13. “Beware of the man who says he has
20 years’ experience when what he
should be saying is he has one year’s
experience repeated twenty times.”
Alan Fletcher
14. Noel Tichy’s 3 Zones of Learning
Comfort
Zone
Learning
Zone
Panic
Zone
15. “You can’t allow yourself to get
comfortable with what you are
comfortable with, because then that’s
all you will want to do.”
Twyla Tharp
17. Activities designed, typically by a
teacher, for the sole purpose of
effectively improving specific aspects
of an individual's performance.
Anders Ericsson
23. Discussion
What are your approaches and processes for
developing your practice?
How do you assess, measure or evaluate that you
are growing and developing as a teacher?
What do you need from your school, staff
development and institution to help you
develop and grow as a teacher?
‘Excellence’ is a loaded word which is frequently used within the higher education arena; the bulls-eye that academics are required to aim for in their teaching and research roles. Measuring/Quantification: The difference between teaching and research What is the difference between teaching and research? Research is easily quantified while teaching is not (qualitative knowledge work). Measurement of developmental goals. You can count the number of words (outputs) on a daily basis, you can set the goal to publish 2 journal articles a year? How much research funding you bring in. Easy basis for comparison. How do you measure or evaluate your teaching? Awards, Certificates, external validations and measurements and recognition.
Teaching is more than transmitting or telling information/contentTeaching is empowering or training others to become better learners: Training them to be curious, inquisitive and to ask better questions. Enthusing them to want to find out more about the subject/topic
Most academic lecturers are not trained teachers. They are either trained researchers or practitioners in their field. This is the reason why most universities demand or require new academics to do a PCPD or equivalent. You are usually left to your own devices or on your own. Use my personal example at Sunderland (2005/06 academic year). You learn from your own mistakes - trial and error learning - ingrained bad habits.
Because teaching is a skill, it needs to be developed
Watch Joshua Foer
Noel Tichy’s diagram (below) illustrates the three key zones connected to growth. The three zones are contained in three concentric circles. The inner circle is the Comfort Zone, the middle is the Learning Zone and the outer zone is the Panic Zone. He describes the Comfort Zone as the area in which we have mastery. The things you do effortlessly or the things that have become a routine for you. These are activities that you once found difficult but are now easy. This zone encourages one to become complacent and you find yourself stagnating instead of growing if you choose to stay indefinitely in this zone.The Learning Zone is the stretch zone. This is the area you should always want to be and the place where kaizen is most effective. You take on projects, tasks and assignments that take you out of your comfort zone and challenge you. This involves exposing yourself to new information and skills that expand the depth of your knowledge base and get you to experiment new things.The Panic Zone is the fail zone. A lot of people tackle projects and tasks that overwhelm them instead of stretch them and the only outcome is failure instead of growth. This is a result of trying to skip the required learning steps of whatever they’re seeking to master.~Unrealistic attempts to grow exponentially, instead of incrementally, within a short time frame will only produce stress and failure.~Tony Robbins once said that “people underestimate what they can achieve in 10 years and overestimate what they can accomplish in one year”.You enjoy the benefits of kaizen when you stay within the Learning Zone and gradually expand the zone as you grow. The Comfort Zone makes you complacent while the Panic Zone stresses you out and makes you frustrated. Which zone are you currently operating in?
I believe that university teachers need to reverse-engineer their teaching practice because this will enable them to identify what works, what doesn’t work and what needs to change in their teaching practice. They also have to be willing to learn new practices, unlearn ineffective practices and re-learn effective practices. This is the pathway to becoming a reflective practitioner."
‘Excellence’ is a loaded word which is frequently used within the higher education arena; the bulls-eye that academics are required to aim for in their teaching and research roles. Measuring/Quantification: The difference between teaching and research What is the difference between teaching and research? Research is easily quantified while teaching is not (qualitative knowledge work). Measurement of developmental goals. You can count the number of words (outputs) on a daily basis, you can set the goal to publish 2 journal articles a year? How much research funding you bring in. Easy basis for comparison. How do you measure or evaluate your teaching? Awards, Certificates, external validations and measurements and recognition.
How can you develop what you don’t measure? You don’t become excellent by accident (OBA).
Excellence takes time (clock - sand) and hard work (exercise) and it is hard