Professionalism, reflective practice and evidence for learner benefit

It was good to have the opportunity to make a keynote presentation (available at the bottom of the page) at the UCOL National Teaching and Learning Conference last week. As I commented at the time, my talk was very much about sharing my current thoughts about how Ako Aotearoa might move forward as an organisation. It is very much a work in progress. This blog post summarises the ideas floated in that talk and develops them further.

In the medium term, I believe that one of the key contributions Ako Aotearoa can make is to facilitate the development of tertiary teaching in New Zealand as a profession. At the moment, in common with most other English speaking countries, tertiary teaching is much more in the nature of a craft: it has some expert artisans, many participants who are highly committed to student success, but also includes many who are less committed.

This starts with the recruitment base: academic staff (and I include all staff concerned with supporting student learning in this) are generally first recruited because of their expertise in other areas, notably their industry or research skills. There is no consistent pre-entry qualification required.

Professions are guardians of the quality of the work their members do and, by virtue of that, the status of their members. They have considerable influence in determining both standards of their work and the regulatory environment in which that work takes place. They take a leadership role in practice improvement. Good examples are IPENZ, ICANZ, RSNZ, the various medical associations.

Tertiary teachers are some way from having similar status. I argued that one of the key barriers towards the development of tertiary teaching as a profession is that we work off a weak evidence base about how learners benefit from what they do. This, in my view, needs to be a priority for both educators and organisations in a policy environment that seeks to identify and reward educational performance and hold to account those organisations that cannot demonstrate that their performance is value for the tax-payer dollar.

This raises a range of questions:

1. What makes a professional tertiary teacher?
2. Should there be an entry level qualification to the profession? – Personally I have an open mind on this.
3. If reflective practice is a critical part of being a professional tertiary teacher (and I believe it is), do we know enough about how to do it? – I suggested in my presentation that all too often we don’t do it particularly well.
4. Why do we, as reflective practitioners, have so much difficulty uncovering and engaging with an evidence base on which to discuss and improve our practice?
5. What might a NZ professional accreditation scheme for tertiary teachers look like?

I put forward a set of propositions about what might be the characteristics of a high performing professional teacher, identifying four key attributes:

• Empathy
• Reflection in action
• Reflection on action
• Emancipatory action.

The first three in particular relate to the necessary skill set of a professional teacher and have an evidence gathering component, the fourth is likely to be the key difference between a teacher in the compulsory sector and a teacher of adults: it also has an evidence testing component.

Are these sufficient?

I also emphasised - but didn’t detail - that high performing tertiary teachers need to be supported by high performing tertiary education organisations: the quality enhancement of tertiary teaching and learning is as much an organisational issue as it is an individual professional issue.

On reflection, I’m a little surprised, myself, that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning didn’t figure overtly in my presentation. I’m not sure why that is.

Is it because it’s implicit?

Or is it because it’s a concept that has been subverted in attempts to give teaching similar status to research, but on the terms set by research?

Let me know what you think - click on the 'Add new comment' button at the bottom right of the screen.

Peter Coolbear
7th October 2009