, and teaching. As a result, he apparently will help the reader avoid cultural suicide by inadvertently threatening colleagues as a result of challenging the culture and hegemony of current teaching practice. This is something I believe has been happening to me this past year as I continually challenge the hegemony of the lecture and passive learning. I have been experiencing this with my colleagues but of course also with my students - the instructional strategies I implement in the classroom challenge the hegemony of the lecture in students’ understanding of what it means to learn and be taught.

What an interesting 1st chapter. I started to become elated and uncomfortable at the same time. Elated, because I began to recognize issues of hegemonic thinking in my own employment as a university professor - I recognized what Brookfield was analysing. But also began to become uncomfortable at the same because, well, for the same reasons I became elated at being able to recognize in myself the issues he was describing: the hegemonic power of seeing teaching as vocation and how that creates a sense that as instructors we have to say yes to our students, say yes to service requests, yes to publishing another chapter, article or book, yes to another conference presentation. This hegemonic assumption of teaching as vocation takes over our lives and we begin to think that unless we are exhausted at the end of each and every day, then we have not attended to our teaching vocation as much as we could have and thus have let down ourselves, our students and our institutions.

Of course, Brookfield is advocating that we critically reflect on this hegemonic assumption. Is the assumption of teaching as vocation good for our students? Good for ourselves? Good for our institution? In his experience, being slaves to the hegemony of teaching as vocation leads to burn out and collapse or becoming dulled to the needs of our students, ourselves, our friends and family.

I wonder if this is specific to Western culture, in particular, North American culture or if there would be a different understanding of teaching in Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. My suspicion having spoken to colleagues teaching in other cultures is that teh USA and Canada are different and this may arise from what Brookfield identifies as the dominant ideologies of the US: positivism, democracy, militarism, capitalism, white supremacy & patriarchy. I am unclear how these would lead to teaching as a vocation, but it feels right to me. I have to think about this some more.

So that is what jumped out for me in this chapter: the hegemony of teaching as a vocation and how that co-opts our best intentions for students that ends up being what is best for the institution and not for ourselves and thus not for our students. If we don't take care of ourselves how can we care for our students?

This examination of the hegemony of teaching as vocation models how Brookfield wants his readers to understand critical reflection. Critical reflection examines the nature of power and hegemony and that is done best by considering our actions and thinking through four different lenses: our personal experience, students' voices, colleagues' voices, and theory. These different points of view or perspectives help to triangulate the issue being examined to reveal the underlying issue that is producing a particular behaviour or way of thinking.

The other thing that Brookfield considered while discussing the ideology of positivism in American culture is that it manifests itself in our teaching when we apply rubrics during our marking and grading of student work. Some things in student learning are not measurable in this way and are why I have so much trouble using rubrics. It is difficult to produce a rubric that really captures everything that you are looking for students to achieve and accomplish in the assignments we design to facilitate students' learning. Part of it I think is that students are able to surprise us with learning something valuable and insightful that we didn't plan or anticipate. This is what makes teaching and learning such an interesting and exhilarating process - there is always the possibility of students surprising us and teaching us, the teachers. Such fun!

Sometimes when students ask me for the guidelines for what they need to accomplish on an assignment or exam, what I really want to say rather than giving them the rules is - surprise me! I want students to cultivate their own curiosity and creativity. How does a teacher do that? I am hoping that developing my ability to be a critically reflective teacher will help me develop that instructional ability in myself.

One last thing to consider from this chapter. Critical reflection enables us to tease apart and examine the assumptions that we carry into our classrooms and I appreciate how Brookfield catalogues three different types of assumptions: paradigmatic, prescriptive, and causal. Paradigmatic assumptions are those that essentially form our worldview. I think these will be influenced by hegemonic ideas of our prevailing culture. These are foundational assumptions. Prescriptive assumptions are all of those that include "should" in the statement. These are the assumptions we think we should have and enact but do not necessarily arise from our worldview but rather may be externally imposed (e.g. professional conduct). Finally, causal assumptions are those ideas of how things are achieved: if I do this, this will happen. If I teach this way, students will respond in this way. I think this will help me to better identify what my own unstated assumptions are coming to bear on my own teaching.

ESWE and social justice

Back in August of 2014 Barbara Walvoord delivered a teaching workshop at the Augustana Campus. She was great. One of the things that stuck with me was hearing for the first time about Edited Standard Written English (ESWE). Dr Walvoord spoke of it as a social justice issue. I hadn't really thought about teaching students to write English as a social justice issue before. But that perspective makes sense. Without the ability to write English well, students may be barred from certain professions and employment.

This year I was again teaching the capstone course for Augustana's Biology degree programme which is the last chance we have as biology faculty to ensure that our students are leaving Augustana with well-developed writings skills. I tried something different this year when I returned students' first written assignment back to them with my comments about their structure and style in addition to their thinking. What I explained to them was that they would be judged on their basis of their writing by future employers and professional schools. Without even having a chance to speak with a potential employer or supervisor or admissions counsellor, their ability to succeed will be judged on the basis of whatever writing they have submitted to the programme or employer.

It was interesting to see my students pay attention when I said that. Even those students who already had good writing skills paid attention. I think this may be another example of promoting student engagement in their learning by making explicit connections between what teachers are teaching and what students need or will need. It is another way of making learning relevant to students.

Did it make a difference in student learning? I don't have any hard data to show that actual student learning outcomes improved but I do have one anecdote. One student who had been avoiding classes requiring writing discussed her aversion to writing and her new understanding of what that could mean when she graduated and moved into her working life. She knew that her writing ability was weak. I suggested that she make it a habit to meet with the Writing Centre on our campus to help develop her writing skills. She did that - and I could clearly see the improvement in her writing in the MT submission of her writing dossier and again with her final submission.

Explicitly stating the impact writing can have on students' lives after university clearly had an impact on one of my students this year. From that perspective, it does makes a difference on student learning outcomes.

Resources

Weimer M. 2012. A Strategy for Grading Student Writing Assignments. Faculty Focus. January 31.
Haave N. 2015. Developing students’ thinking by writing. The National Teaching & Learning Forum, 25(1), 5–7.

sharing the moments that bring us back to teaching, part 1

My last final exam this term was for my 3rd year histology class. A great class to teach; my students often enjoy it. But they also find it very difficult to master the material - so many details, so many interconnections to synthesize. One student who worked particularly hard and was particularly anxious about being accepted into medical school kept in touch with me throughout the term discussing her term paper, discussing her learning strategies seeking help to master histology. She was wound up so tight! As could be predicted, she was the last to submit her final exam to me. After handing in her exam she pulled out her smartphone and looked up and said to me "I just received the email informing me whether or not I got into medical school." Her trepidation was readily apparent on her face. She opened the email and gasped for joy. Doing her little happy dance she came over and gave me a hug. On her way out I asked her to keep in touch and let me know how her first year in med school goes. She bounced out the door of the classroom, feet barely touching the floor.

Was my face a little damp?

I smiled and was content.

does liberal education and integrative studies prepare for creativity?

What I found interesting in Secrets of the Creative Brain from the July/August 2014 issue of the Atlantic by Nancy Andreasen is the finding that creative people are prepared, tend to teach themselves, have broad interests and persevere. The finding that creative people tend to be polymaths seems to be connected to creativity because the creative act is about making novel connections unapparent to others. As a result, school should not narrow students too early on a particular subject or discipline. Education needs to first prepare the mind with a broad spectrum of understanding and knowledge so that creativity has been nurtured for when connections become available.

So, does a liberal education and integrative studies have an advantage in preparing minds for creative ideas?

changing the learning paradigm

Maryellen Weimer published a great post yesterday on her Teaching Professor Blog: "She didn't teach. We had to learn it ourselves." She discusses the comments that a colleague recently received on her end-of-term student evaluations and suggested that this is a result of student-centered learning or active learning in which students are given more responsibility for their learning. Comments such as this typically arise because students resist shouldering this responsibility. However, Weimer suggests that instructors could do a better job of unpacking the teaching and learning strategy used in the course so that students might better understand why they are shouldering the burden of their own learning - teachers cannot learn the material for students. If students understand the reasons for the implementation of a particular teaching and learning strategy they are more likely to accept responsibility for their own learning and more deeply engage in the learning environment. 

I have also received this sort of comment on my student course evaluations when I have used the teaching strategy Team-Based Learning. Some students felt that I had abdicated my teaching responsibilities when I didn't lecture every class and instead had students doing work (under my guidance) during class. I thought I had explained why I was using the teaching strategy and presented the data suggesting that deeper learning happens with collaborative active learning. What I have read over the past summer, and am reminded of again by Weimer's post is that as instructors we need to constantly be explicit about our teaching strategies and about the metacognitive development that is happening in our students as a result. The objective of every educator, I am sure, is to produce independent self-regulated learners that are no longer reliant on instructors to tell them what is the right and wrong way to do things. But this is something that requires work on the part of both learners and instructors in the sense that teachers must resist the easy way out and not give students the answers they seek instead guiding them to produce their own answers. And for their part students must be patient and understand that learning is hard difficult applied work and is not easy, quick, or simple.

Otherwise we graduate students who are unable to contextualise situations resulting in an inability to think on their feet when conditions change. As instructors we have an obligation to develop students intellectual ability.

is higher ed knowledge transmission or skill development?

Some recent articles about the future of higher ed appeared in the 2014 June 28 issue of The Economist. In a nutshell: academics will lose their jobs to MOOCs, MOOCs deliver low cost programs throughout the world, and the demand for higher ed is still there because of the lifetime earning power with a degree, though that has diminished in recent years.

Part of the problem with their analysis is that it seems to me that the authors still view education as transmission of knowledge rather than the development of learning skills. However, part of that perception is likely due to many classes in our universities being run with lectures dispensing knowledge to students rather than using class time to develop students' thinking, researching, and communication skills.

One of the things I found interesting, though, is their analysis that the lifetime earnings potential is markedly higher for graduate degrees than for undergraduate degrees - the earnings differential for undergraduate degrees has decreased over the last couple of decades but not so much for graduate degrees. Some will likely say that this simply reflects the fact that bachelor's degrees have become the new high school degree.

A great rebuttal to this issue of The Economist can be found at the Behind The Numbers blog. It discusses the dangers of linking education with profit. Public not-for-profit education is accountable only to the citizenry. In contrast, for-profit education may not have students best interests at heart but rather its investors. 

Higher Ed articles in The Economist, 2014 June 28 issue

Higher Education: Creative destruction - A cost crisis, changing labour markets and new technology will turn an old institution on its head

The future of universities: The digital degree - The staid higher-education business is about to experience a welcome earthquake

Free exchange: Wealth by degrees - The returns to investing in a university education vary enormously

The higher-education business: A winning recipe - Two big Brazilian education firms, now in the process of merging, show how universities can do both quantity and quality

new beginnings

This week marks the end of summer in my household. In addition to the weather being noticeably cooler and leaves beginning to yellow, we start teaching and our daughter starts university this week. Exciting times but also sad in the loss of unstructured time. At the same time part of the excitement that my daughter feels about starting university is welcoming the structure that facilitates learning. Interesting that our lives need times of structure to apply ourselves but then also unstructured time to regenerate our energy and allow free association of the different thoughts accumulated over the year that need to be integrated in order to permit the creativity that makes our professional lives enjoyable.

Something new for me this year is being appointed managing editor of Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching (CELT). This is a scholarly journal published by the the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) and contains peer reviewed articles arising from the society's annual conference on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). I am excited by this new venture because of my interest in developing learning environments and practices that resist the typical learning cycle of memorize/regurgitate/purge that seems to permeate much of higher education. I want to give my students life-changing experiences rather than simply a collection of courses appearing on a transcript. I believe that the papers published in CELT (and its sister publication CJSoTL) contain critical reflections on teaching and learning that when shared have the potential to transform students' learning experiences into ones that can positively shape who they will become.

I have been reading much SoTL literature over the past year about what makes teaching a scholarly activity and how that activity can be translated into scholarship. What has emerged for me is that SoTL is diverse in its approach to investigating teaching and learning being both experiential and objective in nature while simultaneously being robust in its critical appraisal of how evidence is collected and considered in the development of how we design the educational experiences of our students.

For me, Weimer (2006) makes the clearest statement of SoTL's goals: it needs to be both credible and viable. Viable in the sense that it needs to be read in order to have an impact on improving teaching and learning practices and thus must be both well-written and have something to say to educational practitioners. For it to be viable, SoTL must be credible by using acceptable methods of analysis and critical reflection on questions relevant to teaching and learning. If SoTL is going to have an impact on our students' ability to learn, it must be credible and viable.

Bernstein (2010), Felten (2013), and O'Brien (2008) present good structures for understanding the nature of SoTL and the different levels of engagement possible for educators and learners resonating with Weimer's (2006) criteria for how SoTL should be judged. For SoTL to be credible and viable it needs to have clear goals, a sound understanding of its scholarly and learning context, using appropriate methods to gather evidence of significance to the teaching and learning community that is critically considered and publicly disseminated.

As an editor of a SoTL journal my objective will be to support SoTL as a viable and credible force for improving the learning outcomes of our students. CELT will thus be one resource freely available online to help teachers develop their voice (Elliott-Johns 2011) and use evidence-based educational practices.

Resources

Bernstein, D. (2010) "Finding Your Place in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 4(2): Article 4.

Elliott-Johns, S.E. (2011) "Reclaiming a Writing Voice as a New Teacher Educator: SoTL as Portal." International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 5(2): Article 22.

Felten, P. (2013) "Principles of Good Practice in SoTL." Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal, 1(1): 121-125.

O’Brien, M. (2008) "Navigating the SoTL Landscape: A Compass, Map and Some Tools for Getting Started." International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2(2): Article 15.

Weimer, M. (2006). "Enhancing Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning: Professional Literature that Makes a Difference." Jossey-Bass, An Imprint of Wiley.