DEVELOPING YOUR TEACHING: AN ONGOING STORY

We will, though, still find that several different development processes are likely to work in any given set of circumstances. Of course, we are all used to choosing from among a number of possible options – but what else guides us in these choices other than their immediate effec-tiveness? Are we left with an entirely subjective approach that depends in large part on day-to-day whims and that changes as our circumstances shift, perhaps with every new departmental policy or Vice-Chancellor?

In addressing these issues, it is worth remembering that you are the one who has to make the choices and live with the consequences. This means that there needs to be a match between your choices and what you genuinely value. We cannot simply look for a technical solution:

a categorisation as a certain type of learner or an assessment of likely effectiveness. Palmer (1998: 10) argues that understanding your own identity as a teacher is essential if you want to thrive, but this self-awareness is not something that is automatically ours. We need to explore what drives us – both in our academic and in the rest of our lives – if we are to understand which developments might turn out to be dead ends or lead us in the wrong direction altogether, resulting only in frustration.

Our aspirations for the future comprise a significant part of our iden-tity as teachers and academics, helping us to determine where we are headed in developing our teaching. In many ways our aim is simply to teach well, and thus to help students learn effectively. In this book our primary focus has been on the process of developing your teaching. We could have tried to present an ideal vision of how to support student learning and then identified how to reach it, but instead we chose to 1111

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■^{TABLE 10.1} Analysis of contextual factors that will affect our choice of which development process to employ

Contextual factor Comments

Institution Institutional policies, procedures, strategies, resources, and even the personalities of those in positions of authority are particularly relevant where larger-scale developments are concerned.

For instance, the prospect of some project funding may tip you over into introducing a new

development.

Department or Your immediate working culture has a significant school influence on which developments are possible.

You might well be reluctant to put a good deal of work into an innovative approach if you are convinced the relevant committee will never approve it.

Support from The extent to which colleagues are interested in colleagues teaching will affect how social your approach can

be and its scale (e.g. learning from others or working with others versus self-evaluation).

Requirement to Some processes present themselves to us as a engage regular part of our work (e.g. peer review or

mentoring). It may thus often make sense to choose to engage with these more fully, rather than taking on another process as well, only superficially.

Aspect of Some processes will be more suited than others teaching to developing given aspects of our practice. For

example, areas that involve relationships with others (e.g. personal tutoring, working with students who have disabilities) may particularly benefit from more social processes.

Depth of insight Some situations are complex and require significant insight for development to occur.

Processes involving more sustained levels of reflection thus provide a more adequate basis to transform such practice (e.g. appreciative enquiry or dealing with an issue through a critical collaboration).

focus on how to develop your teaching; on the process rather than the end point. Nonetheless, our discussion has identified certain aspects of good teaching. It will be worth picking out some of the threads that have been evident within different chapters as to what good teaching might look like:

■ Good teaching maintains a focus on student learning. After all, it is the students who learn, and no teacher can force this. The research on conceptions of teaching that we noted in Chapter 3 provides robust evidence for the value of centring your teaching on the student, something also evident across all of the

chapters. Case study 2.1, for instance, on fieldwork saw the benefits of allowing space for student enquiry, while the importance of a dialogue with students was also evident in Chapter 5, as well as other chapters.

■ Good teaching takes account of the discipline concerned. Disciplinary considerations are also relevant, a feature of that has been particularly evident in the case studies. In effect we have seen how essential it is for the methods that we employ to align themselves with the values that our discipline holds dear.

■ Good teaching is a collaborative endeavour. It stems from collaborations between colleagues, as we have seen in every single chapter; and not simply from the individual concerned – we work in a shared environment.

The characteristics of good teaching are also closely aligned with the process of developing your teaching: there is a synergy evident between them. We can say that good teaching involves developing your teaching on an ongoing basis, given the pace of change in higher education and the need to maintain inspiration over the longer term. Continuing professional development, for instance, is now accepted as an integral element of good teaching. However, good teaching also influences the process of developing your teaching: we should develop our practice in a way that recognises the student voice, the demands of our discip-line and the experience of our colleagues.

While we evidently need a clear set of aspirations or aims for the development of our teaching, our identity as someone who teaches will comprise far more than this. After all, my personal history will make it more difficult to realise some aspirations than others. In partic-ular, your identity can be expressed in the form of an ongoing story, 1111

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a narrative about your practice. The following questions provide prompts to help you articulate the story that underpins your teaching:

■ What initially drew you to your discipline? What are the values held dear by this discipline? How can you reflect them more fully in your teaching? (You might have been attracted to a discipline simply because you were good at it – but would this sustain your attempts to open it up to others as well?)

■ Why did you choose to teach?

■ What are the major threads of your life that influence your teaching? Are there any important aspects of your life that have never had an opportunity to affect your teaching? Why not?

■ To what extent is your identity rooted in your research? How does the relationship between your research and your teaching influence each other? What synergies can you exploit between these?

■ What do you find compelling in your teaching? What is it in your teaching that your students react to with enthusiasm?

■ What values underpin your teaching? Are you willing to take risks in order to help your students learn? Or would you rather play safe?

You might think of one or more critical incidents in your teaching that encapsulate your approach, or that help to illuminate each of these above questions, analysing the incidents in light of the advice given in Chapter 4. In Case study 10.1, Denise Batchelor begins to explore her own story by starting with a critical incident in her teaching.

Case study 10.1

HEADING FOR A SHOWDOWN?

The discussion of Donne’s sonnets was progressing well, with lively opin-ions being voiced by the seminar group. In the corner of the classroom stood a tall, dusty four-panelled black screen, abandoned after some past event.

Within the enclosure formed by the panels sat X, as he had done for the last five weeks, mostly silent, then suddenly, invisibly and aggressively, stab-bing angry and perceptive comments into the air.

The other students found the situation exasperating and amusing. I sensed their longing for me to confront X, insist that he conform, engineer a show-A SENSE OF DIRECTION

down. As a new and inexperienced lecturer my mind told me this is what a good teacher would do, what I should do. What would happen if the head of department heard that I was allowing a subversive student to lurk behind a screen, potentially sabotaging the smooth running of the class?

Something held me back. In week six X emerged and joined the class.

Nothing was said publicly. Privately, X revealed that he had hated school, where he was labelled a failure and expelled for spectacular misbehaviour.

He was building up to a similar dramatic scenario again. But something held him back.

Looking back at this nerve-racking incident many years later, I see now that any personal philosophy of teaching I have evolved since was present in embryo then, although as a novice I was acting purely and anxiously on instinct. Remembering this reminds me to try to tread carefully in mentoring staff and working with beginning teachers, to hold back from expressing my own ideas and interpretations too early, and to respect and trust colleagues’ developing and different voices as they unpack and reflect on their experiences.

The value implicit in this episode that has become fundamentally important to me in subsequent years of teaching – and, now, researching into the concept of student voice – is respect for students as individuals, seeking to:

■ allow students space and freedom to be themselves rather than subscribing to a fixed idea of a student, an inflexible expectation of who and what students should be;

■ accept students where they are;

■ recognise that vulnerability in students manifests itself in unexpected ways;

■ take risks;

■ stay open to being surprised;

■ have the courage to be myself in my teaching;

■ listen to everything in a classroom, silences as well as words, in myself as well as my students.

Denise Batchelor, Business, Computing and Information Management Faculty, London South Bank University

We can ask of each possible development or, indeed, teaching method that we employ, ‘How does this fit with my personal story as a teacher or academic?’ If an action conflicts with my story, or fails to enhance it, then we might well draw back from taking on the new 1111

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development, while if it heads in the right direction, we can invest ourselves in it, knowing that it is for this that we are in fact working.

We thus see that a personal story can give meaning to your attempts to develop your teaching, as MacIntyre (1984: 216) notes: ‘I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”

An important part of our stories are the roles that both we and others play within them, as Denise evidently found. We can take a passive approach to a role that we take on, or engage more actively, as we saw in Chapter 9. All our stories involve other players as well, and their choices affect our choices and, indeed, our own ability to develop, as particularly evident in Chapter 6. Just as the circumstances are given to us, so also the roles of those around us play an important part in shaping our story. You will thus also want to explore whether there are further networks, collaborative contexts or communities of practice in which you can participate more fully, or contexts in which you can take greater responsibility. A mentor, certainly, can help provide access to these networks, as we saw in Chapter 7. When such social situations and roles align closely with your own aspirations and values, then coherence will certainly be added to the way in which you develop your teaching.

You may also find it helpful to move from creating a story to artic-ulating your identity as a teacher in further ways. You might want to develop an action plan for the development of your teaching. Your goals, and the actions associated with them, need to be rooted quite clearly in your history and your present situation. Then, of course, you need to carry it out, reflecting on its usefulness and evaluating its effec-tiveness. Another option is to write a personal philosophy of teaching, and indeed of your teaching development. This would include atten-tion to your concepatten-tion of teaching, the methods you employ in teaching and in developing your teaching, and the values and principles that underpin your practice, and its development.

Review point 10.2

A PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY

In order to create a personal philosophy of teaching, or personal philosophy of teaching development, you might reflect on the following:

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■ What method of teaching or developing your teaching do you rely on most frequently?

■ Why do you not use another method?

■ What do you think would happen if you changed that method?

■ What does this tell you about your attitudes and approach towards student learning?