Essential Teaching Skills

This week, I would like to share a variety of resources on essential teaching skills. Hopefully one or more of these will resonate with each of you in different ways. We are all aware there is not a single way to measure effective teaching, instead there are many different ways to engage and motivate our students. Ideally, we might wish to focus on how we can create a system to evolve our instructional practices step-by-step. There are some general teaching frameworks and models that are popular (TPACK, Wiggins and McTighe Backward Design, Universal Design for Learning, etc.). I would like to share the following teaching skills research articles for your consideration: 

• Development and Validation of a Framework for Teaching Competencies in Higher Ed (2004) includes domains of Person as Teacher, Expert on Content Knowledge, Facilitator of Learning Processes, Organiser, and Scholar/Lifelong Learner, was validated through a Delphi method with educational experts, achieving stable results with an 82% response rate and 59% consensus on items.

• Systematic review and synthesis of frameworks for teacher expertise in higher ed (2020) identified six key tasks on what constitutes expertise in university teaching by analyzing 46 frameworks, including teaching support, educational design, assessment, leadership, scholarship, and professional development. The synthesis, called UNIversity Teacher Expertise (UNITE), highlights three dimensions for task-related development: enhanced task performance, broader task diversity, and increased influence.

• Teachers' pedagogical competences in higher ed: A systematic literature review (2022) necessitates changes in teachers' roles, focusing on competence-based approaches. A systematic review of 51 empirical articles highlights personal, research, and pedagogical skills as crucial for effective teaching, with a gap in cultural competence and diversity responsiveness. The study emphasizes the importance of personal skills to students and curriculum expertise to teachers, while also revealing a lack of attention to cultural competence and diversity responsiveness in higher education teaching.

In addition, here are some instruments that might help us gather data for our own reflections and perhaps guide our curriculum (including pedagogy) updates:

• UBC Teaching Practices Inventory: Categories include Course information, Supporting materials provided, In class activities, Assignments and Feedback, Diagnostics, Training and guidance of TAs and Collaboration

• University of Pittsburgh Self-Assessment Tools suggests including reflective statements, activity reports, annual goal setting and tracking. Teaching Centers can offer recommendations for how to use results to improve teaching. 

• Classroom observation protocols such as Teaching Dimensions Observation Protocol (TDOP), Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS), Practical Observation Rubric to Assess Active Learning (PORTAAL), Decibel Analysis for Research in Teaching (DART) and CO School of Mines Observation Protocol Toolkit

Finally, here are some links to teaching excellence and competency frameworks:

• Europe Teaching Excellence Project

• Colorado Teaching Effectiveness Framework 

• U of Oregon Professional, Inclusive, Engaged & Research Informed Teaching 

• Penn State Institute for Teaching Excellence

• Valencia College Teacher Competencies

References

• Gannon, K. (2018). The Case for Inclusive Teaching, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 27.

• Kuh, G. et al. (2006). What Matters to Student Success: A Review of the Literature, National Postsecondary Education Cooperative.

• Ambrose, S., et al. (2010). How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.

• Tanner, K. (2013). Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity, CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12, 322-331.

• Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Theory Into Practice, 34(3) 159-165.

• National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

• Nilson, L. (2010). Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors, 3rd ed., SF: Jossey-Bass.

• Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design, 2nd ed., Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

• Brown, P., et al. (2014). Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press.

• Freeman, S et al. (2011). Increased Course Structure Improves Performance in Introductory Biology, CBE-Life Sciences Education, 10(2) 175-186.

• Knight, J &. J. Brame, J. (2018). Evidence-Based Teaching Guide: Peer Instruction, CBE-Life Sciences Ed, http://lse.ascb.org/evidence-based-teaching-guides/peer-instruction/.

• Freeman, S., et al. (2015). Active learning increases student performance in STEM, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410–8415.

• Nicol, D. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and 7 principles of good feedback practice, Studies in Higher Ed, 31(2), 199-218.