Enhancing a collective approach to teachingin the spirit of SoTL

• M.A. Sundset ^[1] ; R. Sandvoll ^[1] ; M. Allern ^[1]
  1. [1] Arctic University of Norway
• Localización: Ikaskuntza-irakaskuntza akademikoaren eremu berriak arakatzen / Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (aut.), 2019, ISBN 978-84-1319-033-4, págs. 507-512
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • Working together in communities that provide an arena for discussing teaching and learning andpromote an experience of shared responsibility for educational practices can enhance individual teachingpractice (Roxå and Mårtensson, 2015). The presented study explores how such collegial communitiescan be developed in a multidisciplinary faculty at a university. As a first step, a pilot was conductedwith twelve academics participating and working in pairs to explore peer observation of teaching. Peerobservation of teaching is a reciprocal process where colleagues observe each other’s teaching and providefeedback in order to encourage improvement of teaching practice. The pilot showed that the peerobservations enhanced the educational discourse among colleagues and enabled to accentuate teachingas a collective approach (Allern et al., 2017). However, level of feedback and reflection depends uponthe participants’ engagement in and knowledge about educational research and theory (Tight, 2015).The follow up project was inspired by Shulman (2000) who underlines that scholarship of teaching canevolve when teaching becomes public, peer-reviewed and critiqued. A competition for scholarships forwriting and publishing was announced. Additionally, a workshop on peer observation and peer reviewof teaching was organised to develop pedagogical competence and strengthen academics’ work withteaching to make it critical, constructive and research based. Four applicants were awarded writingscholarships. All of them presented their projects at the workshop, where fourteen academics participated.Semi-structured interviews and questioners to participants explore how such projects can make adifference for the individual development as a teacher and for the collective approach to teaching. Participantsat the workshop found the competence building important and inspiring. The winners of thewriting scholarships worked with publishing at different levels, from “going public” by sharing theirsystematic work among colleagues at the Faculty to writing an article for a peer review journal. Theworkshop and the scholarships enabled enhancement of a collective approach to teaching. This paperdiscuss how peer cooperation can be strengthen through sharing experience and ideas.