In last month’s post I referred to my planned research project for Module One of my structured PhD programme, the first draft of which is due for peer review in a week’s time. Being a logical sort of person, I drafted my introduction and literature review, in the knowledge that both will need to be edited during the month of May.
On Easter Monday last, I sat down to write my self-narrative, the ‘auto’ piece of autoethnography, with my well-thumbed copy of Chang (2008) by my side to guide me. Let me state at the outset that it was a draining experience, not in a bad way, but those four hours of writing took so much out of me that I could not return to the paper for another week. So, what did my self-reflection tell me about my teaching journey? I won’t bore you with the entire 1,618 words I wrote but here are some highlights.
Construction of my teaching approach and beliefs
As a secondary school student, I greatly admired my French teacher (in senior years she also taught me Irish language but the less said about that the better!). Mrs O’Dee (not her real name) instilled a love of the French language in me and I knew from my first day at secondary school that French would be ‘my subject’, one that I would excel at, even though I was just an average student, no more or less bright that many of my classmates. She believed in me and my ability to master the language in the six years I spent at school. On the rainy afternoon following our final senior French exam she drove me home and said that while A grades were not common in the honours exam they were possible. In the end I received a B and was very happy with this result. Putting the prospect of teaching on the long finger while I attended to my undergraduate studies, I continued to recall Mrs O’Dee and her focus on the teacher / student relationship. This may have been my experience solely since I considered myself to be the star student of my class, but I don’t think so, preferring to believe that Mrs. O’Dee’s approach to teaching considered the importance of relationships in effective learning.
Relying on personal memory data from 2004 when I first started teaching, I was very conscious that my teaching approach attempted to build on that of my face-to-face tutor, let’s call him JJ (not his real name). JJ was knowledgeable in the area of project management and informative, passing on experiential examples to assist the group’s project management learning process. One Saturday morning each month I looked forward to the 200km / 3 hour round trip to participate in JJ’s class, and learn from both him and my classmates. At the time, I was new enough to the practice of project management with less than three years industry experience under my belt. I felt like a sponge with so much to absorb and apply to my industry position at Apple that I had taken up only six months earlier. JJ had slides and other interesting handouts for our class with the content covering what we should have studied over the previous four weeks (flipped learning anyone?). He always started the class asking for any questions on the material and this would often prompt discussions amongst us. I like to think that I have adopted a similar ‘semi-structured’ approach to my classroom-based teaching, encouraging discourse and peer learning.
In 2007, October to be precise (since I have a habit of writing my name and date inside the cover of books I purchase or are given) the Centre for Project Management organised a two-day training session for us part-time tutors facilitated by (now Professor) Sarah Moore from the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the university. During these two days I was immersed in teaching strategies and principles, learned about a teaching portfolio (and received a ring binder for my own future portfolio), which still contains all the materials from that two-day session. The importance of self-reflection was discussed along with peer observation which we had to practice in that academic year. Probably the most important output, however, was the A5 flyer of a skills framework that we, as a tutor group, produced.
Nine essential skills were identified that we felt would help us in our roles as tutors: building effective teamwork; coaching others; listening actively; ability to see the big picture; assessing other people’s ability; encouraging others; giving advice; asking closed and open questions. I have no recollection of the term pedagogy being mentioned and have to admit that the term has only entered my vocabulary in very recent years. In fact, the text that I used as my bible in the years that followed from that training session was Moore et al. (2007) Teaching at College and University. It was a new text at the time and one that I have found hugely helpful over the years. Interestingly, the index contains no reference to pedagogy!
Until next time, work on my paper continues:
Understanding my journey as an online tutor:
towards development of an effective online teaching framework
Sandra
Featured image courtesy of bitmoji.com
Sandra Flynn 