Mindfulness in teaching (Brendel & Cornett-Murtada, 2019)

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Recently I was very provoked by a colleague’s comment about how mindfulness practices lead to people’s focus being so inward that they will only strive to optimize their own lives and forget about the world outside that needs attention, and how it is “cruel optimism” to suggest to people that all can be well if only they do their mindfulness practices. Toxic positivity like that is never good, and neither is detaching from the world and stopping working against systemic injustices. However, mindfulness (and breathing practices, like we do for freediving training) can also be used to draw energy and inspiration from within in order to use it to change the world, and one application of just that in teaching is explored in the study that I am summarizing below.

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Students trust teachers who ask, listen, and respond (says my work with Peter Persson and Rachel Forsyth)

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In my series of things-I-want-to-say-in-an-upcoming-workshop-but-suspect-I-might-skip-to-make-time-for-participants’-topics, here one slide about a recent study I did with my colleagues Rachel Forsyth and Peter Persson when we got the chance to ask a question in the student-led “SpeakUp Days” survey at LTH. And it turns out: Student trust teachers who show that they care about students (most typically by asking questions, listening, and responding), and that show teaching skill.

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STEM students’ sense of belonging and test anxiety in in Bergen (quick summary of work with Emily M. Christiansen, Sehoya Cotner, Robin Costello, Sarah Hammarlund, & Madeline Kate Kiani)

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In my series of things-I-want-to-say-in-an-upcoming-workshop-but-suspect-I-might-skip-to-make-time-for-participants’-topics, here is a quick summary of work I did with Emily M. Christiansen, Sehoya Cotner, Robin Costello, Sarah Hammarlund, & Madeline Kate Kiani on STEM students’ sense of belonging in Bergen a while back. The results are very interesting, mostly because they are very similar to what we have read about for years in a US context. However, this is the first time that this type of data has been collected in a Scandinavian context, where the assumption is traditionally that gender equality is so high that there shouldn’t be any differences between male and female students’ sense of belonging (yet we see there is), and where access to education is universal, so that it shouldn’t matter whether your parents have been to university or not (yet we see a correlation with test anxiety). Becoming aware of that is really important, so that we can figure out how to address it and level the playing field (some examples of what we could do are given here).

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Intervening when witnessing microaggressions (my backup plan in case I don’t have time for this slide in an upcoming seminar)

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I am planning a seminar on relationships in the classroom, and I have way too many things to say on that in general, AND want it to be driven by what participants feel is relevant. One topic I have traditionally included, and talked (and written) about, is how to react when being target, witness, or perpetrator of microaggressions. This blog post is a summary of what I would say about my favorite slide on this if I had the time, so that if I don’t, I can send participants here.

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Operationalising and assessing sustainability competencies (some ideas from Wiek et al. (2016) and Redman et al. (2020))

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We put a lot of effort into teaching for sustainability, but whether or not we are actually successful in doing so remains unclear until we figure out a way to operationalise learning outcomes and, obviously, ways to assess them. Below, I am summarising two articles to get a quick idea of how one might do this.

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Reflecting on my Scope of Practice (Inspired by Karen Costa’s interview on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast)

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In one of my favorite podcasts, Teaching in Higher Ed, I came across and interview with Karen Costa (and I wrote about another interview with her on another one of my favorite podcasts a while back, go check that out!) about articulating our Scope of Practice. And since I am feeling extremely overwhelmed at the moment, this came at a perfect time and feels really meaningful to do.

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