Section 5.3 Listening to an experienced TA
Whenever possible, a new faculty member was assigned a teaching assistant with experience in the course in order to provide some continuity and support. As one new faculty member reminisced, on-going conversations with an experienced TA were very helpful:
I had an undergrad TA, who had taken the course a year or two previously; he might have been a fifth year undergraduate or something like that, and so I met with him every day for a good chunk, half an hour or an hour, and he would explain things to me, particularly activities; ...
In addition to offering insights such as why the new faculty member should stand on a stool during a particular activity or how to affirm the most confident students while keeping them quiet so other students would have a chance to speak, a TA could keep track of what was happening during class. This new faculty member noted, for example:
Active engagement is very challenging, the timing is the hardest thing...I also had (the TA) always keep track of how long each activity took for me...so then I would print out the days' plans, which would have time estimates in it, sometimes with question marks, and so then (the TA) for each of those times would mark down how long it took me, which was really helpful... after that day was done, I would enter those into my... document, update the times, sometimes I would put a range in...
In addition to assisting the new faculty member, the process of discussing and helping to document the details of class activities also could provide the TA with valuable preparation for becoming an instructor skilled in teaching interactively in the future.
Debriefing with a co-instructor.
As a post-doc some years earlier, one of the new faculty members had enjoyed frequent and insightful conversations while co-teaching paradigm courses with experienced faculty:
At first, I had a lot of meetings with the instructors; (an experienced faculty member) described it as having “infinite conversations.” (This person) really was trying to convey all the things she knows about students' ideas and knowledge she's gained about how to move those ideas toward understanding, to convey the she things that she finds most productive. Our debriefs at the end of class, when she said why she said what she said, were enormously helpful. I had fewer conversations with (another professor), but I met with her daily. When I worked with (a third professor), we met several times a week; we split days, I was a little more independent, that was planned, the idea was I would co-teach the first six paradigms and then teach as the instructor of record.
Such a gradual apprenticeship would be ideal if feasible for all new faculty members.
Consulting with more experienced faculty.
The new faculty members had easy access to the more experienced faculty and consulted them informally as needed. One noted:
I'd basically knock on (the prior instructor's) door the day before the lab was going to happen and say “I'm not sure what I'm going to do” for a certain aspect of it; so it was certainly valuable, if you're adopting something; it's nice to have this person just down the hallway from you.
Through such interactions, the new faculty members were building upon the sharing of teaching practices that had become part of the department culture during the early development of the paradigms in physics courses.
Reading the wiki.
The wiki provided many resources for learning how to use active engagement strategies. Under the curriculum section, one could explore activities by topic and by sequence as well as within individual courses. Under the pedagogy section, one could peruse descriptions of activities organized by classroom strategies such as small group activities, compare and contrast activities, kinesthetic activities, tangible metaphors, computer visualization/simulations, integrated laboratories, small white board questions, concept tests (clicker questions), homework, and tips for lectures. A set of narratives included extensive interpretations of transcripts of highly interactive episodes from class sessions; some included videos of these episodes as well. A section on props and equipment presented information and examples of figures, software, whiteboards, specially designed machines, even pumpkin quarters. Multiple examples of small whiteboard questions were organized both by topic and by course. Many educational issues were discussed in a section about how middle division students learn.
A new faculty member related learning on the wiki about a puzzling aspect of an activity that occurs during the first week of the first paradigms course when both students and the instructor are acting out a scenario that illustrates several abstract concepts:
The wiki...explained things like “why is it you stand up on a desk?” You stand up on a desk because it challenges students' expectations about what goes on in the class; it also guarantees that they will not be the most ridiculous looking person in the room. I don't know that it said it that way but that's my interpretation about why I should stand on a desk.
An experienced faculty member had designed the activity specifically to establish a culture in which students would feel comfortable actively participating in developing ideas that would otherwise be the focus of a lecture.
Some of the new faculty members indicated that intense study of the wiki had been useful. One, for example, noted:
The wiki meets the needs of somebody's who's going to spend three weeks teaching the course and devote an hour a day reading the wiki and there may be 15 hours worth of stuff to read there on the wiki and if you're teaching the course you want that 15 hours of material.
Others did not use the wiki much or at all. Much seem to depend upon the resources the wiki had available for the course in question as well as upon the new faculty member's awareness both of the wiki's existence and of ways to use it effectively.
Watching videos of a prior instructor's course sessions.
As part of the research on the paradigms in physics program, some courses had been routinely videotaped every session (one hour, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays; two hours, Tuesdays and Thursdays). For some courses, there was only one camera primarily focused upon the instructor and for courses later in the research process, additional cameras documented interactions during small group activities. Two new faculty members and the sabbatical visitor offered extensive comments about their experiences watching videos of a prior instructor teaching the course they had been assigned to teach.
Typically the new faculty member sampled a course video rather than watching straight through, particularly for the two hours sessions (Tuesdays and Thursdays) that often involved extended activities. One described the video-watching process as follows:
I wouldn't look at the whole two hours. I would basically jump and look at sections and if I had the feeling I was not connecting the two pieces I'd seen, I would put one inbetween, but most of the time I would listen for 10 seconds and say “oh this is interesting” and I'd keep listening and then, “OK I think I understand what he's doing” and skip a few minutes and if I felt he had moved on to something new I would listen or maybe go back and video it and if I felt “oh, he's still on that” I'd skip it...I would probably spend about at least an hour or forty five minutes on a two hour (session).
This new faculty member first had taught this course without access to such videos. During the second year, seeing what the previous instructor had been doing was helpful well beyond the materials provided in a course binder:
(The videos) helped a lot with the activities because I saw what he was doing and the previous year, some of the activities I had to kind of invent them; I had the handout and the material but I hadn't seen anybody doing them and of course (the experienced faculty member) is a great teacher so I tried to steal everything I could...
The videos thus apparently provided a virtual apprenticeship in interactive teaching as well as practical information about what to do, how, and when.
Another new faculty member watched the video of every session for a course and reported that this had been enormously helpful in anticipating student reactions:
It was a huge difference in...the efficiency of me adopting the class and the quality of what I was able to do; it was almost like I had taught the class once before rather than teaching it for the first time, because I had that experience of how the students are going to react if I do exactly what (the previous instructor) did.
This faculty member described watching the videos at double speed, with some variations:
I watched at double speed...sometimes I'd slow it down, there's a lot of time, the most important parts of those videos could maybe be condensed down into something shorter and by being able to fast forward I could get to the elements that I really wanted...
What this new faculty member wanted was a better understanding of the prior instructor's perspective:
I probably am filtering in ways that I put my prejudice on the experimental data and I'm only taking the stuff I want to take but the way I would filter is, first of all, she's saying something, I want to hear what she's saying...
This new faculty member noted that the video did not provide much information about what was happening during small group activities:
And there's a lot of the class where the students are doing activities, and the camera is not really capturing what's going on, and so that's just kind of dead time...
In addition, this new faculty member filtered according to what the instructor was saying:
So she's talking; often I find that if somebody's explaining something...if somebody's learning something for the first time, I know what pace I should be talking and I'll slow down if they're kind of catching up with me but I already knew a lot of the material so if she was talking like that (as for a new time learner) I would double speed it...
What was most of interest to this new faculty member was the prior instructor's ways of framing and wrapping up the small group activities:
I took away the framing that came before the activity started and what was really valuable to me was afterwards, what kinds of things she wanted to emphasize, that helped me understand what the whole purpose of the small group activity was, the way she wrapped it up...
Watching the videos seemed more efficient than other ways to learn how to do this:
Everything I was able to see in those videos when I watched (the experienced faculty member), I wish I'd had that earlier, the details of how she explained something, or how she wraps up an activity, a lot of those subtleties are not captured, well they're not captured when somebody hands you a binder or their class notes; they're captured better in the wiki but not as efficiently.
By watching the videos, this new faculty member gained a deeper understanding of the overall goals for a small group activity and ways to enhance the students' understanding of the anticipated outcomes.
The sabbatical visitor also watched videos of an experienced faculty member teaching the course that he was teaching:
I would spend whatever (time) it takes at twice speed, and I would do that typically like the night before each class, I would watch the actual lecture and my goal was “do what (the experienced faculty member) did” – do it my way but do what she did so I brought with me my own ideas, like I added clicker questions, but basically I tried to do the exact same thing that she did...that's what I'm here for, to be a ‘paradigms person’...that's why I watched it, to try to emulate and not to do my own thing.
Trying to emulate what someone else does can be problematic although helpful:
There's a little bit of ego swallowing when you do that...you kind of have to give up a little bit of being yourself, and so I was...like “me being (the experienced faculty member)” and...it helped me grow as a teacher...
The sabbatical visitor teaches in a traditional department where fast-paced lectures are the typical mode of instruction, where “reform” has meant using clicker questions in class (Mazur, 1998). The videos portrayed a much slower approach that responded to student input:
We cover stuff in a traditionally fast pace; we do use clickers and get students arguing but it's like “after your 2 minutes of discussion, time's up, now you've got to listen to me again” whereas I clearly got the sense that (the experienced faculty member) was open to letting conversations go as they needed to...and that was part of why I wanted to do the paradigm, like to give me the excuse...I'm doing what they (the host institution faculty) want me to do, so I should be allowed to slow down if that's what they do.
Watching the videos provided an opportunity for the sabbatical visitor to realize that familiar ways of speaking were still occurring:
You asked me for advice for other faculty – maybe this willingness to step out of your comfort zone is what paradigms asks of you, and at least if you're like me, if you're used to teaching by lecturing...there's still enough of it (lecturing), that you can keep me feeling like “ok, I still got to teach this” so that was still in there
Thus watching videos of an experienced faculty member teaching had been affirming, in that what was actually happening in class included aspects of 'teaching by telling' as well as “actively engaging students in developing new ways of thinking.”
And it was also nice to see the video showing (the experienced faculty member) doing that, that also gave me permission, “oh there is still some ‘teaching by telling’ going on here” – when you hear about the paradigms, you don't know, it sounds like this really radical thing, and you're really uncomfortable about it, and then when you actually watch (this experienced faculty member) do it, you're like “Oh! That's what I do!”
The advice offered for other faculty seemed to be “a willingness to step out of your comfort zone” by taking a step toward active engagement without having to give up providing a coherent development of ideas.