Friday 12 October 2018

Teaching in a university context? The myth of teaching 'any course' in my program!

Teaching, learning and performing dynamics become nowadays complex in a university context due to many factors, yet academics may ignore the extent to which they need to seriously fill that gap through extended training and development. Each field, discipline and area of knowledge or profession may require from its partitioners (educators) to acquaint themselves with the scholarship of teaching and learning specific to the field( history, medicine, sciences, translation, business studies...etc). The administration's best friend ( Implementing overlapping tactics to get you out of what they call ' comfort zone') does not play in favor of learning and students alike. The learner, then,  gets second hand services and disoriented and superficial knowledge about the discipline or course they studying. Worse than that, teachers or faculty, instead of excelling in designing and managing quality learning/performing environments for their students, they resort to a de-contextualized textbook that students refer to like a sacred resource!! and which they call the recommended 'syllabus' or ' declarative content to be use'....exactly the type of practices undertaken in secondary school context!!

With the high interest in the role of quality in teaching and learning in a university context ( besides research), there has been a widespread and  emerging as well as innovative literature published in the scholarship of teaching and learning disciplines. Also, some universities start launching credit -based short postdoctoral training and development programs for their PhD graduates or future university faculty to prepare them to operate in their respective discipline with a quality assured approach. This is the case of some of Canadian universities. Instinctive, impressionist and fragmented approaches to teaching and training in a university context would yield weak and inefficient learning and performance outcomes. Things become more serious when the discipline is professionally oriented  such as the case in medicine, engineering, and translation/interpreting...etc.

Teaching exclusively with textbooks seems to be an example of such weak pedagogy that enhances flat learning and leads to only an assessment type of exclusively declarative knowledge without stressing on skills and other sustainable and lifelong abilities ( for certain subjects like translation/interpreting). Besides, relying heavily on textbooks will always lead to Pharon types of attitudes in teaching whereby the instructor thinks HE CAN TEACH ANY COURSE that is allocated to him by the administration as long as there is a textbook to use. Wrong! This is an ill-planned approach on the part of administration and, on the part of faculty or instructors, it leads to de-professionalizing the latter's profession and diminishing his status. Nobody can teach any content if there will be less reliance on that BIBLE type of textbook. To keep the status of  university instructors live and kicking, these need to reflect on their practices, engage in classroom type of research and manage their learning and teaching environment based on guidelines and frameworks in teacher education ( Andragogy for adult students, and university-based types of pedagogies)

Teaching is a profession. The instructor or faculty is a professional.The instructor needs to DESIGN A CUSTOMIZED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT to maximize  students learning and performance opportunities. This needs to be done in alignment with contextual curriculum and course level guidelines/ syllabus.There will be careful and strategic choices made by the course manager and designer (faculty) whereby thriving learning environments need to be created and mobilized to achieve specific learning outcomes. Responsible and dynamic adults students (not passive empty containers) will thrive in such a rich and diverse and stimulating learning environment if faculty designed active type of pedagogies ( Problem based techniques, project based learning scenarios, collaborative learning...etc). Thus, less textbooks...and more thriving and stimulating learning and performance environment.


Fouad  EL-KARNICHI
fouadelkarnichi@gmail.com

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