“It is unquestionably the function of education to enable people, individual human beings, to operate at their fullest potential, to equip them with the tools and the sense of opportunity to use their wits, skills and passions to the fullest.” – Jerome Bruner
It is my ultimate goal – as a teacher, facilitator, educational developer, trainer, and leader – to lift up others.
Achieving this can look many different ways: as a trainer, I accomplish
this by empowering faculty to autonomously complete certain tasks with
new technical skills; as a teacher, using active learning techniques
facilitates high-order learning in students; as an educational
developer, guiding and probing a subject matter expert transforms their
content goals into an eLearning product vision; as a facilitator,
encouraging risk in a safe environment reaps rich rewards for a
participant; finally, as a leader, fostering a sense of community
creates an environment of compassion and safety.
The key to lifting up others is building connections and fostering community,
regardless of the context. In fact, this philosophy guides me both
within and outside of my career. As a teacher, I am certain that
creating a community-focused environment in the classroom supports
students in reaching their fullest potential, yet this is but one piece
of my philosophy. In the classroom, I rely on one other guiding concept –
tools. For me, tools encompasses teaching and learning theories that
inform what I do, and the strategies, activities, and methods I use in
the classroom to create a learning-centred environment (Barr & Tagg,
1995).
In general, I set high expectations for my students, and in turn hold
myself accountable to creating active learning opportunities, providing
feedback in a timely fashion, and appealing to different learning
preferences (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). To promote active learning
in my classroom, I use the flipped classroom method, Classroom
Assessment Techniques (CATs; Angelo & Cross, 1993), open-ended
questioning techniques, and design participatory activities for learner
engagement. Utilizing CATs allows me to provide (informal) feedback to
students on a regular basis, which acts as a great complement to
summative feedback. Additionally, I appeal to a range of learning styles
(Kolb, 1984) by using different teaching activities, such as
reflection, think-pair-share, class discussions, assigned readings, and
facilitated experiential learning opportunities. Within this framework
of high expectations, effort, and mutual respect (Lieb, 1991), I then
foster a positive community environment for my learners using humour,
sharing my life experiences when relevant, and – context-dependent –
facilitating a group contract. Once a sense of community is established,
I encourage my students to take risks and act creatively. Only in a safe, community-driven learning environment do I believe students feel comfortable enough to be their whole, authentic selves, and to allow themselves to be vulnerable as they take risks and share their creative talents.
One of the biggest challenges I face as an instructor is the plague
of passivity that students can suffer from. There is, at times, a lack
of active involvement in class, which is a symptom of the traditional
lecture-style, sage-on-the-stage type teaching which all-too-commonly
takes place in classrooms. There is a lack of questioning, conversation,
and debate, which is exacerbated by dependence on technology such as
i>clickers that allows students to remain anonymous. There are
commonly-made requests by students for teachers to “just tell them the
right answers”, so that they can write it down and delay thinking it
through until later. It’s a shame that this type of passivity occurs in
what could be engaging, transformative classroom experiences. To address
this, I find one solution is to take a risk myself, and when I don’t
know the answer to a question asked by a student, I say so. When I first
started teaching, I found it very hard to say “I don’t know”, as it
sounded, to me, like failure. And to some students, I’m sure it may
sound that way to them as well. However, in a room of many brains, I
always wonder why it is mine that is considered the only one with a
reliable answer! In reality, this is far from the truth, especially with
technology at our fingertips. Thus, I endeavour to challenge the
concept of experts vs. novices in the classroom, and invite my students
to contribute as curators of content. Teachers are generally perceived
as experts by students, but I think the classroom should be a place
where knowledge is discovered and constructed by both students and
educators (Bruner, 1966), as learning should not be the responsibility
of only the instructor.
Overall, as a teacher, I seek to challenge outdated instructional
paradigms, rely on evidence-based tools, and foster community to create
an effective learning-centred environment, as I whole-heartedly believe
that if we, as learners, took responsibility to be actively
engaged, authentic, open to taking risks, creative, and willing to
share in a learning community, we’d lift each other up, thereby creating
a classroom with heart.
References:
- Angelo, T.A. & Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Barr, R.B. & Tagg, J. (1995). From Teaching to Learning – A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education. Change Magazine. 27 (6): 12-25.
- Bruner, J.S. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. The Wingspread Journal. 9 (2).
- Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Lieb, S. (1991). Principles of Adult Learning. VISION [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.lindenwood.edu/education/andragogy/andragogy/2011/Lieb_1991.pdf
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