Expertise in teaching

When I read the proposed chapter 3 ''Expertise in Teaching'' by Mark Tennant, Cathi McMullen and Dan Kaczynski I instantly associated it with the psychotherapy. Possibly this is not that obvious but my brain makes sometimes interesting associations. When a patient goes to a psychologist two of the main questions are '' when my therapy is going to end?'' and ''how do I know that I have reached a point that I am mentally healthy''. Often, the answer is that a psychotherapy is a long-life process, once you have started you can continue until you die or your brain stops working. Of course here I do not mean that you have to continue psychotherapy sessions your whole life but that during the arranged sessions you manage to acquire the tools and base for your self-exploration and understanding. This can offer you the foundation to progress, be creative, evolve intellectually and emotionally, improve communication of your thoughts and to develop a more empathetic attitude (possibly) towards other.

How many similarities this has with the ''expertise in teaching''?

If expertise in teaching implies having a repertoire of ways and tools to handle different situations, communicate your know-how, evolve your know-how, adapt it based on the social-cultural needs, question it and at the same time not only to maintain your essence (principles or identity) but also interact and absorb the good elements from your academic environment, then it has many similarities, and honestly speaking as much personal work and struggle as in psychotherapy is required. To face your own fears, doubts, challenges at work and sometimes disagreeing colleagues is not an easy task at all. Possibly, a daily meditation after reflections would be beneficial :-)! Critically speaking, the whole analysis presented in the book chapter was mainly a teacher-centered one (which is OK but for me it is only the one side of the coin). Even though our best intentions and wishes (to deliver a good and solid lecture to our students), things do not always work as we wish due to either external factors or our beautifully unique imperfections and individual charisma as well as our very preciously limited time.

We are not only us and our kind students, there are other people involved and I felt that only an ideal narrative was presented in this book chapter. I do believe that experience always counts in addition to our innate teaching abilities but we also need an inspiring intellectual environment...

Now about the questions '' What kind of expertise would you like to develop as a teacher? '', I would say that in a ideal world I would like the whole package! I want to be novel, adaptable to new environments and challenges, passionate, not pay attention to bad influences, stay calm, evolve my ways of thinking, learn new things, support my students, devote lots of time to help my students understand concepts, have a good intuition, collaborate and interact with my colleagues in order to improve my skills, keep my essence and enrich it with good examples and so on and so forth. I could write long lists about this. But how plausible it is to develop all these elements is another questions... Do I have the intellectual tools to do all these things is also another story...

Realistically, I think the best for me at the moment is to keep it simple and practice, practice and practice. I would like to be able to experiment (to do trials and errors) and to follow the general practical guidelines, e.g. be well-prepared for my lectures, organize beforehand the tasks, request feedback, be available for questions and be aware of the available resources. These elements will give me some confidence and hopefully improve my teaching experiences (the first step towards expertise in teaching)...