Re-shaping Practices of Academic Development: The Disciplinary Commons

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Re-shaping Practices of Academic Development The
Disciplinary Commons

• Sally Fincher, University of Kent
• Josh Tenenberg, University of Washington, Tacoma
• 12th December 2007SRHE Conference, Brighton

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Dilemma of Academic Development

• Horn one specificity
• Specific educators have specific problems how
  to teach auto-ionization, Kants ethics,
  programming a computer in Haskell
• Institutionally-based academic developers cant
  have this multiple expertise
• Either spend huge amount of 1-on-1 time, or cant
  help
• Not an efficient approach

• Horn two generality
• Some problems are generic PBL, CATs, action
  research
• Institutionally-based staff developers can and
  do have relevant expertise. Groups are formed,
  workshops run.
• But staff have to self-identify that they want
  it, then adapt the generalised knowledge (work
  the bugs out) for themselves.
• More efficient, but not effective

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Disciplinary Commons
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Disciplinary Commons Aims

• To document and share knowledge about teaching
  and student learning in the UK.
• To establish practices for the scholarship of
  teaching by making it public, peer-reviewed, and
  amenable for future use and development by other
  educators creating a teaching-appropriate
  document of practice equivalent to the
  research-appropriate journal paper.

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Disciplinary Commons Structure

• A Commons is constituted from 10-20 practitioners
  sharing the same disciplinary background,
  teaching the same subject sometimes the same
  module in different institutions.
• Meet monthly throughout an academic year.
• During meetings practice is shared, peer-reviewed
  and ultimately documented in course portfolios
• Part of the sharing is cross-institutional peer
  observation of teaching.

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And this re-shapes academic development how?

• Professional development
• Community development
• Documentation of practice

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Re-shaping academic practice Professional
development

• A course portfolio is a set of documents that
  focuses on the unfolding of a single course,
  from conception to results (Hutchings, 1998)
• In the Commons, the critical reflection involved
  in creating course portfolios is magnified by a
  disciplinary intensity, creating what Schon
  termed a hall of mirrors

Herbert Good to find a group where everyone is
treated as an equal and ownership is shared. Not
a common thing in my experiences of HE up to now!
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Re-shaping academic practice Community
development

• A Commons adopts those features of research-based
  activity which provide value externality and
  peer-review (Whilst carefully leaving behind the
  bath water of inappropriate representation)
• Most common reports confidence
• thats not how they do it at institution x
• 17 other institutions do it this way
• Research colleagues respect my knowledge

Daniel I have never had any externality on
teaching the peer review process, the exposure
of ideas, you present ideas and get them hammered
down, thats all part of what I do on a
day-to-day basis in the research, whereas
teachings something I keep in my pocket, you
know?
Daniel the thing that kept me going was the
fact that Im getting externality this peer
reivew. Those things that characterize good
research projects keeping up in the field,
being aware of what other people are doing. I
didnt do any of that for my teaching. I do now.
Elizabeth We know more about each others
courses and our views and attitudes than we know
about our colleagues that we work with day in and
day out
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Re-shaping academic practice Community
development

• Unusual practice of cross-institutional peer
  observation
• Not for QA purposes. Not for appraisal, promotion
  or professional development

Elizabeth Peer observation a necessary and
semi-regular part of my job, I view it like a
visit to the dentist painful but soon over. What
about the feedback? I ignore positive comments
as, S/hes just being kind. Negative comments
support the notion that I should not be in this
job. As the observer I always rate myself
unfavourably with the other person. What a
wretched business. How can this process be
helpful?
Now I can approach peer observation
differently. Its not meant to catch me out.
Whether Im the observer or the observed, I can
investigate teaching from a different perspective
to my own. I can see what works, what doesnt and
consider alternatives. We can work together.
Neither of us is the expert. Instead we can
both learn.
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Re-shaping academic practice Documentation of
Practice

• Documentation of teaching is
• Rare
• In non-standard ( therefore non-comparable)
  forms
• Commons portfolios have
• Common form
• Persistent, peer-reviewed deliverable
• Power of portfolios is multiplied when there are
  several examples available for a disciplinary
  area
• Commons archives provide a rich set of
  contextualised data, charting and calibrating
  development over time

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So?

• As our professional practices become more
  complex, our reflective and developmental
  practices need to be re-examined
• The Commons new collaborative form and
  co-operative culture takes disciplinary activity
  as its focus, thus over coming the dilemmas of
  institutionally-based models a Commons is
  specific in expertise and general in comparison

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Jumping through the horns of the dilemma

• All Commoners are expert
• Commoners work together to discover, interpret
  and re-interpret new material
• Resultant public documentation is contextual,
  comparative and collegial
• (As appropriate a representation of teaching as a
  journal paper is of research? Maybe. Watch this
  space.)

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Acknowledgements (i)

• The US Disciplinary Commons was made possible by
  funding from the Washington State Board of
  Community and Technical Colleges, the University
  of Washington, Tacoma.
• The itp Disciplinary Commons was made possible
  through the award of a National Teaching
  Fellowship 2005 to Sally Fincher.

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Acknowledgements (ii)

• Funding for project evaluation was provided by a
  grant from the SIGCSE Special Projects fund.
• The authors also acknowledge the Helen Whiteley
  Center of the University of Washington for
  providing a quiet and conducive space for
  undertaking the project evaluation.

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• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.