I come from a family of teachers. Both my parents, 3 of my grandparents, my sister, even aunts and cousins were, and still are, schoolteachers. My grandfather used to say there is no replacement for a good education. I don’t think I understood exactly what he meant with the term ‘education’ at that time. As a little girl, my interpretation was that I had to work as hard as I could at school and learn as much as possible.
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Through stories shared around dinner tables I later learned about the powerful impact that teachers can have on students’ lives, both the good and the bad. Slowly I came to understand what my grandfather meant; that teachers not only teach, but whether deliberately or inadvertently, they contribute to shaping their learners’ personal development as well. This probably helped to shape my belief that good teachers, in any field or institution, should not only be knowledgeable, but also strive to be responsible and respectable people. Looking back now, I can clearly see how these childhood experiences had contributed to shaping my teaching philosophy, which is focused on the development of the whole student. It also sheds light on how I moved from being a chemistry lecturer to designing and coordinating the Science in Context 178 module that is focused on development of academic literacies. I teach because I believe that I can make a positive contribution to students' overall development.
I first became involved in “teaching” as a demonstrator of second-year chemistry practicals when I myself was only a third-year student. I was extremely passionate and excited about the subject and I took the responsibility very seriously. However, I understood my responsibility to be knowing the content better than the other students and being able to explain it over and over again until they would say that they understood.
Later on, while doing my post-doctoral studies in science education I stood in for a lecturer that went on maternity leave. Now I had to teach the whole cohort of Afrikaans students, suddenly it was not the individual students in the laboratory anymore. I had to address roughly 200 students all at once. I realised that I needed to know the content even better than before, because what would happen if they asked me something in class and I didn’t know the answer? I would lose credibility. They would not trust my knowledge anymore. The responsibility felt overwhelming. Furthermore, I had to find the best possible ways to explain concepts. I spent hours and hours thinking about how to explain acids and bases in a fool proof manner, so that everyone in the class would understand it. I remember calling Dr Lutz (the lecturer I was standing in for) and asking her advice on how to explain buffer capacities, one of the most challenging concepts in the first-year curriculum at that stage. It was a fantastic lecture. I enjoyed every moment of it and I could see the students’ faces light up as they started to make sense of the concept.
Then a few days later, in a practical session in the laboratory one of these students called me over. She was having trouble with the calculations in the practical report. The experiment was on titration, and was thus related to what we have covered in class. I spent almost 2 and half hours out of the three-hour practical at her table, explaining the concept from all possible angles. I asked her peers to explain it to her and later called some of the other demonstrators to take a turn. Yet, at the end of the practical the poor student was exhausted, probably embarrassed, overwhelmed and still did not understand.
I went home devastated. What went wrong? Was I not as good a teacher as I thought? What else could I have done? Is the student not smart enough? Should I just accept that some students will never be able to understand?
Looking back now that was a very powerful learning moment for me. Firstly, it forced me to reconsider my understanding of my role as teacher. Secondly, it forced me to think about the student’s experience of that interaction.
In considering my role as teacher I came to realise that learning is not a one-way process. Regardless of how good my explanations might be, there needs to be effort from the student’s side as well. I cannot transfer my knowledge onto another human being. Rather, I can only facilitate the process of making the connections. This also implies that for students to be successful they need to personally take responsibility for their success, and they need to have internal motivation to succeed.
Considering this specific interaction, I realised that I was very persistent and determined, but the student did not engage with the same effort. I realise now that there might be a myriad of reasons for this and that I as lecturer should’ve been more aware and sensitive to that. Thus, I had to ask myself what role I can play in getting students more engaged.
In the next two sections I will focus on the two theories that underpins and explains my teaching philosophy, or as I prefer to call it, my philosophy on learning facilitation, in reaction to this specific interaction as well as in reaction to my childhood experiences.
Humanising pedagogy
Humanising pedagogy
Recently, when working on a book chapter (Volschkenk et al., 2020) for a soon to be published open source book on our recent experiences with Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT), I was introduced to the concept of a humanizing pedagogy. This immediately resonated with me as I realised that this explains my approach and interactions with students. I also think it is apt because the concept has a very strong connection to online courses and my teaching is mostly in either a blended learning or fully online format (Czerkawski and Schmidt, 2017; Delmas, 2017).
“Instructor-student relationships lie at the heart of humanizing serving as the connective tissue between students, engagement and rigor.” (Packansky-Brock et al. 2020 p.2)
Growing from my initial understanding of being a teacher, where I thought I had to know everything in order to be taken seriously, I came to realise that I need to be vulnerable and human in order to be accessible to students. And that students do not loose respect for you when you are honest about what you know or don’t know. Rather, they respect that.
In addition, my own believe (informed by my childhood experiences) that learning should not and cannot be just a cognitive experience, but that it is about the development of the whole human being, resonates with what Salazar (2013) refers to as the “purpose of humanizing education” which is “not only to transfer meaningful academic knowledge but to also promote the overall well-being of all students.” (p.128). My involvement with the first-year welcoming programme (Addendum A: Amazing race poster), development of the tutor training short course (Addendum B: SoTL presentation), as well as the Science in Context 178 module which I am currently coordinating (Addendum C: Module framework), attest to my pursuit of this ideal.
Self-determination Theory
Self-determination Theory
Linking back to the interaction with the chemistry student during the practical session, one of the questions I was left with was how to get students to be more engaged. Self-determination theory (SDT) gave me insight into this. It is a theory about motivation that identifies three psychological needs that is directly related to self-motivation namely autonomy, relatedness and competence. The argument is, when these needs are satisfied in an educational environment, students tend to be more self-motivated and thus more engaged in their studies (Ryan and Deci, 2000).
Autonomy is about feeling in control, having the freedom to make choices and understanding the rationale behind the activities you engage with. Competence is about being challenged just enough so that the goal feels achievable, and relatedness is about feeling that you belong and that you can relate and connect to other people, including peers and authority figures e.g. students and lecturers in your environment (Ryan and Deci, 2002).
SDT is a well-established theory that is familiar in education contexts and has proved its value through numerous studies (De Loof et al. 2019, Reeve et al., 2014, Marais et al., 2019, Orsini et al., 2016). Over the last years I have aimed to structure and design courses and workshops in a way that encourage student engagement by deliberately designing activities that support the three psychological needs that make up SDT. In the next sections of this portfolio I will give some examples and discuss this in more detail. I will focus specifically on my role in the design and coordination of Science in Context 178 over the past three years. I will also reflect on how previous teaching experiences and my role as E-Learning Instructional Designer in the faculty contributed to the design and implementation of this course.
References:
References:
Czerkawski, B.C. and Schmidt, N. (2017) Editorial: Why We Need to Humanize Online Education, Issues and Trends in Educational Technology, 5(1), pp. 1–3.
Delmas, P.M. (2017) Using VoiceThread to Create Community in Online Learning, TechTrends. TechTrends, 61(6), pp. 595–602. doi: 10.1007/s11528-017-0195-z.
De Loof, H., Struyf, A., Boeve-de Pauw, J. and Van Petegem, P. (2019) Teachers’ Motivating Style and Students’ Motivation and Engagement in STEM: The Relationship Between Three Key Educational Concepts. Research in Science Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-019-9830-3
Marais, D.L., Kotlowitz, J., Willems, B., Barsdorf, N.W. and Van Schalkwyk, S. (2019) Perceived enablers and constraints of motivation to conduct undergraduate research in a Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences: What role does choice play? PLoS ONE, 14(3): e0212873. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212873
Orsini, C., Binnie, V.I., and Wilson, S.L. (2016) Determinants and outcomes of motivation in health professions education: a systematic review based on self-determination theory. Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions, 13(19), http://dx.doi.org/10.3352/jeehp.2016.13.19.
Pacansky-Brock, M., Smedshammer M., and Vincent-Layton, K. (2020) Humanizing online teaching to equitize higher education. Current Issues in Education, 21(2). Retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1905.
Reeve, J., Jang, H., Carrell, D., Jeon, S. and Barch, J. (2014) Enhancing Students’ Engagement by Increasing Teachers’ Autonomy Support. Motivation and Emotion, 28(2), pp.147-169.
Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000) Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well- being. American Psychologist, 55(1), pp.68-78.
Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2002) An overview of self-determination theory. In E.L. Deci and R.M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self- determination research. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, pp. 3-33.
Salazar, M.C. (2013) A Humanizing Pedagogy: Reinventing the Principles and Practice of Education as a Journey Toward Liberation, Review of Research in Education, 37, pp. 121-148.
Volschenk, H., Rootman-le Grange, I. and Adendorff, H. (2020, forthcoming) Successful online learning and teaching is not about technology – it is about humanizing. In S. Strydom, M. de Klerk, N. Herman, and H. Adendorff (Eds.), Responding to the necessity for change: HE voices from the South during the COVID-19 crisis.
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