Listening to “teaching from the same side” on one of my favorite podcasts, Tea for Teaching

I am sitting on the ferry sailing towards Germany, with new-found appreciation of the Öresund bridge and its harp-style carrying cables… And I am listening to a conversation with Michelle Miller on one of my all-time favorite podcasts, Tea for Teaching, on “teaching from the same side” (what a nice, figurative bridge to the featured image here :-D)

This is an episode that I really recommend everybody should listen to. We are very much conditioned into assuming an adversarial relationships between teachers and students — an “us vs them“, but also a “students just want a job, not to actually learn“, and those assumptions sit very deep. So considering how we are actually on the same side — wanting students to learn! — and how we can make sure to teach in a way that communicates that to students is so relevant!

One important aspect that they point out is that motivation is not about something within a student per se, it’s about the conditions in the environment a student is in. For example in self-determination theory, whether students have choice, feel competent, and feel that someone cares about their learning! They discuss a bit how to create motivating settings, including the “hypocrisy effect” which, according to Miller, tells us how to “induce attitude change by getting people to act in accordance to what we’ve said or done before”. The example here is to write a letter home for why you are taking the class, what you’ll learn, and how it will help you in the future, to generate buy-in into the class and increase engagement.

Another aspect is about how to help students adopt good study strategies. Students come with study strategies that they (probably) believe work for them. So why would they give up those to try something that might put their grades at risk? Many teachers like to use evidence-based practices, and are already being transparent about why they are being used to get students to buy into them. But as we know: knowing does not transform behavior. So one suggestions for helping students train self-regulation os the knowledge-belief-commitment-planning framework (McDaniel & Einstein, 2020). It “rests on the assumption that four essential components must be included in training to support sustained strategy self-regulation: (a) acquiring knowledge about strategies, (b) belief that the strategy works, (c) commitment to using the strategy, and (d) planning of strategy implementation“. The part b, the belief that the strategy works, ideally comes from applying it in a small, low-stakes way during instruction, to build trust in it, before then moving on to committing to using it and planning how to do it. This is a super helpful way to think about it!

Then, there is a lot of discussion on how do we communicate that we are all on the same side, and establish trust between students and teachers? (Quick plug here to Rachel’s and my slide on “trust me” and “I trust you” messages, that teachers might want to use in the presence of GenAI…)

But a very important first meeting point between students and teachers that can set the tone for a whole course is, of course, the syllabus! Here, they discuss several interesting points:

• ALL CAPS might be used to indicate that something is very important, but it might be perceived as screaming (as it would in online discussions)
• Does the syllabus imply that I am expecting you to do all these bad things that I am warning you here not to do, and tell you the consequences if you do?
• Consider syllabus warmth and use “we will”-messages rather than “students must”…
• Frame resources so it becomes clear why students should use them, what benefits they’ll get from seeing a student councilor or get a library card or read something etc

And they point to a really excellent resource: Chandar et al. (2023) on “Ten tips for developing a more inviting syllabus“. In there, they give an example quote from a syllabus: “First, I want you to know that I care deeply about your success; not just in my class but in life. Therefore, my goal is to connect with each of you so that we can work together to help you accomplish your learning goals.” I, reading this on the background of several focus group interviews with teachers on trust this week, just have to point out how this is a trust-building move that works both on affect (“I care“) and identity (“connect with each of you“) and values (“not just in class but in life“) and competence (“accomplish your learning goals“). So clearly a very good move!

(In a different podcast, “Speaking of Higher Ed” on “Accessibility in Action: Practical Steps for Every Faculty Member with Peter Berryman“, that I am half-listening to right now to tune out conversations around me, they just now really warn against all the fun pictures that could make a syllabus more appealing to some, but really inaccessible to others because there is just way too much information that doesn’t actually carry any relevant information. My pet peeve also when slide shows are full of stock images. What’s the point???)

Lastly, the discussion moves onto the topic that of course we can still have boundaries, but that it is about communicating them in a nicer way. For example, explaining why some deadlines are fixed, e.g. responding in online discussion needs to be near real-time, while others might be flexible. Miller suggests this super nice heuristics for saying yes or no: Does it bring students closer to learning, or not? For example, if I designed an assignment so that students would learn something from doing it, and they would still learn it if they did it two days after the due date, then an extension should be ok!

I really liked the “teaching from the same side” framing, and I will recommend this episode to anyone who will listen to me!

Chandar, S., Crum, R., Pennino, E., Ishikawa, C., Ghosh Hajra, S., & McDonald, K. (2023). Ten tips for developing a more inviting syllabus. Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, 24(3), e00032-23.

McDaniel, M. A., & Einstein, G. O. (2020). Training learning strategies to promote self-regulation and transfer: The knowledge, belief, commitment, and planning framework. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(6), 1363-1381.