I found an interesting article by Starling, that describes his semester as returning to the classroom as a student. In his college setting, for professional development, one teacher each semester is selected to suspend their teaching and enroll in a full-time semester as a student. The premise is to have the teacher view other classrooms and teachers from the student perspective, instead of just attending as a peer reviewer. The teacher is to assume the role of a "master-learner" and assist newer students, in addition to doing all assignments and tests themselves.
One of the driving forces is to increase the amount of self-reflection, as so often our feedback is derived from anonymous student surveys and very rare and brief supervisor visits. Some of Starling's take-aways include focusing the first day on content and assignment relevance, employing increased journal activity and group discussion over exams and lectures, and having increased empathy for student concerns and questions. I don't foresee this being an activity my school would endorse, primarily because many of our programs have a small faculty, such as three full-time teachers in my program, so the resources to cover the classes simply aren't there. However, I could envision a few hours set aside for teachers to visit a handful of classes, it would just take a shift to move away from being there to critique, to being there to absorb and reflect. In another course during a group discussion, colleagues who teach in Korea and Vietnam discussed how this type of PD is already being done, where teacher visits to other classrooms are the norm. Here in North America, this would most often be viewed as an intrusion, we've got work to do! Starling, R. (1990). The impact of alcoholism: The writer, the story, the student. College Teaching, 38(3), 88-92. doi:10.1080/87567555.1990.10532200
1 Comment
Candice Brown
3/3/2017 06:40:49 pm
I have never heard of this before, what a fantastic idea! This truly would be a way for educators to understand what its like to be a student since often times this is forgotten. I agree with you that this would be hard to implement but I like your idea of having teachers go into other classes for a few hours. This definitely would need to be modelled and practiced because you are right, often times when we go into colleagues classes it is to critique and not to learn about the content. I think after a few sessions this could be easily done though.
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AuthorI teach Paramedicine at Cambrian College, in Sudbury, Ontario. I also continue to work as a paramedic, and ride bikes. This is my third semester in the PME program, and I look forward to learning with everyone! Archives
March 2017
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