It is important to develop a climate that not only recognizes and values good teaching practice but additionally fosters the development of teaching as a scholarly pursuit. An effective way to achieve this is to create a venue for scholarly discourse on teaching. In many university departments teaching practice is essentially a private activity. The only public aspect is the occasional comment, usually expressing a worry or a disappointment, which in turn elicits a comforting but closing response. A more appropriate response and one that will contribute in a developmental way to the individual and to the department is to create space for these concerns to be considered collaboratively. However scholarly discourse requires more than the consideration of ad hoc problems and issues. The word scholarly implies a planned, sustained and rigorous response.
Steps to establishing a meaningful agenda for a discourse on teaching.
Guidelines for developing a productive working group.
Example of an appropriate collaborative action research program.(Graduate Attribute Project)
Steps for reflecting on the activity.
Organizations of all sizes can be viewed as a system of small groups. At its most basic, the work group or team is an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of the group to enhance individual performance towards commonly held goals. This group activity enables the use of multiple insights and skills being brought to bear on the task or the problem and this has been found to lead to better solutions than where one person works alone. Collaboration produces much better answers. When work is conducted in a collaborative and scholarly way better outcomes will result. Groups provide an ideal learning environment. Issues that relate to teaching a specific discipline or professional practice, can provide the focus for a scholarly conversation that will enable all the members to learn whilst addressing issues of practical concern to the group. Once such a group is established it may chose to take on an particular project. Tasks such as developing a series of learning experiences to produce a specific set of graduate attributes would provide a suitable focus. We have developed a format for approaching the graduate attribute task. See Graduate Attribute Project.
This unit is not describing a one off or even occasional meeting. This program requires a sustained and systematic commitment from participants keen to share the successes and the problems of teaching practice, who believe that they have much to learn from all members of the group. Success in this activity will require the careful selection of a focus or issue of substance and of genuine relevance to the group.