Being Self-Aware and Mindful

Being Self-Aware and Mindful SoT-3-4-SelfAware responsibility, accountability, fairness, personality, behaviour self-awareness, mindful, biases moderate, actions, methods, interpretation, consciously, perception, preceding, concurrent, subsequent

Watch out for your own biases in teaching. Be aware of them and moderate them if necessary.
Think about your students outside the bubble of your course (what other courses are they taking? have taken? will take? extra curriculars? world events?).
Be aware of how your actions and methods are being interpreted and processed by the students. Are you aware of how you answer questions is interpreted?

Thoughts...

Our biases

Being aware of how we, ourselves learn. How we were taught. What methods we enjoyed when we were students. What we found easy. What we found hard. And, then not let this bias our thinking about how we teach unless supported by learning and teaching science with appropriate due diligence, rationalization, and justification. Remember that you were never the average student.

Our skill and expertise

We should avoid hubris and arrogance and understand our true levels of skill and expertise when it comes to teaching. Too often expertise is used in street-level ways without consideration of actual cognitive skill and expertise measures. It is also used in relative ways; someone can be an expert compared to others around them. Familiarity and simply doing does not develop cognitive skill. We should know what we know and what we do not know. We should know where we need to improve.

Our responsibility and accountability

We should do the ‘right thing’ and be accountable for using reasonable judgement. What are we responsible to do? In research, if in a theoretical discipline, then the research should contribute to the body of theoretical work. If in an applied discipline, then the research should have some direct or indirect contribution to the real-world situation, not theory. The same goes for teaching. If we are judged 40% based on teaching, are we dedicating 40% of our time and effort to teaching?

Our perceived fairness

We know that students expect and hope that instructors are fair in their dealings with students. Unfortunately, it is not enough to be fair, we need to be seen as being fair and without bias. It will be the optics that will influence student perceptions. Are we aware of how our actions are being perceived?

Preceding courses

We should be aware of what the students have been taught in preceding courses, and how they were taught (methods for teaching, methods for assessment). What can we leverage? What we should assume about the topics? How well were the desired learning outcomes learned? What might be needed in tutorials, remedial material?

Concurrent courses

What are students doing in their other courses? What can be leveraged? What can be possibly co-taught, co-experienced, co-assessed? What are they assuming for preceding courses? When are the major deliverables in all of the courses? What are the critical, peak load periods for the students? What are the teaching and assessment methods?

Concurrent activities

Not everything is course driven. Are there co-op patterns, internship application deadlines, etc. that the students might be engaged in? When? How much time will be spent? Are there social, class or cohort activities that will arise? Cultural, religious activities?

Subsequent courses

We should be aware of what the students will be taught in future courses and what other instructors are relying upon. What do we need to focus on? What do we need to prepare the students?

Student effort

How much effort does an average student have to put in to get an average mark in the course? What does each assignment or project deliverable actually require? What does the student need to learn to do the work? What does the actual work require; using what was learned? Does the loading make sense; average hours per course per term? Is the format taken into account: For example, online learning is not as effective or efficient for the student.

Class personality, behavior

Does the incoming class or cohort have a certain attitude or personality when it comes to engaging and dealing with issues? Are there any biases needing attention? Has anything happened in the past term/year that would create challenges in the classroom?

Tips for Beginners

Talk to colleagues who have taught these students before about the classes personality, attitudes and preferences before you finalize plans for your course

Get to know the instructors that teach the courses yours builds on and that you lay the foundation for where applicable. Having open lines of communication will allow for a better student experience.

3.4 Being Self-Aware and Mindful

It's not all about you...'

Thoughts...

Tips for Beginners

Further reading