Understanding Yourself as a Teacher

Self-Assessment Question:

Do you need a better understanding "who you are as a teacher" and how this has an impact on your teaching?

Quick Take:

Teaching is a human action. Therefore, if you intend to teach and teach well, you need to understand who "you" are, "you" the person who is trying to engage in this action. What frameworks are available to help you search for a better understanding of who you are as a teacher?

One framework is a conception of teaching as having four dimensions of action (Fink, 1989). These are illustrated in the following figure:

This conception of teaching assumes that, to be good, (a) teaching must be good in each dimension, and (b) the four dimensions must be consistent with and in harmony with one another.

"Skills" refer to a teacher's level of competency in specific teaching activities: lecturing, leading discussions, writing tests, formulating learning activities, etc. "Decisions" refer to the many decisions teachers make about what instructional strategies and activities they are going to use, e.g., what portion of the course will consist of lectures, field trips, small group projects, reading assignments, writing activities, lab work, and how these will be connected to one another. All teachers have a "Philosophy" of teaching, good or bad. Their philosophy consists of their beliefs about how learning really occurs and their values about what constitutes good learning and good teaching. Finally, every teacher has a set of "Attitudes", i.e., their feelings and images, about students, about themselves, about the subject, and about the teaching/learning process.

This model of the act of teaching can help one analyze and improve one's own teaching by offering two strategies for improvement. One strategy is to focus on and improve any one dimension of the act of teaching, say one's lecturing skills, or the decisions one makes about course design. The other strategy is to focus on the harmony or consistency between dimensions. One may be making decisions about course design that are inconsistent with one's real philosophy or attitude, or one may be using a course design that does not take advantage of some of the skills one has as a discussion leader or creator of learning activities. Greater harmony between the dimensions of teaching should result in an enhanced ability to teach effectively.

The second framework is that of striving to be a critically reflective teacher (Brookfield, 1995). Critically reflective teaching is "what happens when we identify and scrutinize the assumptions that undergird how we work." How can we do this? By viewing our practice as teachers from four different perspectives or through four sets of "eyes":

1. Our Own "Eyes": keeping reflective notes on our own experiences as learners and teachers
2. Our Students' "Eyes": Obtaining reflective notes from out students, about our teaching
3. Our Colleagues' "Eyes": Engaging in thoughtful discourse about teaching and learning
4. The "Eyes" of Published Literature: interpreting the published reports of other teachers on their teaching

A third framework to understanding oneself as a teacher is offered by Parker Palmer on the "inner landscape of teaching" (1998). His ideas deal especially with the bottom two levels of the Fink's triangle model above, i.e., philosophy and attitude. But he too notes that these levels have clear implications for one's decisions and the skills one needs to teach well.

Palmer's basic premise is that "we teach who we are." If you accept this premise, then it follows that we must know ourselves. Palmer states that we need to know ourselves in three dimensions:
Intellectual: the way we think about teaching and learning
Emotional: the way we and our students feel as we teach and learn
Spiritual: the diverse ways we answer the heart's longing to be connected to the largeness of life

Using this perspective, there are a number of topics that Palmer explores in his book and that teachers can explore to better understand themselves as teachers:

· Identity: the nexus of forces that converge in the mystery of "Self"
· Integrity: the life-giving wholeness that I find and create within my identity
· Inner Fears: Connect with these, to break their silence and hiddenness
· Paradox: Embrace the opposite, profound truths of life
· Knowing in Community: Learning how to be "in community" with the subject and with other learners about the subject
· Teaching in Community: Putting the subject in the center of the learning space, with students and the teacher exploring the subject together
· Learning in Community: Engaging in conversations with colleagues about teaching and learning
· Divided No More: Ending our isolation as teachers, by connecting with ourselves, the subject, other learners, our colleagues, and our institutions of learning

References:

1. "The Lecture: Analyzing and Improving Its Effectiveness" by L. Dee Fink, in The Department Chairperson's Role in Enhancing College Teaching, edited by Ann F. Lucas. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 37. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989, pp. 17-30.

2. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher by Stephen D. Brookfield. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.

3. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life by Parker Palmer. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.