I believe the role of the teacher is to communicate, to prepare students, to challenge, and thereby to provide value. I believe that teaching is about communicating clearly and effectively the important information for students to get the most out of their course (they are the consumers and their needs come first). What they want is the information in the most basic form to pass assessments, but I can do more than that. I can teach them learning skills; transferable skills to memorize, understand, appreciate, communicate and value information. I can also inspire them to believe in themselves, to push their intellectual capacities and to surprise themselves about what they can achieve. If it’s the poor student who has low expectations, I hope to help them achieve more than they expect. If it’s the good student, I hope to help them reach new heights, and surpass their lofty goals.  

The role of students is as the consumer or customer. Their job is to engage with material, by committing time, effort and patience. Their primary goal is to learn material – ‘shallow learning’ - by committing it to memory so they can get a good mark. However, if they are to get value for money, they need to be encouraged and enabled by the teacher to apply what they learn, so that it has meaning and use in everyday life. This can be in the form of transferable skills, or practical applications for theoretical concepts, or just creative connections between what they learn and their world. This takes learning to a ‘Deep level’ which represents real understanding, not just memorization. 

I believe I can promote the primary objective of providing value, and thus satisfying students expectations of shallow and deep learning, and ultimately understanding, through manner, openness, communication style and application. I remember my best lecturers as eccentric, brilliant and insightful people – not the content they taught, but rather how they taught. The friendly smiles that greeted questions during half time break, the booming voice from the back of the lecture theater that started class with a question, the deliberate engagement with quiet students so that they could get as much out of it as the prepared students. This can be described as an authoritative (students believed the teacher knows their stuff, which inspires confidence), and supportive (teacher can assist students and adapt their teaching style to a range of students). 

The teaching environment is crucial. Fostering rapport with students and putting them at ease by humanizing oneself as a teacher. This can include acknowledging mistakes in material, making self-deprecating remarks where appropriate, and reflecting on my communication as I go, so as to catch difficult or poor phrasing and try again. Reading my students expression to look for confusion. Call this out, so they can ask for what they need. This openness encourages student’s participation and engagement with me as the tutor. Lastly, using relevant, interesting and fun illustrations keeps people engaged. Finding practical applications for the content, so people can imagine how it relates to their world, makes it easier to understand and remember – giving people mental hooks for information to make recall easier. One can build in the techniques for memory into the content making it easier to review and study later.

I would measure these teaching outcomes through the standard means. Questionnaires for students to provide feedback on teaching quality. Student marks reflect learning in terms of the unit outcomes and therefore student’s primary expectations (to do well in the unit). Lastly student engagement, including emails and after class questions reflect perceptions of my approachability and competence at teaching.

I teach to fulfill my need to contribute. I can contribute to the success of individual students in an important area of their life – their studies – which in turn, shapes their career, aspirations, and wellbeing. If I can take students who are apprehensive about study; who only aspire to pass, and instill confidence in themselves so that they expect to do well, or at least exceed their expectations, then maybe they will take that confidence into the next unit of their degree and push themselves further. The cycle continues.

Active learning requires short activities to allow students to consolidate information, reflect on their understanding and possible apply it to a problem. As outlined in a review by Wang and Degol (2014) engagement is multi-dimensional; requiring behavioral, emotional and cognitive aspects to provide effective learning. Active learning sets up behavioral engagement by incorporating physical movement (getting students into small groups), and emotional engagement by requiring students to work collaboratively to share ideas (incorporating interpersonal skills). Cognitive engagement is created by the type of question or problem students are set; ideally one which requires critical thinking, bringing in or finding outside knowledge and synthesizing it with class content. Engagement is a reciprocal relationship. For the teacher planning activities, it suggests setting clear expectations and instructions, providing strong guidance and constructive feedback. I would also add it requires the teacher to be flexible; adapting to the flow of discussion from the students, even if it goes in a different direction than expected, rather than stifling conversation by bringing it back to pre-planned points. The authors also make the interesting point that engagement factors (effort, interest, persistence) and disaffection (withdrawal, boredom, frustration) are separate and don’t completely overlap. I believe that, while students may not all engage with an active learning activity, that doesn’t mean they are disengaged. It just may be that they relate to the material differently or prefer one-on-one discussions rather than groups.

 I endeavor to accommodate students individual learning styles. In the course of my teaching I have tried to show flexibility and adapt to the students feedback. Sometimes this is as simple as changing the font of the slides if I notice students at the back of the room struggling to read it. In a recent class, when I had a long group discussion planned, I stopped and asked the students if they preferred to do it at the mid-point of class (when I had planned it) or if they wanted me to finish the slides, and give them all the time remaining to work on their group project. They voted the latter and I finished the slides. I will try to get more feedback from students, both in class and informally through online polls and/ or anonymous feedback sheets left in class where students can write suggestions or questions (like ‘muddiest point’ technique) and put them in a box. 

As an example of active learning by engaging behavioural, emotional and cognitive means, in my second tute I conducted activity on research ethics that incorporated these three dimensions of engagement. Students worked in groups to briefly research one of five controvertial studies I provided, summarise what happened and say what the main ethical issue was, thus brining the discussion back to the ethical principles I had outlined. This worked well as students engaged with the material (interesting and controvertial), applied theoretical understanding to the issues discussed, and teach the class what they had learned in their groups. What could have worked better was if I had provided guiding questions, rather than just say ‘summarise’ as some groups went straight to the ethical issues without providing context (who, what, when, why?). From this I learned that active engagement works best with abstract problems that can be brainstormed in a group. 

 Reference:

Wang, M. T., & Degol, J. (2014). Staying engaged: Knowledge and research needs in student engagement. Child development perspectives, 8(3), 137-143.

What is a Classroom management plan?
Answer: how to ensure collaborative, inclusive classroom which respects diversity, is ‘safe and comfortable’. 

I will bring positivity and openness to my interactions  to humanize myself to students and foster respect and  communication by:

•  Sharing things about me – my cultural background, my likes, my area of research and previous study. 

•  Encouraging students to share similar things with each other with guided conversation topics and icebreakers which involve identifying similarity and diversity in the group (activity: human bingo). 

• Starting these discussions with common topics, including hobbies, pets, travel, and move to personal topics like ‘future aspirations’. These conversations have no assumptions but are designed to make students comfortable with each other and communicate with people they have to work with. 

I will ask their motivations for being in the unit – to create communality for students wishing to go into honours, but also to identify transferable skills like group work, presenting and writing skills that people can use elsewhere by: 

• Addressing the primary academic motivations by providing details on the assessment structure, marks and when things are due so students can plan accordingly. 

As my class involves the students working in small groups on a project together, I will outline the expectations for constructive feedback and respect of others opinions and contributions. 

• To model this behaviour, I will provide a reminder of basic communication etiquette, including email language (not overly formal, but respectful and professional), and use of mobile phones in class. 

• In terms of group communication, there is a structure for dealing with less-cooperative group members which does not reflect on the group and may reduce anxieties. 

• However, this is a last resort as I will work with students to manage their expectations of the group members, while being sensitive to cultural differences or study habits that may cause differences of opinion. 

• To facilitate this, I will provide a helpful list of ‘interpersonal skills’ common to effective group work, which include active listening, constructive feedback, inclusivity and delegating tasks to allow people their individual contribution.

Lastly, I will provide resources such as where to go to find help (library workshops for maths, English language proficiency etc), UniAccess/ Special consideration. This will allow students to access help when and if they need it without having to ask or search for it. It also creates a supportive environment for students, by showing we want them to succeed and do well.