EDUC5105, unit 1: Who am I (as a teacher)?
In Unit 1 of EDUC5101, one of the activities involved completing a Teacher Perspectives Inventory (TPI). When I first took it, it reminded me of one of those “Which Game of Thrones character are you?” quizzes. While the TPI didn’t tell me which of the great houses of Westeros I would be part of, it articulated facets of who I am as a teacher, and made me consider questions of balance (and perhaps imbalance) in my approach. Results were as follows: Developmental, apprenticeship, social reform. Based on Pratt's (2005) describes the developmental perspective using "two common strategies: first, the judicious use of effective questioning that challenges learners to move from relatively simple to more complex forms of thinking; and second, the use of examples that are meaningful to learners" (2005, p.4).
Unlike the Game of Thrones quiz, the TPI is a research-backed inventory, and provided a meaningful insight into who I am as a teacher. While the results weren’t surprising to me, I had to wonder if these outcomes were a product of how I was educated as a teacher (at a western school with western approaches to pedagogy), or if my teacher education program reinforced my personally held beliefs. A definite chicken-egg situation here, but regardless of which came first, I felt that the results were accurate and reflected my teaching style.
The Artifact
I took a look at the teaching artifacts in my resource folders for Business Management to see if any of my TPI results were reflected in my materials, and found that they definitely are. One of my favourite artifacts that demonstrates all three of my dominant teaching styles can be seen in the Harvard Business Review case titled When your brand is racist (2020). I like using this case for my Human Resources and Marketing units, as it requires students to explicitly address questions about the intersection of business and race from the position of an internal stakeholder of an organization. Additionally, for students who are more focused on justifying a business decision through quantitative means (i.e. how does this decision affect the company’s bottom line), they must adjust their focus to consider and respond to questions about the (equally important) human side of running a business.
The benefits of case-based approaches are outlined in Williams (2005), who notes that case-based learning:
Places events in a context or situation that promote authentic learning
Allows for individualized learning
Integrates knowledge and practice
While I think that my teaching styles do mesh with my personal and professional beliefs, I feel that taking the TPI also encouraged careful reflection for me, specifically in making me question whether or not my approach to teaching is balanced enough: am I delivering enough content for the case to actually be meaningful? In imposing my belief in the need for social reform, am I obstructing my students’ opportunity to truly construct their knowledge, and is it enough for me to preface our discussions with a recognition of bias?
On the technical side, doing the TPI made me think of what I could do to bring those teaching perspectives to the context of eLearning. More importantly, how do I bring these perspectives to an eLearning context in an interesting way?
Still questions that I have to answer, but on initial inspection of my teaching resources, I want to think that I’m balanced in my approach.
This post was largely about the case-based approach to teaching, and it’s one that I can definitely recommend. In my own personal practice, I like the at-times meandering nature of the discussions that come out of case studies, and I feel that it’s during these times that my students are able to “connect the dots”, so to speak, and understand the interdisciplinary nature of their studies in high school. Sure, they’re learning content, but in our conversations about a case, we might be able to tie in concepts that they’ve learned in science, geography and maybe a sprinkling of history as well. If you’d like to try it out in your own classes, here are a few resources to get you started:
Queen's University: Case-Based Learning approach
Ivey School of Business: Business cases targeted specifically at high school level business studies
INSEAD business cases: Business cases focusing on a range of topics from electrical/manufacturing, to medical and entertainment
Sources:
Miller, J. C., Stanko, M. A., & Diallo, M. D. (2020). Case Study: When Your Brand Is Racist. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2020/11/case-study-when-your-brand-is-racist
Pratt, D. (2005). Summaries of Five Teaching Perspectives. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
Williams, B. (2005). Case based learning--a review of the literature: Is there scope for this educational paradigm in prehospital education? Emergency Medicine Journal, 22(8), 577–581. https://doi.org/10.1136/emj.2004.022707