Teaching & Learning

In the same sense, my role as an educator today is about helping students to find their voice. In my sub-discipline of human geography, the world is not rendered in absolute vectors, points and regions. The world is messy: defined by heterogeneity and multiplicity while being socially constructed. I therefore don’t seek perfection in my teaching, or my assessment of students. I seek connections between theory and practice; the emergence of a voice, new ideas being generated from old. Whereas Norma’s family includes many educators, I grew up not knowing any teachers in my immediate or extended family. And while Norma’s inspiration for reading came from Reader’s Digest, my material--and perhaps my disciplinary influence--came from piles of dusty National Geographics. The impact of the inspiration is the same, however.

At the same time, I have the opportunity through my teaching of modules on all levels of the undergraduate sequence to steward the curriculum in a way that nurtures learning of geographical concepts from the first year onward. As a new lecturer in the Department, with supportive colleagues and Heads of Department, I have taken the opportunity to respond to our unique learning context through innovative re-design of modules, their content, learning activities and assessment tasks.

The course was very helpful in the understanding of human geography and how different factors effect [sic] the lives of people, I value the way in which the content of this work was brought forward and taught to us by Dr Rink.

The opportunity of tutorials for groups discussions and to gain a greater perspective on the topics at hand. Any course done by Dr. Bradley Rink is valuable! #BestLecturer!

(Comments from GES222-2016 Student evaluations)

Teaching Philosophy: Authentic learning combining theory and practice

My goal as a teacher of human geography is to facilitate students’ engagement with- and curiosity for the world in which they live. From my first interaction with first year students at the orientation programme in January each year, I remind them that ‘geography is everywhere’. I see my role as an intermediary between the theory behind geography and the everyday lived geographies that they experience and inherently know. These are relational geographies: How bodies relate to each other in domestic versus public realms; why space matters; the role of memory and place. My challenge as an educator is to foster students' awareness and engagement with relationships in space, how they relate to other bodies, to people, place. For me, learning is a process of engaging a learner with context that bridges theory and practice.

The measure of 'good' teaching that I strive for is characterised by a combination of challenging and supporting students in their learning. Providing a learning environment that is both challenging and supportive is perhaps my most difficult task as a lecturer. I have become keenly aware that the environment of our learning must transcend the boundaries of campus and home. In all of the modules that I have offered to-date at UWC, I have tested my own boundaries of teaching practice by creating digital learning resources in the form of video clips, narrated PowerPoint slide shows, and a variety of other electronic media that create seamless continuity between face-to-face learning in the classroom/tutorial setting and the virtual realm.

Opportunities for asynchronous learning in addition to classroom-based instruction help students of varying learning styles to engage with the material at-hand. In this way, my teaching responds to the shifting terrain of higher education. Each new cohort of students and each new module that I have taught since my appointment pushes me to grow and learn along with my students. In that sense, the teacher is always a learner too, and the openness to new knowledge is a shared pre-requisite for both lecturer and students alike.

While they highlight the ill-defined nature of the term, Lea et al (2003) provide a framework for understanding what matters most in the student-centred approach to learning. As they argue,

…[S]tudent-centred learning embodies the following tenets: reliance upon active rather than passive learning, an emphasis on deep learning and understanding, increased responsibility and accountability on the part of the student, an increased sense of autonomy in the learner, an interdependence between teacher and learner… (Lea et al 2003: 322)

Active learning in this case means employing tasks that engage students in the process of collecting, analyzing and sharing knowledge. The transmission of knowledge is not unidirectional from the ‘expert’ lecturer to the ‘passive’ student. Rather, the assumption is that students bring knowledge to the learning environment that must be productively embraced and built upon. A student-centred approach to learning is driven by constructivist epistemology where knowledge and context are inextricably linked, and where meaning-making and experience are individualized and unique (Hannafin, Hill & Land, 1997 in Lea et al, 2003). Thus, within the diverse and heterogeneous student body that I teach—and that characterizes much of the higher education sector in South Africa as elsewhere—a student-centred approach to learning promises the greatest possible impact on learning outcomes and higher retention of knowledge (Lea et al, 2003).

If student-centred learning takes into account the role of the student in the learning process, then authentic learning situates learning within the realm of everyday life. The concept of authentic learning is relatively new within the scholarship of teaching and learning (Rule 2006). Although the term itself has only emerged recently, Rule (2006) further argues that its roots lie in the related concepts of constructivist (Vygotsky 1978) and situated learning (Collins 1988) which may be defined as "the notion of learning knowledge and skills in contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be useful in real life" (1988: 2). Authentic learning is a related concept that can be simply defined as “learning in contexts that promote real-life applications of knowledge” (Rule 2006: 1). Attention to such authentic context "…leads to an intense feeling of engagement with the learning..." (Bozalek et al, 2013: 2).

Herrington and Oliver (2000) provide a framework for designing and evaluating authentic learning. Furthermore, Herrington et al (2010) offer an evaluation matrix for assessing authentic learning design. Accordingly, they argue that the ideal situated learning environment will: 1) Provide authentic contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real life; 2. Provide authentic activities; 3. Provide access to expert performances and the modelling of processes; 4. Provide multiple roles and perspectives; 5. Support collaborative construction of knowledge; 6. Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed; 7. Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit; 8. Provide coaching and scaffolding by the teacher at critical times; and 9. Provide for authentic assessment of learning within the tasks (Herrington & Oliver 2000; Herrington et al, 2010). Taken together, these benchmarks for situated learning environments help to ensure the delivery of authentic learning that is student-centred, applicable in real-world situations, and socially embedded in practice.

Research-led teaching with local relevance and global impact

A unifying element of my research and teaching is the concept of ‘mobilities’. As a mobilities scholar, my research focuses in the movement and circulation of humans, non-human animals, objects, capital and information. Teaching as I do between the disciplines of geography and tourism, the concept of mobilities provides unifying and rigorous theoretical terrain where the disciplines meet. Teaching and learning activities in two undergraduate modules (GES111 Introduction to Human Geography and GES225 Space, Place and Mobility in Southern Africa) focus on mobilities theory and its application toward understanding the shaping of space, place and subjectivity. Teaching and learning activities in both modules include student-generated knowledge in the form of on-line surveys (GES111) and mobile diaries (GES225) as reflections on everyday mobility. Both learning activities serve as a link between theory and practice, where the latter serves as a means of illuminating and demystifying the former. Results from learning activities exemplify the innate understanding of critical concepts in mobilities studies, including the experience of movement, its meanings, and practices within the context of the global South. Comments from student evaluations demonstrate the importance of making connections between theory and practice.

While they highlight the ill-defined nature of the term, Lea et al (2003) provide a framework for understanding what matters most in the student-centred approach to learning. As they argue,

…[S]tudent-centred learning embodies the following tenets: reliance upon active rather than passive learning, an emphasis on deep learning and understanding, increased responsibility and accountability on the part of the student, an increased sense of autonomy in the learner, an interdependence between teacher and learner… (Lea et al 2003: 322)

They further argue that a student-centred approach to learning is driven by constructivist epistemology where knowledge and context are inextricably linked, and where meaning-making and experience are individualized and unique. Thus, within the diverse and heterogeneous student body that I teach—and that characterizes much of the higher education sector in South Africa as elsewhere—a student-centred approach to learning promises the greatest impact on learning outcomes and higher retention of knowledge (Lea et al, 2003). If student-centred learning takes into account the role of the student in the learning process, then authentic learning situates learning squarely within the realm of everyday life.

Harnessing students' everyday experience of mobility through the survey, the lived experience of mobility became an opportunity for students to generate knowledge, to understand the differences between qualitative versus quantitative data, and more importantly to illustrate the effect that different mobility strategies and their particular mediating factors have on their daily lives. A wide disparity in travel times and types of mobility strategies used were a cause of intense discussion during lecture. The authenticity of learning in this context was echoed by the degree to which students began to make linkages between theory and practice. In a class of approximately 340 students, the lecture theatre came alive with conversations between students and hands raised in the air to share stories. This excitement was carried through to Practicals delivered in the same week. Equally provocative were the qualitative results of how students describe their journey, such as those below:

Illustrating the politics of mobility in GES225 Space, Place and Mobility in Southern Africa

Like the first-year module, the focus on authentic learning continues in the second-year module GES225 Space, Place and Mobility in Southern Africa. Teaching and learning activities in GES225 are designed to literally mobilise theory through students' everyday practices. Unlike the first-year module, GES225 students are introduced to mobilities theory through tutorial activities and self-learning through course readings. In this case, reading content is discussed in tutorial sessions whose activities draw upon students' daily mobility practices. Through a series of mobile diary entries, students are encouraged to that are by way of their weekly mobile diaries that take the final form of a mobile autoethnography that is assessed as one of the module's assignments.

The assignment provides an opportunity for students to develop their writing skills and to combine theory and practice through their reflections on mobility.

The assignment is in the form of a creative essay that uses an autoethnography related to students' everyday mobility. Through the autoethnographic essay, students use their own experiences in order to understand more about the world in which they live. Furthermore, through the autoethnographic essay, students explore mobility practices in their daily performance of mobility; mobility spaces where their mobility is performed using infrastructure and/or institutions that in mobilities theory may be considered 'moorings'; and finally their own mobile subjectivity and the subjectivity of other mobile/immobile subjects they may encounter everyday. An example from the 2017 student essays illustrates the connections between theory and practice, and how the former is illustrated by the latter:

Every day from home to campus and back I experience the same route seeing the same places, landmarks, people and everything else that occurs in that same space. Spaces in which I make use of observation, using my senses; seeing, hearing, touching and smelling. Seeing vagabonds, landmarks (institutions), markets (dynamic space exhibiting and helping to enact mobility), hearing horns of vehicles, smelling people’s perfume and the fumes from exhaust pipes etc

“Moving is an energy-consuming business. It can be hard work and it can also be a movement of luxury and pampering” (Cresswell, 2011: 166). However, my experience is totally different from luxury and being pampered. My every day experience is awful, time-consuming and as well as energy-consuming. Travelling in a crowded bus early in the morning to campus and back home in the afternoon is horribly unpleasant. It is frustrating, energy draining and exhausting. Being in a crowded bus, standing, with a lack of high level of clear oxygen, having ones space invaded and dealing with people who do not want to open the windows ‘because it is either cold or the wind is coming in too strong’ and cough around you is just painful to my soul. My body is suffocated by my experience till I get off.

GES225-2017 student reflection

The impacts of my teaching can be seen in evaluations from students. The full results from student evaluations may be found on the Undergraduate Teaching page.

Addressing students’ learning needs

In my teaching I have used both student surveys and innovative learning activities in order to assess learning needs. I highlight examples from TOU211, Introduction to Tourism (as discussed above) and TOU322 Analytical Techniques for Tourism. In the wake of the redesigned module TOU211, I recognized the need to understand the ways in which students relate geographical concepts introduced in the first year sequence and the study of tourism. As the objectives of the module’s redesign also included the improvement of learning through tutorial sessions, I introduced a concept mapping activity in Tutorial 1. After discussing the format and purpose of concept maps, students were given the opportunity to discuss and produce a concept map within small groups in order to map key concepts, theory and ideas that shape tourism as an academic discipline (see image below). The concept maps served both as a diagnostic tool for addressing student learning and a guide for shaping the discussion of lecture content over the following weeks. I expand on the learning activities introduced in TOU211 in my discussion of Innovation in Teaching & Learning.

This student-generated knowledge is harnessed to illustrate the temporal and spatially-mediating factors that control individual mobility. Such concepts are central to mobilities theory, and may be seen as higher-order learning. However, in the case of GES111, students begin to grapple with these concepts in a real world, authentic context. The awakening of connections to learning from the world around us is evident from comments from GES111 students as seen below. When asked which section of the GES111 module students enjoyed most, students in both 2016 and 2017 noted:

Mobility, because I never looked at movement in such a manner. It was so fascinating how it opened my mind into not just accepting the norm, but to look beyond the ordinary way of how things are suppose to be.

Comment from GES111-2016 Student evaluation

Mobility as it was very interesting to see how it takes form in our everyday lives.

Comment from GES111-2017 Student evaluation

The impacts of these and other teaching and learning activities in GES111 are evidenced in recent student evaluations found here.

References

Bozalek, V., et al. (2013). The use of emerging technologies for authentic learning: a South African study in Higher Education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4): 629-638.

Hannafin, M.J., Hill, J.R. & Land, S.M. (1997). Student-centred learning and interactive multimedia: status, issues and implications, Contemporary Education, 68: 94–97

Herrington, J., & Oliver, R. (2000). An instructional design framework for authentic learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(3), 23–48.

Herrington, J., Reeves, T.C & Oliver, R. (2010). A Guide to Authentic e-Learning. London and New York: Routledge.

Lea, S., Stephenson, D., & Troy, J. (2003). Higher education students’ attitudes to student-centred learning: Beyond educational bulimia? Studies in Higher Education, 28(3), 321–334.

Rule, A. (2006). The components of authentic learning. Journal of Authentic Learning, 3(1), 1-10.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.