You might think that with our past two posts being on Pedagogy Day that we had pretty much covered the subject, but innovation has struck again, spurred by necessity. Every year our university expands the population of those needing an introduction to pedagogy, and this year was no exception. In addition to new faculty and new part-time faculty, we were asked to conduct a workshop for instructors of the University’s orientation class for undeclared majors and another for graduate students who teach—TAs.
In addition, the more we research pedagogy, the more we realize what a wide field it is. Nine years ago when we taught our first workshop, we focused solely on the top ten strategies for terrific teachers. By 2013 when we were writing our Achieving Excellence in Teaching: A Self-Help Guide (2014), we had broadened our pedagogical scope to include not just Strategies, but Dispositions, a term favored by our co-writer Bill Phillips because of his background in educational research. Recently, in training the instructors of the undeclared majors course, GSD 101, we found ourselves getting into a third category, Values, and—again because of research in psychology—even renaming our Dispositions category Attitudes.
Related Reading: Innovating Faculty Development Lessons From Pedagogy Day
As we discussed these three categories in a live session last week with new faculty, we found participants questioning how to include all three in a single approach or methodology. Ever innovating, we decided to add a fourth category, Paradigm. Moreover, because this week we were facilitating the workshop for TAs, we decided to create a single form that would serve both as a worksheet and their notes. While we could have placed all the needed information on a single sheet that we just handed them (or crafted a PowerPoint), we knew from research that our best chance for deep learning to occur necessitated several things:
- Participants had to receive the information and work on it themselves in trying to understand it (vs. simply being told a la handouts or PowerPoints);
- Participants had to retrieve the information as often as possible;
- Participants had to rate the new information; and
- Participants had to reflect upon the new information.
The Chart
We ended up creating a pedagogical chart that we handed out to the participants at the beginning of the workshop:
EXCELLENT TEACHING
| VALUES | ATTITUDES | STRATEGIES | PARADIGM | |
| 1. | ||||
| 2. | ||||
| 3. | ||||
| 4. | ||||
| 5. |
After bringing up the recent criticism by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) that graduate schools fail to provide students with pedagogic training, we asked these would-be teachers some research questions of our own:
- How many of you have ever taught before in a supervised program?
- How many of you have attended a pedagogy—not disciplinary—conference?
- How many of you have read a book on pedagogy? Article?
- How many of you have been to a pedagogy event before today?
- How many of you can define pedagogy?
A subsequent discussion on their answers validated the AACU’s major point. We then asked each participant to employ Individual Retrieval to draw upon his/her positive educational experiences and fill in as many of the fifteen members of the first three columns and five rows as they could. After a few minutes of retrieval, they were asked to Pair & Share—i.e., use collaboration with another table member to finish the chart. Finally, we asked each table to select a scribe, discuss the paired charts, and, using an extra EXCELLENT TEACHING form we had provided, come up with a new chart in which the 15 members were ordered as to importance (adding the notion of importance forces the participants not just to list, but to argue for relative worth).
Related Reading: 3 Principles for Innovating The Faculty Development Experience
DISCUSSION
Their charts filled, we started by inquiring as to what values were deemed most important; to keep track, we wrote their suggestions on a white board/flip chart. Values such as excellence, honesty, and drive showed up. We repeated the process for attitudes with passion (interesting, enthusiasm), caring, and rapport dominating. The chief strategies followed with organization and setting a high bar receiving the most votes.
As the highest element upon Bloom’s revised taxonomy is creating, we next asked them to synthesize the three columns in order to develop a pedagogy. Only a few knew the concept of active learning, but at least the lecture/sage on the stage was not an approach to which they wished to adhere—i.e., they had rated the material. We barely had time to introduce the mentor from the middle methodology/paradigm before our hour expired.
By that time, however, they had their original EXCELLENT TEACHING form which they had been revising as we went over the material. In an ideal world we would have had them reflect upon what they had learned, but ideal worlds are not created in an hour. However, we do have a survey we can email them that contains some reflective questions.
Author
Charlie Sweet is currently Co-Director of the Teaching & Learning Center (2007+) at Eastern Kentucky University. Before going over to the dark side of administration, for 37 years he taught American Lit and Creative Writing in EKU’s Department of English & Theatre, where he also served as chair (2003-2006). Collabo-writing with Hal Blythe, he has published well over 1000 items, including 15 books; of his 11 books with New Forums. Meet Charlie.
