AKORANGA

ISSUE 09 2013: Teaching Professionals

The Periodical about learning and teaching

ISSUE 09 2013: Teaching Professionals

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AKORANGAThe Periodical about learning and teaching

Features

03 Editorial Clinton Golding

04 News Jenny McDonald

05 Developing a professional identity Rhiannon Braund

09 Congruent teaching Adair Polson-Genge and Jill Paris

12 Is it the lecturer’s job to instill values in students? Selene Mize

16 University 2060: the brave new world of higher education Philip Riley

18 Writers summarise useful tips from academic publications Kwong Nui Sim, Sarah Stein, Lee Adam, Althea Blakey, Joanna Joseph, Kelby Smith-Han

22 Eight simple rules for award-winning teaching Lee Adam

Handy Tips

Seeds

REpublish

ISSUE 09 2013: Teaching Professionals

Akoranga EditorialClinton Golding

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AKORANGA How can we strike a balance between teaching the content or knowledge of a discipline and teaching students to be professional members of the discipline? I faced this problem when I was teaching philosophy and then teacher education: do I teach my students about philosophy, or do I teach them to be philosophers?

Do I teach my students about teaching and learning or do I teach them to be professional teachers? I see this as one of the core issues of teaching professionals. If I concentrate on covering the content then my students may not learn the professional practices, values and dispositions. On the other hand, if I concentrate on teaching the practice, then I do not have time to cover the scholarly literature and content.

Our feature articles further explore the core issues about teaching professions and teaching professionals, as well as the implications for teaching any discipline or subject. Rhiannon Braund, winner of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Teaching Excellence, argues that we cannot just teach our students the answers. We also need to teach them the fundamental understandings, the ways of thinking and the values that will enable them to be independent professionals, researchers and people. As Adair Polson-Genge and Jill Paris put it, writing from our Invercargill campus, our students need to understand not just the what, but also the how and the why. Selene Mize, the winner of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Teaching Excellence, argues that teachers should model the process of thinking and reflection that led to their own values, answers and judgements, rather than telling students what values they should adopt. All three show that teachers are essential role models of professional values and behaviours.

The aim of Akoranga is to strengthen the culture of teaching and learning at the University of Otago. To meet this aim we have changed the format and shifted to an online publication to provide a better avenue for you to share what you know, to learn from the insights of teaching colleagues, and to access some of the news and scholarship in Higher Education. As well as the feature articles, we include a section called Handy Tips in which Lee Adam summarises a range of advice from other teaching award winners. We also offer a section on Higher Education news, and another called REpublish, where we present interesting articles from other Higher Education sources (in this edition a lampoon of the potential impact of massive open online courses). The final section is Seeds in which Otago authors summarise interesting and useful scholarly articles, teasing out what they think are the main points of interest and advice. In this edition, Seeds explores a diverse range of topics: avoiding plagiarism, learning to be a tutor, resistance to staff development, the values we teach without even realising it, teaching to change the world, and digital wisdom.

We hope this new format, and this edition, will be stimulating and useful. Enjoy.

Akoranga is: Editors: Jenny McDonald and Clinton Golding. Team: Gala Hesson, Candi Young, Swee Kin Loke, Adon Moskal.

Teaching professionals

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news

This month’s featured article in Higher Education

Let’s Help Computer-Science Students Crack the Code By Jim Hendlar Published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4th March, 2013 The very things we often insist on in university computer science courses may not reflect best practice in the professional world of computer programming. Jim Hendlar, head of the department of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute writes:

“If a student looks at another’s code, it’s cheating. Programs are turned in to teaching assistants for grading; they are not discussed. And to download code from the Web and use it in an assignment is considered plagiarism—a university-level honors violation. How crazy is that?” By contrast, he points out that leading web development companies encourage code sharing, presentation of code to technical and non-technical staff and the reuse of existing code and code snippets. According to Hendlar, tertiary institutions should be rewarding rather than punishing students for “doing the right things”.

Read the full article here: http://chronicle.com/article/Lets-Help-Computer-Science/137649/

Where to turn for news, views and commentary in Higher Education

Whether you are looking for background on pro-fessional accreditation, tracking research rankings, trying to understand the impact on teaching of government policy or finding out what a MOOC is, the following news sources are useful places to start. The HERDSA news feed provides a useful and regular summary of Higher Education news from THE, The Chronicle and The Australian delivered to your desktop or mobile. http://higheredheadlines.wordpress.com/

If you like to browse, below are the individual links and a very brief summary for each source included in the HERDSA news feed.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education The Australian Higher Education covers a wide range of Higher Education news and topics with special relevance to those working in the Australian and NZ tertiary sector.

http://chronicle.comThe Chronicle of Higher Education is a U.S. based website covering a wide range of topics and disciplines of interest in Higher Education. It is usually updated daily and provides an excellent starting point for researching views on con-temporary issues.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/The Times Higher Education (THE) online is similar to The Chronicle and The Australian Higher Education but with a UK/European slant. Several specific news feeds are available from the site in addition to features and commentaries.

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The key to letting students develop their own professional identity is to allow them to learn, grow and discover who they are as a professional in a safe environment, before they enter the real world where their actions or inactions have the potential to help or harm others.

In my specific setting I am talking about our “pharmacists in training”, but this idea of personal growth and development of identity holds true for all of the students we work with. The reality for all of us is that our growth and sense of identity will always be a “work in progress”, and the best that I can hope for as an educator is simply to start laying some foundation work.

Developing a professional identity

Rhiannon Braund

Features

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One of my goals is to introduce our students to frameworks, or a step-by-step approach to problem solving, that will allow them to logically work through any potential scenario that may occur in the real world, even if it is one that is new to them. For example, in a primary health care setting, a pharmacist may need to perform a differential diagnosis and determine if the patient needs urgent referral to a medical practitioner or treatment available within the pharmacy, or simply advice. The framework that we would work through in class would cover “information gathering” – such as how to get information, what the key information would be – and then “differential diagnosis”, which is where the students would consider possible conditions, based on the information gathered, and then determine what is the most likely cause, given the information they have. This is also where they learn about red flags where one sign or symptom may indicate urgency. The next piece of the framework would be the consideration of “treatment options” including referral, medications, non-medicated treatments and advice, followed by “the plan” where they explain to the patient the timeframe to expect to see improvement, what to do if there is no improvement, and when to see the doctor. Once students understand this framework, layers of knowledge can be applied so they can deal with more and more complex cases. Such frameworks and systematic approaches allow the development of autonomous reasoning, and they can be used to devise a plan that is tailor-made to the specific problem being faced at that moment.

There is a greater reliance on medications, and new, more efficacious and safer medications are becoming available to patients every year. Many medications, in which our future pharmacists need to be experts, have yet to be invented, or are currently in trial phases or too expensive for mainstream use. This will change rapidly. It is not possible for a student to know every aspect about every medication that is available, and even if this was achievable there would be more added every year. For this reason we need to teach basic fundamental concepts so our students can understand how to apply these concepts to new medications. Improving students’ understanding is much more valuable in the clinical process than the ability to simply recall content when required. For example, understanding how groups (classes) of medications have similar actions and toxicities makes it much easier to predict what effects and side-effects might be expected. This is more valuable than memorising all the facts about every medication currently being used.

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I also want to be very clear that fundamental factual knowledge is vital, but it is the delicate balance between the volume of facts and the ability to apply these facts to a potentially “grey” area that allows our students the ability to grow, reflect and develop into autonomous professionals. The main challenge for us as teachers is to explain the core principles of our professions in such a way that those who are beginning to develop their own professional identity understand how it all fits together.

Another important factor for teaching for professional identity is being a professional role model. While our students are developing their professional identity they are very aware of the role models to whom they are exposed. The way that we choose to interact with our students influences how they see professional behaviour. If we believe that being a professional means to listen to others’ perspectives, be empathetic, be respectful and maintain confidentiality and yet we do not listen to our students, or engage with them in a respectful manner, then it can confuse them.

Developing a professional identity takes time and practice. We use ‘role plays’ as a way of letting our ‘pharmacists in training’ practise their skills and develop patient interaction abilities. Within our school we are fortunate to have both actors and genuine patients, who are willing to be involved in our classes and allow our students to work through scenarios in a safe environment. This can be very daunting at first but is important for learning how to apply frameworks that suit their communication style and thought processes. Sometimes the ‘role plays’ do not go well, and these situations can be a really valuable learning exercise without compromising patient safety and professional relationships.

The development of a professional identity is a very individual process and one that does not have a finish point. As we grow as professionals, reflect on our successes and failures, develop and remodel our perceptions and strive to do what is best for our patients, students and those within our circle of influence, we realise that we are always a work in progress.

My goal as a teacher is to ensure a strong platform of fundamental knowledge, provide guidance on frameworks that allow our students to be confident and competent to solve any problem with which they are faced, and to instil in them a sense of professional autonomy that encourages reflection and growth and the best outcomes for those for whom they provide care.

The development of a professional identity is a very individual process and one that does not have a finish point.

Features

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When teaching professionals, our aim is to produce graduates who understand the professional “what” (content knowledge), the “how” (the practice), and more importantly the “why” (the values and ethics) of their profession. Congruent teaching offers a way to achieve this. If we teach in a way that

reflects the professional qualities specific to a profession, this congruent teaching can not only provide the content knowledge, but also enhance adoption of professional qualities. This congruence can be achieved through modelling appropriate professional values and skills, demonstrating specific professional procedures and strategies, specifically analysing these

Congruent teaching Adair Polson-Genge and Jill Paris, College of Education

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and explicitly linking these to underlying theory (Swennen, Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2008). This could apply in many professions. For example, within the context of an engineering undergraduate programme, Godfrey (2008) discusses the importance of “a match or a mismatch between the lived experience of staff and students and espoused values” (p.2).

The need for congruence within teacher education is identified by Korthagen, Loughran & Russell (2006) as Principle 7 of their framework for “responsive teacher education programmes that make a difference”

(p.1020). This principle states “learning about teaching is enhanced when the teaching and learning approaches advocated in the programme are modelled by the teacher educators in their own practice” (p.1036). But congruent teaching is more than just modelling. A further component of the congruence is the explicit articulation of the professional reasoning for the approach. As teacher educators we not only model appropriate practice, but also explicitly draw the learners’ attention to key aspects of this practice and link it to theory. For example, we may use a particular teaching strategy in workshops and then ask students to analyse what this would look like in practice with their own learners, their reasons for choosing it and what impact it might have. We facilitate this critical thinking about pedagogical choices by ar-ticulating our rationale for selecting a strategy and making explicit links to underlying theory. This ‘thinking aloud’ strategy demonstrates and demystifies the process teachers go through when making teaching decisions about which actions to take to promote student learning. Other strategies used to make more visible the teaching decisions made by experienced teachers include the use of a divided whiteboard, one side to comment on content and one for analysis of professional aspects; graphic organisers to record analysis; giving a verbal cue such as “now we are going to step aside and analyse what we have done”; donning a lab coat to indicate change of focus from demonstrating to analysing.

This congruent teaching enables students to experience, observe and critique effective professional practice rather than just hear or read about it. In contrast, a transmission model of teaching, where knowledge alone is the focus, without the accompanying development of the critical thinking integral to being a professional, may result in an uncritical, procedural approach to professional practice.

Features

Congruent teaching enables students to experience, observe and critique effective professional practice

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For a congruent approach to teaching to be effective, each profession has to specifically identify the desired professional qualities so that these become a conscious and deliberate focus of teaching. As a team of teacher educators, we specifically identified as our focus the elements of effective pedagogy outlined within The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007), upon which our students need to base their own practice. These elements constitute professional knowledge and skills for teachers.

Our professional learning journey explored the use of congruent teaching as an approach that could make the elements of effective pedagogy more visible and real for our students. This has taken us from just modelling particular strategies to being more deliberately explicit about their use. To inquire into the effectiveness of this teaching approach, we conducted research with a graduating cohort using a survey and focus group discussion. This provided supporting evidence that the way we teach within our teacher education courses, using the model of congruent teaching, does actually have an influence on the philosophy and practice of our graduates (Paris, Polson-Genge, & Shanks, 2010). To further analyse the effectiveness of the particular components of congruent teaching (modelling, demonstrating, analysing and linking to theory), a study was undertaken within one course. This showed that the students valued all components as being influential on their ability to be able to implement particular teaching strategies in their own classroom practice (Paris, 2011). We are continuing to refine our strategies for achieving congruent teaching.

Godfrey, E. (2008). University education: Enculturation, assimilation or just passengers on the bus? In 11th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference. Hobart, Tasmania. Retrieved on June 25, 2009, from http://www.fyhe.qut.edu.au

Korthagen, F., Loughran, J. & Russell, T. (2006). Developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, (22), 1020 – 1041.Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand curriculum. Wellington, NZ: Learning Media

Paris, J. (2011). Teaching as inquiry: An example from teacher education. In K. Shephard, T.Harland & A. Cohen. Proceedings of spotlight on teaching and learning colloquium. (p26). Higher Development Education Centre, University of Otago.

Paris, J., Polson-Genge, A., Shanks, B. (2010). Effective Pedagogy: The influence of teacher educators’ practice on student teachers’ practice and philosophy. Waikato Journal of Education, 15(1), 145-155.Swennen, A., Lunenberg, M. & Korthagen, F. (2008). Preach what you teach! Teacher educators and congruent teaching. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 14(5-6), 531-54.

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Features

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As a teacher of legal ethics for lawyers, I am often told that I need to attempt to “instill values” in my students. I am a bit sceptical. Certainly there are some topics where there is consensus within the legal profession, for example that it would be wrong to secretly sabotage unlikeable clients, or to give other clients poor service

because of their race or sexual orientation. But those who advocate instilling values are usually expecting me to do something more than just endorse such nearly universal principles.

Sometimes I am told that I should ensure that my students exit University having adopted particular viewpoints on topics about which reasonable people differ (for example, that all lawyers should be required to donate legal services to the poor). At other times, it is suggested that I should mould students to guarantee that they attain a higher standard of morality than the law and the profession will require of them.

Is it the Lecturer’s Job to Instill Values in Students?

Selene Mize

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But I am not responsible for my students’ behaviour – good or bad. They are the ones who need to answer for what they do. And although I am committed to my own personal values and opinions, I do not think that they are so superior and universal that I feel justified in attempting to indoctrinate my students to be just like me.

I have identified my own values and standards over time, through deep reflection, and that is what I ask my students to do – to self-reflect and develop a personal code of values and behaviour that they will continue to refine.

Finding the most effective way to encourage students to self-reflect is a work in progress for me, but I have reached some preliminary conclusions about beneficial techniques. My examples focus on law students, but most of this content would be equally applicable to those in other disciplines.

1. Expose students to relevant information and a wide range of viewpoints and experiences

Values are sometimes underpinned by facts, such as the likely impact of careless lawyering on clients’ lives. This information can and should be learned by students, along with other material. Literature and narratives can help students gain experience without being personally involved, and can show the evolution of a character’s values over time. Guest speakers can also be very useful. The School of Law at the University of St Thomas holds sessions where lawyers who broke the law and served time in prison talk about their experiences.

Student reflection is enriched by being exposed to a wide range of different viewpoints, including arguments for and against contentious actions. Encourage students to consider different paradigms and to look through the eyes of different experts. For example, when considering the legalisation of euthanasia, philosophers, religious leaders, doctors, economists and lawyers are likely to start from different perspectives and emphasise different aspects of the situation.

2. Place the responsibility for developing values on the students

Explain to students that there will be many situations where neither the law nor professional codes will prescribe particular behaviour, and that in these situations they will need to act according to their personal codes of values. To develop a personal code, they will need to carefully consider and test competing viewpoints, and this will be an on-going process that will likely take place over many years.

The lecturer may model a specific professional behaviour (students are often deeply interested in what the lecturer would do if faced with a particular situation), but should indicate that it is just one possible approach. Personal and professional values involve the application of

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Features

judgment, which is a skill and not information to be learned. So modelling the process of reaching a decision is very important. This process includes correctly framing the relevant questions, considering differing viewpoints, and taking time to think before reaching a considered and defensible position.

A few years ago, I showed a clip from Boston Legal in the first class and passed out a survey asking whether the lawyer’s behaviour was appropriate. One student wrote “yes”, then scratched it out and wrote “no”, then scratched that out and wrote “I don’t know!” I mentioned this in the next class and praised it as evidence of taking careful thought and being able to appreciate different angles of the problem. I express trust and confidence in students’ ability to reach appropriate decisions.

3. Excite student interest in preparing themselves for future ethical decision-making

There are a number of techniques that lecturers can use to help stimulate student interest in values decision making, including using compelling hy-potheticals or, better yet, true stories. Sketch the situation and call for discussion. Delay telling what happened in the actual situation until later in the class; curiosity will help maintain student interest. Use a direct, second person voice to help students feel personally involved – instead of saying “what should a lawyer do if this were to happen?” ask students “what will you do when this happens to you?”

Tell stories that make it clear that ethical dilemmas sometimes arrive with little advance notice or time for reflection. I use a true story in my Legal Ethics class where a junior lawyer was suddenly and unexpectedly faced with a very senior colleague lying in court. The lawyer had only a few minutes to act, if he were not later to appear to have been complicit in the other lawyer’s wrongdoing.

Lecturers can promote student involvement by including active tasks such as class discussion; small group or pair discussion; responding through use of clickers; and par-ticipating in structured debates (assigned debate roles will require students to empathise with that viewpoint, and ensure that all viewpoints will be presented).

4. Create a supportive and safe environment for student participation

For maximum student participation, the class environment needs to be safe and supportive. The lecturer can establish ground rules prior to discussion, such as respect for fellow students. Students can also be encouraged to generate arguments without ownership rather than exposing their own personal opinions in a public forum – in a large class it is usually easier to say “a utilitarian might advocate doing x” than to say “I plan to do x”. Anonymous contributions may also be possible (for example in an online discussion forum or by using clickers).

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5. Do not overlook real world challenges

The most powerful scenarios will involve situations that students may face at some point in their careers. Real world challenges should not be neglected. Financial needs, conflicting loyalties and peer pressure may influence future decision-making. Presenting psychology research on pressures to conform with peers’ behaviour and to obey authority can help bring these often overlooked factors into focus. Properly preparing the student includes addressing all these challenges and exploring ways for dealing with them. This maximises the likelihood that students’ future actions will match their values.

6. Display an attitude that is conducive to discussing values

The lecturer’s attitude can affect the robustness of class discussion and debate and the students’ willingness to participate. Preaching at students is not effective in promoting the development of values, for example. People naturally resist being told what to do. Taking a superior or condescending attitude, or being hypocritical, must also be avoided.

ConclusionPushing students to adopt the lecturer’s own values is unlikely to succeed, especially in the long term. It is both more effective and more appropriate to instead encourage students to take a self-reflective approach, and to develop and refine their own values.

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Higher education, 2060: academics are out of a job. All the brand name universities have made all their courses free online, easily doing away with one

side of the teaching and learning equation.

Pretty soon all the universities realised how much money they could save.

Tutorials have been replaced by Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) with the wisdom of the crowd sourcing all answers from the students themselves. Algorithms update the online course content in response to the question’s popularity – after all, “the customer is always right”.

Eventually no new information is taught, as it is too difficult to produce. There can be no FAQs for new material. So university courses have become useless. People need to find other ways to learn.

Universities took up the idea of the customer is always right earlier than 2012. Students became clients. So it became obvious that student evaluation of teaching results determined careers and promotion of lecturers.

That is, even when the students could not possibly be in a position to evaluate the teaching, as they were yet to be introduced to, grapple with and eventually understand, difficult and complex issues.

And yet they were asked by administrators to rate their teachers. Students assumed that because the material was hard, the teaching must be poor. So the complaints went: it should have been easier to engage with; the lecturer did not spend enough time explaining how to get a good mark; they did not answer my questions quickly enough (even if most were posed late at night, and answered by morning).

So the universities felt justified in getting rid of their lecturers: after all the student feedback was not good and the lecturers were difficult to deal with.

The Australian Research Council realised that they too could save themselves a great deal of time. All they had to do was run competitions. They only needed small groups of trusted researchers who met regularly to determine which questions would get funding and how much each question was worth.

Then as each new question was decided it was added to the competition database. This procedure had a great deal of merit. It assumed that the best researcher to answer any particular question was out there somewhere but asking them to apply for funding was a waste of everybody’s time.

Much better for the ARC to put up the questions, sit back and wait for the research teams to engage

University 2060: the brave new world of higher education

Philip Riley, Senior Lecturer in School Leadership. Director, Australian Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey at Monash University

REpublish

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with the questions directly. No need to fund a good looking prospect. They only needed to fund results.

They took the website Kaggle.com as their model. Big questions (that is the ones that could earn the most money) attracted the biggest prizes.

At this point educational research stopped being funded completely, because everyone now knew how to educate en masse for free. Get a free degree from MIT, Stanford or Harvard. Within ten years software was developed that was sophisticated enough to be used to examine PhD theses, so no one had to actually read them any more.

Within 30 years, all the “great minds” currently living had gained their doctorate from an algorithm. No one had read their work, and none could find a job in the academy, because everyone had free degrees from MIT, Stanford or Harvard.

About 10 years later a group of about 12 people sat around together in a room. They had decided to hold a book group. There was no leader except that one person had rediscovered the old practice of a reading group and suggested to some friends that they try it out as a nostalgic reenactment, similar to

the people who still recreated the American Civil War on a Sunday afternoon.

One of the group suggested the book, something they had found in a bookshop from the 1960s, On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers.

They all enjoyed meeting together and talking about the book, particularly the funny ideas that could never take off now. Then someone suggested they read another book.

This happened and they all enjoyed that experience too, sharing and discussing ideas with no particular agenda. After the group had discussed five books they realised it was not just the book that was enjoyable, they brought food, talked about their days, discussed other topics unrelated to the books they

had come together to read.

They were enjoying engaging with each other and learning together.

Pity, they thought, that we couldn’t do this more often.

Educational research stopped being funded completely, because everyone now knew how to educate en masse for free

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From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom

Prensky, M. (2012). From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom. In M. Prensky, From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Education (pp.1-9). Corwin Press.

This article focuses on Prensky’s vision for a more relevant education in the 21st century, which I think is worthy of consideration for university lecturers wanting to adapt their teaching style to today’s students.

Prensky’s vision for education begins with students. Lecturers should find out what their students need. For example, they should listen to their students and teach their students work-related skills. We have to remember that tomorrow’s world is far different to that of yesterday or even today. With such an approach to teaching and learning, Prensky suggests that students will be better equipped to face the challenges of the world they will live in. In addition, Prensky believes that students’

‘Resistance’ to academic staff development?

Quinn, L. (2012). Understanding resistance: An analysis of discourses in academic staff development. Studies in Higher Education, 37(1), 69-83.

This paper reports a study into the variety of views, expressed through discourses, held by academic staff about academic staff development. “Views”, as used by Quinn in this article, include ways of talking about staff development, and associated expectations and assumptions. It thus also included beliefs about what is valued (or not valued) about staff development. Quinn gathered these views through interviews, and the analysis was undertaken using a critical discourse analysis approach.

The discourses related to staff development include

Disciplinary discourse: including views focused on the discipline, the department and that staff development should be related to discipline research.

Student deficit discourse: including views related to problems with students, their lack of preparedness for university and that staff

personal passions are their best motivation to learn. Therefore, lecturers should work with their students to discover what the students do best and guide them based on their passions.

Underpinning Prensky’s vision is his contention that technology plays a significant role in the world today. The locus of knowledge in the 21st century has shifted from teachers to computer technology. Hence, lecturers need to help students learn how to use technology to locate relevant information. Prensky believes that the current regimen of proscribed curriculum and testing should be removed as “the new teaching roles that the new century offers are so much better, powerful, and interesting than what came before”. New ways of thinking are necessary when the educational context has changed. University lecturers today should understand their new roles (e.g. student focus and awareness of the role of computer technology, as mentioned above) and embrace them. With this understanding, Prensky hopes that university lecturers will be able to move from teaching their subjects to teaching their students.

- Kwong Nui Sim

Seeds

Writers summarise useful tips from academic publication

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‘Do the crime, do the time’ – is this the most effective way of reducing plagiarism?

Kaposi, D., & Dell, P. (2012). Discourses of plagiarism: moralist, proceduralist, developmental and inter-textual approaches. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 3(6), 813-830.

Plagiarism is an area of increasing concern in universities worldwide. However, the ways in which we commonly think about and deal with plagiarism are not necessarily effective. Shifting our thinking away from a ‘catch and punish’ model is a good start towards reducing plagiarism. Often, plagiarism is talked about using metaphors of crime and punishment, breaking institutional ‘rules’, or failing to correctly cite or acknowledge sources. This can be unhelpful in

addressing plagiarism because it suggests that plagiarism is unquestioningly a

deliberate ‘bad’ act, when, in fact, most plagiarism by students

is unintentional. It also assumes that plagiarism is clearly definable, and that recognising plagiarism is easy. However, plagiarism is not a good vs evil issue – there are many shades of grey in interpreting what is

plagiarism and what is not, as well as in determining intent

or the reasons behind it. This is why warnings and punishment

may not be the best solution.

In order to tackle student plagiarism head-on, we need to view students as learner thinkers and writers. Learning to avoid plagiarism is just part of the process of learning to write for, and become part of, an academic community. We can help students do this by role-modelling how we think and write within our own discipline, and by working towards developing them as academic thinkers and writers. Through encouraging rather than punishing, we enable our students to develop as writers and as professionals in the discipline. When we identify an instance of plagiarism, it is important to recognise that learners make mistakes, and that mistakes provide an opportunity for learning. So next time you encounter plagiarism, try viewing it as a learner academic’s honest attempt to write as a credible academic.

-Lee Adam

development wouldn’t be needed if the ‘right’ students were at universities.

Skills discourse: including views about teaching being a technical pursuit that can be learned as if it were a set of mechanical skills that have no intellectual complexity.

Discourse of performativity: including ‘skills discourse’ views but with a particular emphasis on quality assurance and enhancement of performance.

In her description of the four discourses, Quinn shows how each can constitute academic resistance to engaging in academic staff development activity in a meaningful way.

CommentaryPrior knowledge, experiences and motivations will determine and influence the nature and quality of learning that occurs when learners (academic staff in this instance) are faced with op-portunities for knowledge and skill development. Teacher (in this instance, academic staff developer) intentions may not match expectations of staff, but hopefully the staff developer is knowledgeable enough about the context, topic and the staff themselves, too, to be able to gauge the level, range, nature and scope of learning expected by staff and use appropriate strategies to facilitate and support learning. It is a complicated business!

Having a better understanding of the range of views that staff might hold about staff development can provide useful insights for staff developers into how to frame and implement development plans and to facilitate staff learning. Such insights can also be useful for staff themselves, as the views described in this paper may prompt reflection on one’s own responses when confronted with staff development activities. A learning environment for staff that is meaningful, useful and aligned with expectations and needs will be more successful and satisfying.

- Sarah Stein

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Seeds Writers summarise useful tips from academic publication

Simple strategies for effective tutor support

Brailsford, I., Bartlett-Trafford, J., Bates, M. and Mead, A (2008). Tutoring the new tutors: training that works. Educational Developments, 9(4), 7-10.

Are your tutors ‘donkeys’? Overloaded, feeling undervalued, overwhelmed by teaching? What simple, effective strategies might you as an employer offer to help them improve their practice and at the same time feel valued as a new small group tutor?

If you have tutors working with small groups, offering simple training will help. There are straightforward measures you might take to ensure tutors feel both valued and enabled to enhance their practice. Simply allowing new tutors to experience groups as their students might (short courses that include icebreakers, setting group rules, etc.) means they quickly learn about group processes and how to reflect on these processes as a teacher.

As a result of training, your tutors will be able to tackle such issues as lack of time due to over-en-gagement (gossiping), how to bring groups back to order (time, gentlefolks, please!) and begin to understand broader ideas like educational philosophy. This kind of training experience communicates both directly and indirectly what is expected of a good tutor: being told is good but them finding out by themselves is better.

These new understandings about teaching practice occur because new tutors having such experiences come to understand what students themselves actually might experience and what, therefore, they might need and expect from a tutor. Such courses are hard work. However, tutors who begin to form their own functional groups find new confidence to voice their concerns about their needs in learning to teach, as they would hope their students might in learning to learn.

Such courses often provide more than enough practice to sustain tutors through the first weeks of small group work. The next time a new colleague confesses to feeling ass-like, under-valued or swamped by new group work, remember this basic, yet effective, training. Invaluable for tutors new as well as old - it’s never too late to experience the basics of teaching and learning.

- Althea Blakey

Critical pedagogy in the classroom: The challenging path towards transformation

Pessoa, R. R., & de Urzêda Freitas, M. T. (2012). Challenges in Critical Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 46(4), 753-776.

Critical pedagogy is grounded on the belief that education leads to self and social transformation. In higher education, some university teachers incorporate critical pedagogy to empower students to radically change the world. This is not an easy task, and critical teachers often have to contend with many challenges. Firstly, teachers need to be mindful to problematise, and not impose knowledge when introducing alternate views and ideas to students. Imposing knowledge can easily occur when teachers draw upon theories from academic texts which often appear as a legitimate, authoritative source that cannot be challenged. Teachers can overcome this problem by avoiding a tone of irrefutable truth, and recognize that the voice of the student and teacher are at the same time valid, and partial, and must be problematised. Creating a cooperative space within the classroom where there is equal participation from both teacher and student is also a challenge for critical educators. One way of addressing this issue is by negotiating with students which topics should be focused on and how they should be approached. Feedback from students can also be important in deciding the amount of time that should be spent discussing each topic. Hence, a more equitable student-teacher relationship is established, and learning becomes a more collaborative experience. Finally, teachers need to continually bear in mind the social aims of critical pedagogy and plan their lessons accordingly. This means that teaching and learning activities should not consist of superficial discussion or playful activities which tend to trivialise subject content. Instead, students’ lives and individual experiences need to be drawn upon to illustrate, enrich and personalise discussions. Therefore, critical educators need to constantly remember their role and the role of students in society as they pursue social justice and equity through teaching and learning.

- Joanna Joseph

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The hidden curriculum – what else are students learning from your teaching?

Phillips, S. P., & Clarke, M. (2012). More than an education: the hidden curriculum, professional attitudes and career choice. Medical Education, 46(9), 887-893.

The hidden curriculum comprises the undeclared, non-explicit elements of a teaching and learning programme and its setting which students are exposed to and pick up. This is modelled by individual teachers (and even senior students) through the language and behaviour they exhibit.

For example, what medical students learn in their early years as ‘good/best practice’ may be in conflict with what is modelled in their clinical years by their seniors. In this research, negative examples of a hidden curriculum in the clinical years included events where teachers expressed personal beliefs to students that showed disrespect for certain patients, groups or practices; where overt derision towards patients who were obese or had mental illness were witnessed; and where general disrespect for colleagues (female doctors in particular) in different specialties was reported.

So what do students do with these confusing messages where their learning and experience conflict? Students responded to these messages in different ways. Two examples include role confusion - where students were confused about whether to be silent, advocate for patients and their families, or be a member of the healthcare team; and transformation - changing to fit the (sometimes negative) model of practice exhibited by their teachers.

This illustrates the powerful nature of the learning experiences, involving implicit attitudes, beliefs and values, which students take up from their teachers and peers in regard to the practice of their profession. However, this is not restricted to the teaching of professionals. If you teach in small groups and value ‘everyone’s opinion’, do you close opinions down that conflict with your own? Take a moment to reflect on your own teaching – what is your hidden curriculum? What are you com-municating to your students about your values and beliefs about your research, subject, students and teaching – your academic practice?

- Kelby Smith-Han

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1. Work with your strengths“Good” teaching involves an honest approach. What this means is that whilst you should not be afraid to experiment with different teaching techniques your most effective teaching strategy is likely to be the one you are most comfortable with. If you are not comfortable with a didactic teaching style, then avoid it and focus instead on methods with which you do feel comfortable.

2. Be explicit about the objective(s) of the lecture/course

To ensure your students gain the greatest benefit from what you are teaching, make explicit the core objective(s) of each teaching session. To do this, you first need to clarify for yourself what the core objective of the session is. Identify exactly what you want the students to know; then determine what they don’t know. You can now identify what they need to know to fill the gap. Focus on the fundamental or core information, as without this knowledge your students can’t move on or process the details.

Eight simple rules for award-winning teaching

3. Clarify the relevance of the material you are teaching

Be explicit with your students about why they need to know what you’re teaching them. This is particularly important in core subjects where some students may not be interested in the subject per se, but need the knowledge to progress in their chosen course/career. A good strategy for achieving this is to explain the practical application of the information you are teaching – not only can this help to clarify the information, it can also make your lectures more interesting. Remember, too, that some students prefer to understand the ‘bigger picture’ first, and some students prefer to understand the details first. Consequently, it is important to make sure you make both the context and the details explicit.

4. Make your expectations clearIt is important to ensure your students are aware of your expectations of them, par-ticularly when it comes to assessment time. For example, it is helpful to clarify whether you expect students to simply present information, or if you expect them to take a stance or draw a conclusion based on their opinion. We have different expectations of students as they progress from first year to second year, to third year, etc., and you need to ensure your students are fully aware of these. Being clear also lets your students know that you understand their thinking is maturing and that consequently you have different expectations of them.

Invited panelists at the recent colloquium, “Teaching Professionals”, each presented strategies they find useful and effective towards excellent teaching. What follows is a potted summary of the main strategies presented and discussed.

Lee Adam

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Handy Tips

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5. Deliver the material multiple times in multiple ways

Students learn in a variety of different ways, and what works for one student may not be effective for another. One way to work with this is to ensure that your students have multiple opportunities and multiple ways to learn the core material. Examples of different ways of presenting material are readings, lectures, activities, assessment tasks, on-line discussions, video clips – the possibilities are endless. Make your students do as much of the learning work as possible; set tasks, for example, that require them to think. Focus your energies on facilitating their learning rather than just delivering information.

6. Encourage active learning/ participation

Many students learn better by being actively involved in their learning, rather than by just listening or reading. Encouraging par-ticipation is one way of encouraging active learning. Noticing how and what students are contributing in class can also provide you with valuable feedback on what your students know. However, not all students may be comfortable participating in class. Consequently, you may want to recognise that participation doesn’t require a whole-class activity. It can also mean working in small groups or simply having a chat with the person beside you.

Decide if participation is really necessary. If your objective is to encourage active learning, this might be achieved by setting a task for students to complete individually. Or it might be achieved simply by ensuring you are delivering your lecture material in an interesting and engaging way, which encourages the students to think about the material.

If you do decide that participation is important, think ‘backwards’ about why some students may not be participating. Once you have identified possible barriers or inhibitors, you can begin to find solutions, for example, inviting students to anonymously text you or tweet their responses during the lecture.

7. FeedbackFeedback is hugely important to good teaching and learning. Setting relevant and appropriate assessment tasks is useful for providing feedback to students about how much they know and how much they need to know. It also provides feedback to teachers on how well they are facilitating their students’ learning. Effective teachers use this feedback for ongoing revision of teaching materials and practices.

8. We are all professionals teaching professionals

The principles of good teaching are the same no matter what discipline you are teaching in. All disciplines, whether part of a professional school or part of a more traditional academic discipline, have professional practices (for example explicit or implicit codes of conduct). It is our job to teach our profession to our students - both the knowledge and the conduct.

The colloquium was intended to start an on-going conversation on good teaching practice at Otago. The invited speakers/contributors were all award winning teachers from around the University and included Rhiannon Braund (2012 Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Teaching Excellence); Selene Mize (2009 Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Teaching Excellence); Allan Blackman (2009 Otago Teaching Excellence Award); John Reynolds (2008 National Teaching Excellence Award); and Tony Zaharic (2011 National Teaching Excellence Award). Attendees at the colloquium also contributed to the discussions on effective teaching practice.

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