What does it mean to be an educational developer? What do we do and what are our core ways of being? What guides how we approach our work? How has this shifted over the last few years?

As a leader in educational development and and higher education, you may think that this should be top of mind. It’s always helpful to pause and reflect upon what you do and what most strongly guides your practice.

Thankfully, I’m not the first person to consider this. Authors like Debra Dawson (Dawson et al., 2010), Lynn Taylor (Taylor & Rege Colet, 2010), Graham Gibbs (Gibbs, 2013), and Kathryn Sutherland (Sutherland, 2018) have put some great thinking into the work of educational development. Building upon the work of Gibbs (2013), a group of colleagues and I (Kenny et al., 2017) described many activities that educational developers engage in such as: working to strengthen teaching and learning practices with individuals, groups of educators, and faculties/departments, partnering with educators, departments and faculties to influence academic course and curriculum development, improving learning environments and spaces, influencing institutional processes, structures and policies related to teaching and learning, supporting quality assurance processes, and engaging in program evaluation, scholarship and research.

We emphasized that educational development takes place across multiple organizational levels: with individuals; departments, faculties, committees and working groups; across the institution; and even across the sector of higher education (Simmons 2016, Taylor & Rege Colet, 2010). Kathryn Sutherland (2018) encourages us to think even more broadly about academic development to consider the whole of the academic role, the whole of the institution, and the whole of the person.

Much of the above work focuses on what educational developers do. In 2013 Julie Timmermans (Timmermans, 2013) described threshold concepts in the careers of educational developers. She emphasized ways of knowing and being such as: respecting existing expertise, building capacity, starting where people are at, getting out of the way, thinking and acting strategically across mutliple organizational levels, influencing knowledge sharing and flow, seeing patterns and opportunities, collaborating and building relationships, communicating effectively, engaging in reflection, adapting a scholarly approach, and adapting to context.

But what does this actually look like in practice?

A group of educational developers at UCalgary came together to reflect on how we approach our practices. We called these our academic core beliefs. In 2023, we expanded upon these beliefs to describe guiding principles for our educational development practices at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning (TI). I’ve presented this work below:

Collective Capacity: We foster integrated, ethical, and equitable networks of practice and leadership to build connections that strengthen our collective capacity to improve post-secondary teaching and learning. We provide context, resources, and expertise to help others enhance their learning, share knowledge, build communities, and influence change in teaching and learning. We believe that teaching and learning expertise and different ways of knowing are distributed across the academic community, and that relationships and a relational approach are paramount to our work. We learn from others and within diverse intercultural contexts founded on integrity which create opportunities for meaningful dialogue and action. 

Collaborative Relationships: We believe it is essential to foster significant conversations and networks through both formal and informal processes. We support the development of collegial relationships and collaborations within the TI and across academic communities. We believe that context and culture matter, and that diverse ways of being, knowing, and doing exist. We respect, celebrate, and draw upon the knowledge, experience, and perspectives of the diverse roles, backgrounds, and cultures of colleagues.

Learning focused:  We are all learners; therefore, we emphasize approaches that lead to meaningful and enriching learning experiences for all.  We model and disseminate strategies that empower educators and students to actively engage in learning. We acknowledge that learning is an iterative and contextual process that can be supported by critical reflection, research-informed principles, and diverse ways of knowing, being, and doing,

Scholarly and cultural relevance: We believe it is important to critically examine knowledge and assumptions through inquiry, scholarly practice, practice-based research, and culturally relevant approaches. We commit to making decisions based on the best available information that incorporates multiple ways of knowing. We engage with the scholarship of teaching and learning and actively support and disseminate it to strengthen educational development. 

Leadership: We believe that shared, collaborative leadership approaches are key to meaningful decision-making, transformation, and change in postsecondary education.  We provide expertise, support, and resources to empower others to lead.  We bring our scholarly experience and wisdom of practice to identify gaps and lead initiatives to influence change in teaching and learning. We model leadership approaches that are grounded in building trust and relationships across the academic community.

Critical Reflection: We believe that critical reflection is essential to fostering growth, enhancement and innovation in teaching and learning, as well as professional practice. We commit to being intentional about our individual and collective educational development approaches by engaging in critical self-reflection, examining our own positionality and assumptions, and modelling reflective practice. 

A call to action

If you are an educational developer in higher education, I encourage you to open a conversation with your team.

What are the principles that guide your work in higher education? What practices bring these principles to life? How might these principles or approaches be shifting?

Concluding thoughts and thanks

I am proud of the work our team continues to put into meaningful considering not only what we do as academics in the TI (i.e., what we do?), but how we approach our work (i.e., who we be?). Special thanks to colleagues Alysia Wright, Carol Berenson, Cheryl Jeffs, Frances Kalu, Fouzia Usman, Jaclyn Carter, Kara Loy, Kim Grant, Patti Dyjur, Robin Mueller, and Sreyasi Biswas, who thoughtfully informed and contributed to the development of these core beliefs and principles over time. Apologies if I missed anyone – let me know if I did and I will add you!

Coming back to these principles has helped ground what I believe to be most important about educational development approaches and practices in higher education.

References

Dawson, D., Britnell, J., & Hitchcock, A. (2010). Developing competency models of faculty developers. In L. Nilson & J. Miller (Eds.), To improve the academy: Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development(Vol. 28, pp. 3-24). Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press.

Gibbs, G. (2013). Reflections on the changing nature of educational development. International Journal for Academic Development 18(1), 4-14.

Kenny, N., Popovic, C., McSweeney, J., Knorr, K., Hoessler, C., Hall, S., Fujita, N., & El Khoury, E. (2017). Drawing on the principles of SoTL to illuminate a path forward for the scholarship of educational development. Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2), n2.

Sutherland, K. A. (2018). Holistic academic development: Is it time to think more broadly about the academic development project?. International Journal for Academic Development, 23(4), 261-273.

Simmons, N. (2016). Synthesizing SoTL institutional initiatives toward national impact. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 146, 95-102

Taylor K. L., & Rege Colet N. (2010). Making the shift from faculty development to educational development: A conceptual framework grounded in practice. In A. Saroyan & M. Frenay (Eds.), Building teaching capacities in higher education: A comprehensive international model (pp. 139-167). Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Timmermans, J. A. (2014). Identifying threshold concepts in the careers of educational developers. International Journal for Academic Development, 19(4), 305-317.

You know that moment between when something happens that triggers you (aka “the stimulus”).  It may be a comment in a conversation or meeting, an action from a colleague (or yourself), or it may be an organizational decision that is completely out of your control.  Something happens that causes your emotions to kick into high gear. Most often in these moments, I react (aka “the reaction”).  In more cases than not, that reaction is sometimes more charged than I would like it to be. These reactions are often grounded in a space of judgment, rather than in a space of curiosity and learning. In those moments, I am not my ideal self as a leader.

The sacred pause

I first learned of the concept of the sacred pause from Tara Brach (n.d.).

Tara shares that the sacred pause involves stopping and “paying attention to your immediate experience” or what is happening within you. Say I am triggered by something that I disagree strongly with in a meeting (“the stimulus”). A typical response for me may be to interject, interrupt the conversation, and strongly state my point of view.  In most situations, I am not putting my ideal leadership self forward in these moments.

Insert “the sacred pause” in between “the stimulus” and “the reaction”, and you get a more thoughtful and intentional leadership response.

The sacred pause of breathing kindness

Breathing kindness is my go-to strategy for practicing the sacred pause.  Here is how it looks.

If I am catch myself feeling triggered in a meeting:

1. I notice. I am experiencing a strong reaction and emotion.
2. I identify the emotion and my inner experience. I am feeling anger and frustration.  My heart is racing, my jaw is tense, and my eyes are tightening.
3. I breath. I take a deep breath (or 20!) breathing in kindness for myself and breathing out kindness for others.

After noticing, feeling and breathing, I am able to more thoughtfully and intentionally respond to the stimulus.  My most common response in these moments? Nothing at all. The more I practice the sacred pause of breathing kindness, the more I’ve come to recognize that my charged inner experiences pass naturally, AND what is triggering me in the moment passes as well. 

The sacred pause of inner inquiry

This is a mindfulness strategy that I use when something has triggered me, I hold onto it, and I am consumed by the experience. In these situations, I find myself stuck in my head, spinning in a mind trap. We’ve all been there.  We sit and fester in our thoughts and challenging emotions. When I  catch myself in these moments, I engage with a longer sacred pause of inner inquiry, reflecting on the following questions, which too are inspired by Tara Brach’s work (Brach, 2023).

1. What’s important? What matters most right now? 
2. What am I feeling and experiencing? What is happening inside me right now?
3. How can I meet this (i.e., what is happening inside me right now), with kindness?
4. What is my truest path forward? What does love want from me?

There are times when my reflections stop after the first questions, as I realize that what was consuming me, really wasn’t that important at all.  Other times, my journal is filled with reflections and options for moving forward that more clearly align with my values, and who I want to be as a leader.

Embracing our emotions at work

I work in higher education.  The affective or emotional part of our leadership practice is not something we often talk about, or make visible.  And yet, our work as leaders involves our emotions, and our reactions to those emotions – EVERY SINGLE DAY. We can’t leave the “beings” part of humanness when we walk out of our house in the morning. 

I’ve held onto a teaching shared by Arthur Brooks (2023) in his book, Build the Life you Want that he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey. He shares that emotions are just signals that there is something happening that requires our attention and action, AND if we take the time to pay attention to and observe these signals, our conscious brain gets to decide how to respond.  The sacred pause gives us time to do this; to transition our limbic reactions to more metacognitive and intentional actions.

A challenge to you 

Embrace your full self as a leader – emotions and all! Our emotions have a real impact on our experiences and actions as leaders.  Learning to lean into, reflect upon, and manage our reactions to our emotions is a leadership superpower. Try or adapt one of the strategies above the next time you feel triggered by your emotions at work. As always, I’d love to learn from you.  If you’d like to share another strategy for taking a sacred pause at work, feel free to add it to the comments below!

References

Brach, T. (n.d.) The Sacred Pause. Accessed at: https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/practices/view/21412?id=21412

Brach, T. (2023) Four Spiritual Inquiries: Finding Heart Wisdom in Painful Times. Accessed at: https://www.tarabrach.com/four-spiritual-inquiries/

Brooks, A. and Winfrey, O. (2023) Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. Portfolio/Penguin, NY.

Following teaching and learning disruptions during the pandemic, we heard a lot about the struggles students were facing as they returned to the classroom. For example, Nappierala et al. (2022) summarized that undergraduate students faced a “skills gap” in time management, organization, independent learning, engagement and communication.  Students were struggling less about the content of what they were learning, and more about the strategies they were using to support how they learned.

Herein lies what may be the most powerful strategy to support student learning and success in university courses – metacognition. 

What is metacognition?

Metacognition is our awareness of and ability to reflect upon, control and improve how we learn (Stanton et al., 2021; Rivas et al., 2022). It involves: 1) learning more about how we think and learn; 2) identifying and developing strategies to regulate and improve how we learn; and, 3) planning to and actively transferring these new and improved learning strategies into other areas of our lives (Stanton et al., 2021; Fleur et al., 2021; Rivas et al., 2022).  Metacognition not only helps to improve students’ learning and performance, but it helps them become better learners in the long run. What’s even better?  Metacognition is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and strengthened over time (ideally over a lifetime!).

Teaching and learning interventions that provide opportunities for students to engage in self-reflection on their learning processes and behaviours, plan what strategies work best for them, and select new learning strategies to support their success into the future may best benefit them and their academic achievement (Fleur et al., 2021).  Teaching and learning activities that support metacognition often don’t take much time, but they do involve on-going effort and practice.

Teaching and learning strategies to support metacognition

Here are a few of our favorite metacognitive activities.

Exam Debrief

Have students explore the following reflective prompts and dialogue with a thought partner after an exam (Tanner, 2012):

• What strategies did I use, and how much time did I study for this exam?
• What questions did I answer correctly? How do these demonstrate my strengths? What questions did I not answer correctly? 
• How do my answers compare with the correct solutions?  What confusions do I still need to clarify?  What course material do I need to review and practice?
• What exam preparation strategies worked well that I should remember to do next time? What exam preparation strategies did not work well that I should change next time? 

Diagnostic Learning Logs

Ask students to keep a log throughout the course and make brief notes on each class. You may want to save five minutes at the end of each class for students to answer the following questions:

• What concepts that were introduced in today’s session are clear to me?  
• What concepts do I need to better understand?
• What are my next steps to promote my success in the course?

Occasionally, you might want to have a class discussion to identify tricky concepts. You can also collaboratively generate strategies to better understand them, such as reading supplemental resources and reaching out to a teaching assistant (University of Tennessee Chattanooga, 2016).

Modeling

Use metacognitive techniques in your teaching to model them to students. These strategies can get you started:

• Think aloud: Demonstrate specific steps or techniques while describing them explicitly. When implementing a strategy, describe what you have selected and why, what the benefits are as well as potential drawbacks. Learners can ask questions to further clarify any confusion (Ellis et al., 2014).
• Diagramming: Present information in graphs, charts, timelines, and other representations as appropriate. For topics that are not easily represented in graphical form, create a mind map while describing the connections. As a follow up, ask students to create their own mind map on another topic and discuss it (including what they’ve learned through the process) with an elbow partner once they have completed it (Ellis et al., 2014).

A call to action

Our call to action for all university instructors is to intentionally integrate one additional metacognitive activity into your course.  It may be through a formal course assignment or as part of an informal course activity.  Trust that the benefits for student learning will likely ripple far beyond your course! Our stretch goal – take the time to stop and reflect with a colleague: What did you notice about this activity? What worked? What didn’t go as planned? What would you change going forward? Get meta about going meta in the classroom!

Curious about other activities and ideas? Tanner (2012) shares many additional metacognitive activities and prompts.

Have additional metacognitive activities and ideas that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear more about them in the comments section below!

References

Ellis, A. K., Denton, D. W., & Bond, J. B. (2014). An analysis of research on metacognitive teaching strategies. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 5^th World Conference on Educational Sciences, 116, 4015-4024.

Fleur, D.S., Bredeweg, B. & van den Bos, W. Metacognition: ideas and insights from neuro- and educational sciences. npj Sci. Learn. 6, 13 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-021-00089-5

Napierala, J., Pilla, N., Pichette, J., & Colyar, J. (2022) Ontario Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences of Ontario First-year Postsecondary Students in 2020–21. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. https://heqco.ca/pub/ontario-learning-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-experiences-of-ontario-first-year-postsecondary-students-in-2020-21/

Rivas, S. F., Saiz, C., & Ossa, C. (2022). Metacognitive strategies and development of critical thinking in higher education. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 913219.

Stanton, J. D., Sebesta, A. J., & Dunlosky, J. (2021). Fostering metacognition to support student learning and performance. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 20(2), fe3.

Tanner, K. D. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 11(2), 113-120.

University of Tennessee Chattanooga. (2016). Classroom assessment strategies. Retrieved from http://www.utc.edu/walker-center-teaching-learning/teaching-resources/classroom-assessment-strategies.php#self-awareness  

Authors: Natasha Kenny and Sue Miller

As we round the corner to the end of 2023, the importance of taking some time to reflect on what we’ve learned and how we will move forward into 2024 struck us this week. So often we rush forward into the new year, without taking time to pause, reflect, learn, and set intentions for our journeys ahead. 

We work closely together at UCalgary’s Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning (TI) – Sue is the Associate Director of Strategic Operations and Natasha is the Senior Director. This week, Sue came to our biweekly 1:1 touch base with some fabulous questions for reflection that allowed us to journey through this process together.  The coach in me (Natasha) loved seeing the coach in her! 

During our conversation together, we took some time to noodle on our framing questions – clarifying and adding a couple that had meaning and resonance to both of us. We then took about 5-10 minutes individually to jot down some initial thoughts that came to mind for each of the questions.   The next 20 minutes were shared in a dynamic and reciprocal conversation together where we shared each of our responses, got to the heart of the matter, authentically built upon each other’s thoughts and reflections, and created new understandings and realizations of how we would move forward individually and in our work together.

It was a wonderful experience and we thought you might enjoy them too! We’ve provided the questions below:

1. What is something from the last year that you are most proud of?
2. What is one thing you learned about leadership or wished you had done differently as a leader last year?
3. What are your hopes for the TI [your organization] in 2024?
4. What would you want a colleague to say about your leadership, if they were having a conversation with another colleague?
5. What are your intentions as a leader in 2024?

We encourage you to share, use, and adapt these questions in your practice as you journey into 2024 (inside and outside of work). We’d love to hear how these questions work for you, how you have adapted them, or what other questions you’d recommend!