Section 5.2 Coaching New Faculty Preparing to Teach Paradigms in Physics Courses
The new head of the department decided that the two newest faculty members should get involved in teaching the junior-level courses and assigned them to shadow the current instructors in the courses they would be assigned to teach the following year. Both were graduates of institutions with traditional instruction based on lectures coupled with intense individual study and performance. The purpose of the shadowing was to prepare them to teach in ways that not only differed from their prior experiences in the organization and development of the physics content but also in the use of active student engagement strategies both inside and outside of class.
Because the assignment to shadow another instructor counted as a teaching assignment, the shadower was expected to do more than just observe every class session. The shadower was to help monitor and assist small groups during activities and eventually to prepare and facilitate such activities during some class sessions. The shadower also was expected to go to any meetings that the instructor held to talk about what was planned for class, what kinds of questions might come up, and what troubles teaching assistants had observed. It is important that these expectations be made clear by the head of the department in making such a shadowing assignment when it counts as a teaching assignment in lieu of actually teaching a course.
During spring 2017, for example, a new assistant professor participated in meetings at least twice a week in which the professor teaching the course, graduate teaching assistant (TA), and a postdoc reflected upon what had happened during the previous class session. They discussed, for example, what had gone well and what not, how the students had responded, and why a particular activity had been chosen. They also discussed up-coming issues such as the physics content, plans for activities, and student ideas likely to emerge during the next class session.
During these debriefing and planning sessions everyone was welcome to give feedback and advice based on their experiences and own perspective. The group would discuss both relevant physics content and pedagogy such as different ways of answering students' questions. The graduate teaching assistant, for example, might offer insights from efforts to understand the content as an undergraduate student and learning assistant previously in the course, from multiple interactions with the current students as a graduate TA inside and outside of class, and from grading the homework. The postdoc might contribute additional insights from prior experiences with this content and/or pedagogical strategy and from conversations with small groups in class. At one meeting, the shadower offered another way to think about a topic that the professor had just presented in class and this enriched all of their understandings in this area.
Some meetings focused specifically on helping the shadower in planning to teach an up-coming session. In one of these meetings, for example, the professor noted that the shadower tended to hang out at one table and emphasized the importance of walking around the classroom during small group activities to see what all the students were doing. The professor acknowledged there is much to learn about helping small groups. When a student asks a question, for example, one needs to think about how to ask an appropriately open-ended question back in order to nudge students toward the next step without being so vague that students are so lost they do not know what to do. Also one has to learn when and how to end a conversation with a small group as well as when and how to bring the whole group back together again.
When the shadower summarized plans for teaching an up-coming session, the instructor coached by asking questions such as “how would you do that?” “What questions would you ask?” “What can you do if you notice someone is lost?” The post-doc sometimes offered suggestions, such as how much one's tone matters, in saying, for example, “you're looking lost, help me understand why you are lost” to elicit what the students are thinking. The graduate teaching assistant noted that calling on students caused a lot of pressure, it was better to ask a small white board question, in which all the students each write some kind of an answer on a small white board; then collect a variety of small white boards showing different possibilities and discuss these asking “what do you like about this answer?” or “what else do we need to do?” In an interview after a coaching session, the shadower expressed appreciation for these experiences, particularly the sense of collaboration evident among all the members of the group.
Facilitating such meetings and coaching in other ways takes a lot of time and effort on the part of the shadowed faculty member. This needs to be recognized by the head of the department in appropriate ways.