By: Mohsen Haghighatpasand
In this short blog post, I’m going to share my review of the course “Theory and Practice of Undergraduate Teaching”, which I took in the Fall 2019 term at the University of Ottawa. This course is particularly designed for graduate students who are interested in teaching university-level classes. To receive the Certificate in University Teaching, students have to complete three connected courses with the first part being “Theory and Practice of Undergraduate Teaching”. As I have only completed the first course, my review will be about this section of the overall program. I’m going to look at this course through a social-constructivist point of view as the instructor of this course, Jovan Groen, used this learning theory as his framework for the course design and teaching approach and practically followed that throughout the course. Here, I’ll bring examples from his class and show how they were aligned with social-constructivism.
Social-constructivism accentuates the significance of culture and context in constructing knowledge based on this understanding (Derry 1999; McMahon 1997). Social constructivists argue that the learners should be responsible for learning and that the learner should be actively involved in the learning process (Von Glasersfeld 1989). Here, I will present some important tenets of social-constructivism and link them to examples in the course.
1. Learning does not just take place within the individual
Vygotsky (1987) argued that learning is a social and collaborative activity where people create meaning through their interactions with one another. This feature of social-constructivism could be vividly seen everywhere in the course. Every class, which took around 3 hours each, was filled with group work, collaborations, and discussions. The instructor tried to gather the students’ knowledge to support different aspects of the course content. As the students brought their worldviews to the class, especially given their different fields of study, their social interaction could provide multiple perspectives on the content and multiple representations of reality.
2. Teaching as an interactive relationship
For Vygotsky, the learning context was of paramount importance in shaping knowledge. He was a strong supporter of learning as experiencing and stressed the significance of providing a learning environment where learners are active contributors to the construction of their knowledge. The instructor in this course, Jovan Groen, was successful in following this crucial tenet of social-constructivism. He designed and carried out a variety of tasks for students related to different topics. Before the beginning of each session, there were hand-outs on the round-shaped tables waiting for the students to read and complete, mostly collaboratively. This helped the students to be actively involved in the construction of knowledge instead of passively listening to lectures. The content was presented to them through authentic tasks that were meaningful, relevant, and parallel to problems in the real world.
3. Teacher as the guide on the side
In Social-constructivism, students are believed to be able to, with the help of instructors, learn concepts and skills they cannot learn individually. The teacher is more of a facilitator than a lecturer. After giving tasks, the course instructor would walk around the class, observe the students, clarify concepts and help students to solve problems based on specific group needs. He created a zone of proximal development [ZPD] for each group. Through his observations and interactions with groups, he would run a follow-up stage in which he would ask students to share the ideas that could be interesting for the class or could trigger a new discussion related to the topic or the students’ needs. He was there to overcome the obstacles, provide a final wrap-up to the discussions and answer unanswered questions.
4. Assessment as an active process
Constructivists argue that assessment should be used as a means to improve both the student’s learning and the teacher’s understanding of a student’s development. Jovan perfectly implemented different assessment tools for these two purposes. Assessments were project-based and in line with the objectives of the course. The students had to: 1. Write their teaching philosophy, 2. design a course syllabus (relevant to their field), 3. Complete their teaching portfolio and 4. teach a specific topic for 1 hour. The teaching philosophy and the syllabus would form 80% of the teaching portfolio so the students could progressively complete their final project while improving each section after feedback from the instructor. The teaching task was recorded and then analyzed by the instructor for further feedback. The feedback on written works was provided through videos as he would record his screen with his voiceover, show areas for improvement and offer recommendations. Students’ teaching videos would help the students to discover their potentialities and problem areas and would help the instructor to watch and analyze them to provide comprehensive feedback.
5. Final words
It can be undoubtedly said that the course offered a precious experience for students. They practiced teaching, learned different approaches in teaching, shared their concerns and questions, discussed solutions and understood their potentialities as a university instructor. What caught my attention throughout this course was that the instructor was implicitly modelling great teaching at the university level. Students were observing what I believe is the right way of teaching. Lecturing was not promoted and instead interactive learning was reinforced. I believe the course, to a high extent, was able to accomplish its objectives in preparing learners to teach undergraduate and graduate courses.
For more information about this course or the certificate in university teaching, please visit: https://tlss.uottawa.ca/site/attestation-en-pedagogie-universitaire
References
Derry, G.N. (1999) What Science Is and How It Works, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
McMahon, M. (1997) ‘Social Constructivism and the World Wide Web - A Paradigm for Learning’, paper presented at the ASCILITE conference, December, Perth, Australia.
Von Glasersfeld, E. (1989) ‘Constructivism in education’, in T. Husen and N. Postlewaite (eds), International Encyclopedia of Education [Suppl.], Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 162-3.
Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mohsen Haghighatpasand, M.A
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Ottawa