1. Introduction

Driving questions are intended to provide a focus to learning and inquiry; and, for you create interest. Each week of this course has a driving question (check out the study schedule for all of them) and the course has a driving question. The driving question for the course is

How will you become a master teacher in higher education?

The driving question for this week’s learning path is

Where do master teachers come from?

Hopefully by the end of the learning path you can provide an answer for this week’s driving question.

How are your going to answer that question?

This week’s learning path will help you answer that question by

• Getting you to look at some master teachers and think about the types of behaviors they practice.

• Give some initial thoughts on how think someone becomes a master teacher.

• Using some literature to explain the attributes of masterful teaching and where master teachers come from.

• Using the teacher inquiry into student learning and teaching (the process model we’ll be using in this course) to map out your semester to come.

2. Your experience & thoughts around Master teachers

What do master teachers' think?

The survey you have just completed is based on the Teachers Behaviors Checklist and its use by Keeley, Ismail, & Buskist (2016) to measure what excellent teachers thought about excellent teaching. This checklist is based earlier work that assumes that there might be a common set of behaviours or qualities that distinguish master teachers from the others. As with all educational research there are multiple perspectives on this research.

The aims of using this survey now were to get you thinking about what qualities you might associated with a master teacher and a chance to compare your thoughts with those of others.

The following table - adapted from Keeley, Ismail & Buskist (2006, p. 177) - shows the top 10 qualities ask ranked by national (USA) award-winning teaching staff and how two other groups teaching staff ranked those qualities.  A ranking of 10.5 indicates a tie between two different qualities.

2. Who are some master teachers you know?

One of the researchers behind the Teachers Behaviour Checklist is

willing to wager my next year’s salary that most of us can think of at least one or two undergraduate teachers who influenced us to pursue a career in psychology

Personally, I haven’t had this particular experience. I’ve experienced some very good teachers, but none have influenced me to the extent of directing my choice of career. However, I have since observed a number of teachers who I would consider Master teachers.  My quick list would include the following:

• Michael Wesch - personal website and My Teaching Notebook
  A US-based award winning professor of Anthropology who has very successfully used social media to help students learn anthropology.

• Gardner Campbell
  An American professor of English well known for offering insights into how learning and teaching can better respond to increasing complexity of the world.

• Peter Albion
  A USQ Emeritus Professor of Education long at the forefront of using digital technology in higher education, and so much more.

Pick at least one of these and visit their online presence (Wesch’s is perhaps the biggest).

1. What is reflection

For various reasons (some of which will hopefully soon become abundantly clear) reflection is a core activity in this course.

(MacLellan, 2004, p. 76) with emphasis added offered this on reflection

One recognized means through which intentional and autonomous learning can occur is through the process of reflection (Barnett, 1990; Boud et al., 1996; Cowan, 1998) and, in particular, through the process of reflective or transformative writing (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Moon, 1999a). Distilling the theoretical perspectives of Dewey (1910) and Scho¨n (1983, 1987), Boud et al. (1996) describe reflection as a cognitive and/or affective response to some experience with the intention of coming to revised or new understanding(s). An essential feature of reflection is that, while it can take place at an unconscious level, its use as a tool for learning depends on its being conscious (Boud et al., 1996; Marton & Booth, 1997). As well as being purposeful, the mental processing of reflection is applied to relatively complex or unstructured ideas (King & Kitchener, 1994).

While there can be different purposes for reflection (Cowan, 1998; Moon, 1999a, b), the intention to revise extant understandings and/or construct new understandings involves dealing with fuzzy ideas to reconcile ambiguity and inconsistency; to recognize the ways in which one’s current knowledge and understanding are confused, incomplete or misconceived; and, generally, to make meaningful (for oneself) that which is disparate. Thus, reflection is seen as being particularly useful for deep learning (Marton et al., 1997), or for organizing knowledge at the relational or extended abstract levels (Biggs & Collis, 1982), because it can trigger activation of, and increase in, the skills of self-regulation (Ertmer & Newby, 1996). Reflection is, therefore, neither simplistically procedural nor routinely automatic. Rather, it is intentional, effortful, and may even be problematic (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989).

Each week throughout the course you will be asked to engage in reflection. You may already know a fair bit about reflection, or you may not. This book is intended to offer a brief background to reflection and use that to explain how that links to the design of this course.

2. Reflection and writing to think

(MacLellan, 2004, p. 76-77) offers the following

The power of writing in the process of reflection is as a means for thinking (Nickerson et al., 1985). While writing can be a record of what one already knows (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987), writing can also be the means through which one learns what one thinks about an issue (Kellog, 1994; Richardson, 1994). In trying to represent our thoughts to ourselves—and others—clearly, we have to work and rework our ideas. Writing can involve generating, integrating and evaluating ideas (Langer, 1986; Langer & Applebee, 1987), thereby creating the possibility of precipitating intellectual change.

One of the key media you will use in this course for reflection is your blog. When you write on a blog, you create a post. For this course, you will be writing at least two different types of blog posts:

1. Assessment; and
   You will submit your assignments by writing blog posts with specific titles. These posts should meet the normal expectations for an academic essay (e.g. language, referencing etc.). These posts will be marked and contribute toward your final result.

2. Everything else.
   These do not need to meet the expectations for an academic essay. These posts will not be marked.

The everything else blog posts are intended to be “the means through which one learns what one thinks about an issue”. The space where you experiment with your thoughts about the content of this course. The space you can write to think.  

As such, it’s quite acceptable for the everything else blog posts to take any form you like. They don’t need to be wonderfully constructed logical arguments rife with theory. Nor does every everything else blog post need to be wonderfully reflective. They are what you need them to be. They will be spaces where you and others in this course will be able to observe the evolution of your thinking as you generate, integrate and evaluate the ideas presented in the course.

You will be expected to explicitly make use of the everything else posts in your Assessment blog posts. As outlined in the Assessment section.

3. Reflection and your blog

Following on from here, the “non-assessment” blog posts you write could be seen as a learning journal

(MacLellan, 2004, p. 77)

Much of this reflective writing has typically been in learning journals (George & Cowan, 1999; Moon, 1999b). A distinguishing feature of learning journals is that the learner is able to determine how the process of learning will be documented. Notwithstanding any guidance which the novice reflective writer may need in order to begin (McCrindle & Christensen, 1995; Brockbank & McGill, 1998), it is the freedom to experience, explore and evaluate his/her responses to the content-to-be learned, and to have these reflections as a legitimate and significant part of the writing task, which enables learning to be enhanced (Watson, 2000).

While there will be prompts in the learning paths to encourage you to write learning journal blog posts. You also have the “freedom to experience, explore and evaluate…”. Hence, your learning journal blog posts are: not assessed; do not require formal referencing or academic language; have no fixed number, style or content; but there will be some suggestions and scaffolding offered.

The suggestions and scaffolding are intended to help you engage in the type of writing to think that will help prepare and generate the necessary writing to serve as a foundation for the assessment tasks.

4. Assessment tasks

Your “assessment” blog posts can be seen as essays. You are required to use APA referencing and more formal language, but they will also include reflection. (MacLellan, 2004, p. 77) offers this relevant description

While most commonly associated with learning journals (Moon, 1999b; Morgan & O’Reilly, 1999), it is perhaps limiting to conceive of reflective writing as their exclusive preserve. Essays, for example, can require analysis, critique and argument (Hounsell, 1997; Miller et al., 1998; Morgan & O’Reilly, 1999), and therefore have the potential to drive higher-order thinking (Resnick & Resnick, 1993). And while essays can vary in what they require of students (Brown et al., 1997), the tasks of clarifying and extending one’s mental representations of ideas, as is implied by Bereiter and Scardamalia’s (1987) knowledge-transforming model of writing, are not inconsistent with the demands of learning in the social sciences generally (Barnett, 1990), and with the subtasks of essay writing in particular (Freeman & Lewis, 1998).

As already mentioned, the assessment tasks will require you to analyse and critique your learning journal blog posts and the broader literature and from there develop answers to specific questions. This will include reflection.

5. Exposing your thinking

Hatton & Smith (1995) identify this possible reaction to a requirement that you reflect/write to think in this course.

Responses on the part of students part might include feelings of vulnerability which follow from exposing one's perceptions and beliefs to others, especially if the locus of control is not seen to be with the individual, who may tend to self-blame for any perceived weaknesses uncovered through reflection (Wilman & Niles, 1987)

Writing to think exposes your struggles as you seek to learn. There are important advantages and reasons for doing this, but that doesn’t reduce the challenge it can present.

Derek Sivers touches on some of what contributes to this challenge, and why we should expose our thinking when he talks about “Obvious to you. Amazing to others”. A video based on that post is shown below.

If you have any concerns about this expectation, please do start a conversation with the course examiner.

One small tactic we’re adopting to help address this is that the teaching staff will be engaging in this practice. We will also be using blogs to expose our learning.

6. Reflection, Kolb and the learning paths

 As mentioned in the Getting Started section, the design of this course is explicitly guided by the use of Kolb’s experiential cycle. The following image is a simplified representation of that cycle. This conception of learning has reflection on experience as a core activity within learning. Hence the focus within the course.

A perspective that (MacLellan, 2004, p. 77)  expand upon as they explain

However, according to Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987, 1989) writing can only be a mechanism for generative thinking if the writer holds a knowledge-transforming view of the writing task and has it as an intentional goal that as a result of engaging in the writing task, there is the possibility for change. Barksdale-Ladd et al. (2001) found that, amongst academics, different foci in writing about a common issue led to differences in their practice of teaching. The task of writing reflectively encourages connections between declarative knowledge and practical experience (Yost et al., 2000) and further allows a response to the relationship between knowledge and experiences in professional practice (Eyler, 2001). Writing, then, can be powerful (though is not guaranteed to be so), because by engaging in writing, the potential to develop one’s thinking, to revise or increase one’s understanding or, simply, to learn is heightened (Kellog, 1994; Richardson, 1994; McCrindle & Christensen, 1995; Watson, 2000).

Reflection is important to the course. It’s something you will engage in each week and it will contribute to your assessment tasks. Next week you will be introduced to some ideas about the elements of reflection and types of reflection.

But now, it’s time to get some practice.

1. Where do they come from? How?

Earlier in the learning path you were asked to think about the qualities or behaviours of master teachers. You also had the opportunity to look at some examples of master teachers and to ponder the master teachers of your experience or discipline.

Now it’s time to think about where they come from. First, what are your thoughts?

1. What does the literature say?

2. How do you become a master teacher?

Kane et al (2004, p. 303) write

We propose that ongoing and purposeful reflective practice is a means of interrogating and establishing teaching practices where subject knowledge, skills, interpersonal relationships with students, research, and personality can complement each other and work in concert to develop excellence in teaching. McClean and Blackwell (1997) claimed that “teaching excellence resides in a reflective, self critical, theoretically informed approach” (p. 85).

And later they quote Common (1989)

Master teachers are not born; they become. They become primarily by developing a habit of mind, a way of looking critically at the work they do; by developing the courage to recognize faults, and by struggling to improve (p. 385)

Not bad, but how do they do this? How do they become?  

There will be no one single approach or method. However, for the purposes of this course, we’ll be focusing on the use of approaches that fall under the label teacher inquiry into student learning, and in particular it’s integration with learning design and learning analytics.

1. The integrated model of teacher inquiry

Emin-Martinez et al (2014) develop a model that integrates teacher inquiry into student learning, learning design, and Learning Analytics. It is work that informs the Mor, Ferguson & Wasson (2015) paper you just read.

It is this model that we’ll use this semester.  It has 7 phases

1. Initiation;

2. Context analysis or investigation;

3. Formulation of the design objective and the research question;

4. Design of the method to achieve the learning objective and to answer the research question(s);

5. Enactment;

6. Evaluation;

7. Reflection and Re-design.

This course is designed to help you step through each of these phases (e.g. next week focuses on initiation). Time to learn a bit more about the 7 phases

2. Mapping out the course

As mentioned on the previous page this course has been designed to step you through the 7 phases of the integrated model for teaching inquiry into learning and teaching from Emin-Martinez et al (2014). This means that it should be possible to explicitly map each week's focus and the assessment tasks against the 7 phases. Actually creating this mapping should also help you develop an understanding of the overall structure of the course. The next exercise (and the last for this week) asks you to do exactly this.

This Word document might be helpful in doing the mapping. It is based on Figure 5 from Emin-Martinez et al (2014, p. 8) and has a column ready for EDU8702 specific information.

References