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Workshop Activities
In this section, we're going to start thinking about the experiences you have had so far. We'll start by distinguishing Skills and Values.
Have a look at the provided teaching statement used to apply for a lectureship in a US university.
Read through it and identify where it demonstrates skills and where it states values.
Once your group has finished, share them amongst yourselves to see if you all found the same skills and values, and if you interpreted them differently.
Write down the skills headings Delivery, Design, Mentorship, Supervision; and the values headings Inclusivity, Access, Personal Development
Have a look at the example activities listed under these headings given in the workshop (these will be available after the workshop) for some guidance on how different activities might fit into some of these categories.
Go through each category and try and list activities you have done which demonstrate that skill type or value.
Once you have your list, pull out each unique teaching activity. Define its Scope, Context, and Audience. Another example of this from the workshop will be made available here.
Reflection on your experiences is a crucial part of developing your teaching techniques and your persona as an educator. This critical process is usually evidenced through reflective writing
I've provided eight reflective writing excerpts from two real applications which were used for UK Higher Education Authority Accreditation by two University of Exeter ecologists.
Choose one of them to read through (in your group, try and choose a different one for each person). Identify and label Successes, Failures, Evidence, and Reaction. Think about when the writer admits a success or failure, their evidence that it was a success or failure, and how they did or will react to that success or failure.
Share what you identified in your excerpt with your group in a brief discussion.
Go back to your list of experiences so far. Choose one of them and either plan or have a go at writing a reflective paragraph on that experience; remember to evidence successes and failures and then explain your reaction to that, including how it shapes your teaching now.
Once you have had a go at writing your paragraph, share it with a partner. Read each other's reflective paragraphs and chat about how easy t was to label the success/failure, evidence, and reaction.
Have another look at your list of experiences so far. We've seen some of the diversity of experiences which can evidence skills and values. Identify what you think are any obvious gaps and think about how and where you might fill them. Talk with a partner or in your group about this.
Here are some guiding questions to help:
- Where can teaching take place?
- Who can you teach to?
- How can that be organised or accessed?
We're now going to talk a little bit across the class on novel ideas and places to gain experience
(Notes from that discussion will be made available here after the workshop)
You may have noticed in the reflective writing excerpts that there is pedagogical research and literature which we should refer to when designing teaching and reflecting on how to improve.
We're all researchers to reading literature shouldn't be too new - here you should choose one a few (1 2 3 ) pedagogy papers to look over as a group. Like any other paper, pull out the main points of the results and discussion to chat about.
Once you think you understand the main points of the paper, look over your teaching experience so far. Are there any activities you have done (or plan on doing) which could be informed by this paper? If so, how?
I've provided here some example pieces of education literature that I personally have found helpful as an ECR ecologist when teaching - just to get you started!
It is important to recognise how teaching is shaping our employment landscape, and how regional political initiatives have a role in that. In the workshop we very briefly highlighted two of those:
- The UK's Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)
- The EU's Responsible Research and Innovation
The slides from that presentation are available here. We're leaving it up to you to research what these things mean for your teaching.
We finished the workshop with a quick panel to answer questions.
If you have any questions about the topics in this workshop, feel free to email Lewis (l.bartlett exeter.ac.uk).