One of my favourite podcasts discussing the book “Cultivating critical teaching behaviors” by Barbeau & Happel (2023)

On a recent walk (and dip, see featured image!), I listened to one of my all-time favourite podcasts, The Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, where host Bonni Stachowiak discussed with guests Lauren Barbeau and Claudia Cornejo Happel about cultivating critical teaching behaviours. Starting from the assumption that good teaching can be learnt, but that it also looks differently for every teacher, they have developed a framework of overlapping critical teaching behaviours — align, include, engage, assess, integrate technology, and reflect, all of which came out of a thematic analysis of the current research literature. Behaviours often precede beliefs, therefore they start their academic development work, and recent book, from there.

When I came home, I had to look up the book (for LU: read it here via LUB), and on the publisher’s page found the downloadable online Appendix, which made me want to read the book even more and YOU SHOULD TOTALLY CHECK IT OUT!!! I love a good framework, and especially one that is colour-coded and includes not just the desired behaviours, but also examples of how someone would document them! I am reading the book not just out of general curiosity, but also because from the discussion on the podcast I started wondering if it might potentially be a candidate for the new text book in the “introduction for teaching and learning” course that we teach all the time. I have been thinking about frameworks for that course (and all the courses I teach) for a while, just to be able to approach them in a more structured way. Another idea I had considered, inspired by Ginie Servant-Miklos’ pedagogies of collapse, are the different levels (from cognitive, individual, group, university, society, to global), but that is a lot more useful for structuring from our perspective than as a framework that we actually give to our participants. And somehow the framework of behaviours really spoke to me when I first heard about it on the podcast. But now to the actual book!

In the first part of the book, for each of the six critical teaching behaviours, the authors give an introduction of what they mean by the behaviour, a “What do we know?” review of the relevant literature with tons of references (I always appreciate that, even though it means that my reading list is exploding…), a “What do we do?” section on the actual recommended behaviours (nice and actionable!), a “What do we show?” section on how that demonstrated behaviour could be documented (which I love because in my context there is such a focus on teaching portfolios), and reflection questions* to round off each chapter.

Some personal highlights on reading about the six behaviours (note: NOT a summary, this is what stands out to me in addition to what I would assume a text book should have anyway!):

Align

Behaviours under this heading are about alignment — clear goal description, outcomes that can be measured, and learning activities and feedback that prepare students for assessment. What I like here is that while the idea of alignment is described as obviously useful (I mean, it is the first of six behaviours they present), at the same time they discuss that over the last 30+ years, the idea of alignment has been driven by an “increasing demand for accountability and evidence of effectiveness“, and that the focus on explicitly formulated learning outcomes might be perceived to limit teachers’ agency and especially their “flexibility to respond to emergent needs or explore student and local interests“. (And not to forget, there is also the criticism based on the historical origins that I wrote about recently) Kirsty recently framed the idea of alignment in terms of fairness towards students: We should let them know what we want them to know by the end of the course and how we will assess it, and we need to make sure that the instruction before supports them towards that goal. So yes, it is clearly useful!

They present several taxonomies (Bloom, Fink, and others, but not SOLO, which is the taxonomy that we use the most). I like how the focus is on just informing that there are several taxonomies, and that having an idea of different dimensions of learning and complexity of tasks is useful, but at the same time leaving it up to the reader to pick a taxonomy themselves. But for our purposes, we might still want to dig into SOLO (or some other taxonomy) a bit, because we base a lot of our tasks on instructions like for example “develop a question that addresses the relational level or higher” when participants develop multiple choice questions, or when they do microteaching.

One recommendation for documentation (but also super useful during teaching itself to provide orientation to participants) is a “course map”, “a visual representation such as a table or flowchart showing the alignment of course learning outcomes with content, assessments, and activities“. I always love developing those and just the process in itself helps eliminate so many potential issues of misalignment!

Include

This behaviour is about promoting equity, focussing on accessibility and student well-being, and centring the learner in designing and teaching. And there are so many things in this chapter that I was really positively surprised were brought up under this heading! For example, they explain “the “hidden curriculum” as a collection of unwritten rules, unspoken expectations, and implicit academic, social, and cultural messages that stipulate the “right” way to think, speak, and behave“, and ways to level the playing field by being explicit about cultural expectations, resources available on campus, how gaining experience as a student employee will look good in later applications within academia, and many other things, including “make a list of your personal expectations for students, including behaviours, attitudes, and so on“. They also explain stereotype threat and how not to trigger it, and UDL.

Engage

Engaging is about using techniques to support students to actively participate and take responsibility for their learning. What I find super interesting here is that the first thing mentioned here, before going into what kind of activities engage students, is the importance of regular, open and transparent communciation, not just verbally and nonverbally in class, both in-person and online, but also through syllaby, assignments, and other materials. That communication needs to also be consistent and intentional, and the recommendation is to intentionally develop a teaching persona (more on that later). Also, the importance of fostering a growth mindset is stressed and there are examples for how to do that.

I also like how they use expectancy-value theory to support student motivation (although I am really a fan of self-determination theory myself, and like to use it as a framework to structure how we approach teaching… but that could always be added in the courses I teach, and fits well with the “value” part of expectancy-value, too)

Assess

Assessing is about providing meaningful and timely feedback for learning, formative and summative, — and, as they point out — about getting feedback on how well our teaching is working out!

What I especially appreciate in this chapter is the mention of alternative grading models, e.g. specification and contract grading, and “ungrading”, i.e. moving away from grading towards pass/fail and more student agency in what is learnt, and how it is assessed. Even though they might not always be feasible, it is good to at least be aware that they exist along with a growing body of research into their effectiveness.

Integrate technology

Responsible use of technology is about creating “engaging learning opportunities beyond traditional barriers of place and time”. Love that! They also really stress the importance of engaging with how we use technology well (“While scepticism regarding the role of instructional technology persists, it is practically impossible to teach a course without it, and therefore we must consider how we can use it well so that it can enhance teaching and learning rather than distract from it“) and they provide lots of references for how big the influence of technology on learning actually is. And having struggled with plenty of crappy Learning Management Systems over the years, I can personally attest to how a bad system can destroy all motivation to engage with anything offered there (if you can even find things in the first place). So how do we do it well?

The six main points they discuss are

• Selecting limited and relevant technologies! Using technology based on the didactical purpose is a good start, not following trends based on the most flashy new toy becoming available, or not using technology “because that’s how we have always done it”… There are some helpful frameworks suggested in the text to figure out what technology should actually DO in the course.
• Leveraging technology to increase access, facilitate ease of use, and optimise the student learning experience! For example by creating a shared mental model of how things are organised. Something what’s crystal clear to us is not to the students…
• Using technology effectively and efficiently! And always have a backup plan in case technology fails. For example, if I am teaching online, I like having my phone logged into the same meeting, so if my computer or Wifi fails, I can use a different device and cell phone data… Or, one good suggestion that they have: If the projector fails, it is really helpful if slides are shared online already so students can pull them up on their own devices instead.
• Training students to use instructional technology and provide basic support! Of course, also students need to learn how to use technology…
• Considering pedagogical needs relevant to instructional modality! Here, the authors share a nice table on what to pay extra attention to in face-to-face, flipped, hybrid, and online teaching regarding each of the four behaviours above.
• Ensuring materials and tools meet legal requirements! Definitely a relevant point! At LU, the easiest way to do that is to use the tools that LU itself provides…

What I really liked in this chapter is that the first “potential implementation idea” is to use Open Educational Resources for affordable options, and the second one to include links etc to encourage exploration beyond the core content.

One little drawback when considering using the book (although not a fair criticism considering that it was published in 2023, so written probably some time before): There is no mention of LLMs, artificial intelligence or GenAI. But I am sure there will be in future editions!

Reflect

Getting feedback from everywhere in order to improve teaching… And engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (as we do with all our courses, and it is nice to see this in this book, too!)!

*I like the alignment between what the authors suggest others do and what they do themselves: Because, according to Ellis et al. (2014), reflection on failed experiences is more beneficial than reflection on successful experiences, in the reflection chapter, the reflections also invite us to reflect on what worked for motivation, and then on what did not work yet for effectiveness!

Now in the second part of the book, we get a bunch of practical tools for how to work with the framework. First, to identify core teaching values and to connect them with one of the facets described in the first part of the book (and what I really liked already in the podcast is the very open approach to this framework — every teacher is different, the behaviours overlap, find the one that is most important to you and start from there! Core values might start us out in one of the behaviours, but this might then branch out into others).

Next, a chapter on peer observation: instructions, discussions of potential pitfalls regarding for example power, judgements, and fairness, and a peer observation protocol. This is followed by a chapter on how to get formative feedback from students, with a suggested method similar to the Teaching Analysis Poll that we wrote about recently. Lastly, there is a chapter on pulling it all together by “creating a narrative of teaching effectiveness”, so basically a teaching portfolio.

What I am missing a bit is one chapter, maybe second to last, where it is really about how to think about your “teaching persona”. In the podcast, they discussed the difference between persona and personality in a way that really resonated with me. From the transcript, Lauren Barbeau says [00:30:20]: “We do believe a persona is intentionally constructed. What I learnt from my experience that semester is that students understand me and who I am as a teacher through the behaviours they experience from me. They don’t know me as a person outside of of the classroom. Their interactions with me are that space that we have each week, and they know who I am by how I behave. And so one of the reflections that I gleaned from that was if I want them to give a certain kind of feedback and experience me a certain way, I need to be enacting behaviours that communicate care to them. In my head that semester, I knew I cared. I was so devoted. […] However, they didn’t experience my feedback as care.” So this is then a really strong motivation to look back at the framework and intentionally choose to behave in ways that communicate care, and that support learning! It is not only showing up as your best-loved self, it is merging it with your most effective teacher self!

So in a nutshell, I really do recommend you check out the book, or at least the Appendix with the framework and some work sheets, and next free afternoon I have, I will sit down and do all the exercises and reflections myself!

P.S.: There is also a book website with links to a google drive, where people have shared their adaptations of the materials! Super cool!

And now enjoy a picture of some water from the day I listened to the podcast…

…And one of my favourite views that I take pictures of almost every day, and actually sit on that bench quite often! Maybe this is actually my “sit spot“?

Barbeau, L., & Happel, C. C. (2023). Critical Teaching Behaviors: Defining, Documenting, and Discussion Good Teaching. Routledge, 198 Pages