Colleagues' 'lenses' for viewing teaching and learning

Each of us has an individual mix of knowledge, beliefs and assumptions about teaching. One way to better illuminate our personal stance is to work with colleagues and share their perspectives with our own. Colleagues may be from the same ‘teaching culture’ as ourselves, or from a different one, in which case some of our fundamental ‘givens’ about teaching may come up for discussion. There are a number of ways that colleagues can work together to bring their personal ‘lens’ to the teaching situation.

• Critical conversations and dialogues. These need to be structured to
  • create ground rules (parameters of discussion, agreement of confidentiality, and establishing of trust)
• provide a focus of conversation (e.g. why students resist learning, how to get better participation)
• have a target outcome (e.g. a technique you will both try)

 

• Solving teaching puzzles and problems collaboratively, perhaps using:

• Good Practices Audit (can be started by circulating a series of FAQs around the Department/School and asking for responses)
• Action Learning Sets
• Collaborative Action Research
• Co-operative Development

 

• Peer observation of teaching

• Peer review of pedagogic practice