2014: When Good Intentions Meet Harsh Realities
With the year 2013 lecturer-teacher experience recommendations for 2014 put in place and continuing with the successful active learning activities from the year 2013 in the year 2014 (such as 1) peer based learning through creating a lesson together and presenting a lesson to a peer, 2) creating integrative physical education lesson plans, and 3) sharing the empirical research based benefits of physical education with students) I expected the 2014 year to be a great success. I additionally expected the 2014 year to be a success because I used the following to reflect on my 2014 upgrades:
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I engaged in a mentorship program with a colleague
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I reflected and included content based on the CTLM course content
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I reflected on my own practical based experience which included collaborations with teachers in lower socio-economic areas .
Unfortunately although my intentions with the 2014 upgrades were good, I had missed a critical element within my reflection-interrogation cycle. The following section will help me explain the critical element I had missed and how this effected student learning.
Table 1 highlights the teaching strategies I had put in place based on the feedback from students in the 2013 year. Table 1 additionally highlights why I made these changes, how these changes affected my students, why they affected my students in this manner and how this effected my 2015 teaching strategy upgrades.
The above changes to the 2014 module culminated into a mass meeting with the student body and HOD, an administrative load that quadrupled and very unhappy student body feedback. At the time I was very puzzled by the negative response by the students as I felt I had made all the necessary changes to improve our collaborations. I decided to follow up on my teaching strategy choices by:
- Chatting to colleagues about my concerns in my module,
- I asked students to provide feedback on their experiences of the module but more specifically on how they learnt for my module content.
What became clear was that even though I had included active and collaborative written assignments and practical activities, the focus shift in 2014 to improving content and communication through providing students with exactly what is needed removed the reflection and personalized teaching approach. As I reflect on my transition from the teacher-centered to student-centered approach the following are the critical elements I had not included in my reflections:
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I had all the teaching strategy tools but my 'lens' of thinking application was not student-centered. In other words I was not including debates, problem solving, reflections on the self, making students aware of their own learning and the role they play in the bigger picture and or getting students involved in my decision making in class.
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My students were not applying self-directed learning principles as illustrated in their reflections on how they learnt for my module. Additionally I noted that students were having many emotional responses to the module that I had not reflected on with them. Consequently instead of open discussions and debates about perceptions about the content, themselves and the context we worked in; the students and I were instead focused too much on the content.
The 2014 years' experience made me question many of the teaching strategies I had put in place and the reflective 'lens' I was using. To see how the 2013 and 2014 years of experience affected the 2015 and 2016 year refer to:
Regardless of the emotional year my students and I experienced, the following e-mail from a student showed me that even though I was teacher-centered in the year 2014, student reflection and growth had taken place.
Good Afternoon Miss Kahts. I would just like to express to you how much I appreciate your professionalism. Even though we couldn't see eye to eye you firmly maintained your professionalism at all times, even when I couldn't. I apologize for the harsh criticism which was not always necessary. I take my work very seriously as you may have noticed and it means everything to me, but in the future I will no longer let temporary emotions influence the way I conduct myself. Thank you for all your help and support through this semester, your hard work is highly appreciated.