Reflection one
This reflection is in response to Online Activity 1.1: Five perspectives of teaching.
Task
Pratt (1998) refers to our perspectives on teaching as something "we look through, rather than look at, when teaching" (p. 33). What do you think he meant by this?
Artefact
Each person's initial perspective on teaching is "... the result of years of being a learner, in the home, at school, in the community, on sports teams, and in a thousand other moments responding to someone acting as a teacher." - Pratt, 1998, p.33
This immediately resonated with a conversation I have had countless times within my organisation. For background and perspective, I work for the NZDF - an organisation that is continuously training adult learners in a number of different activities at any one moment. All personnel have engaged with training, whether as a learner or instructor, perhaps in a formal setting or informally through a sort of apprenticeship model as outlined in Pratt (1998). Through these experiences, people gain their own perspectives of what teaching is, and therefore how they will implement teaching when the situation arises. The perspectives introduced in this paper can been seen reflected across the board in classrooms, workshops and field time alike.
What the paper does not appear to consider however, is how each of these perspectives (outlined as separate entities in Pratt, 1998) can be utilised together when designing for learning. For me, when I am considering how I will design a learning session, I will first consider the learning outcome - "what is it my learners' need to be able to do at the end of this learning session/ paper / course?". From there, I look to create a means of assessing their attainment of that learning outcome by getting them to demonstrate competence (bear in mind this looks different for practical and theoretical outcomes). Then I look to the building blocks for how we will get there; considering lessons that have come before and those that will come after, as well as current levels of understanding and desired levels of understanding. To get there, I may need to begin with a small period of transmission of content to get a complex idea across, then move into developing the levels of understanding of that idea through questioning (perhaps taking a nurturing perspective), and integrating some 'hands-on' time with the task to demonstrate in context how it can be used (apprentice perspective).
This is just one way that these perspectives are used in my own experience in teaching and learning - not as singular perspectives, but as parts of an integrated whole which need to be understood to be reflected upon, and utilized as part of a wider strategy.
Teaching is something “we look through, rather than look at, when teaching” (Pratt, 1998, p. 33).
Prior to reading Pratt (1998), I took this statement to refer to the way in which we teach guided by the ways we view effective teaching without necessarily looking at those ‘ways’, but more using them as a way of self-governing own practice. What I hadn’t considered as much was they way in which we look through these perspectives without necessarily questioning them, or allowing ourselves to open up to the possibility of understanding others’ teaching perspectives. This leads to bias in not only our own approaches to teaching and reflection, but also in our appraisal of others’ teaching practices.
This activity required that we completed the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) questionnaire (http://www.teachingperspectives.com/tpi/). According to Collins and Pratt (2011) the TPI measures teachers profiles against five contrasting teaching views or perspectives. The authors argue against a one-size-fits-all approach, with the TPI acting as a tool for reflection on teaching perspective bias to look more critically at how we teach. The TPI questionnaire asked a number of questions in which I indicated a “sometimes” or “neutral” answer – this is in part due to the nature of some questions requiring an answer of “it depends”. For example, questions such as 9 "In my teaching, building self-confidence in learners is a priority" - this depends, as I determine my teaching as effective if learners are able to conduct the learning competently and confidently in accordance with the specified learning objectives. While I do not teach confidence (for example), and it is not my main priority, it is a consideration which in part guides the way that I facilitate learning sessions when I am performing an instructional role. That being said, attributes such as building self-confidence can be taught implicitly through teacher actions such as role-modelling.
References
Collins, J. B., & Pratt, D. D. (2011). The teaching perspectives inventory at 10 years and 100,000 respondents: Reliability and validity of a teacher self-report inventory. Adult Education Quarterly, 61(4), 358–375.
Pratt, D., & Associates. (1998). Alternative frames of understanding. In Five Perspectives on teaching in adult and higher education (pp. 35–53). Malabar, FL: Kreiger.
Small, L. (2022). Teaching as something we look through [digital visualization on the internet]. https://www.canva.com/design/DAFdWLw0iHg/VdlWf1rdO_t80HFa9Xalew/edit