Good practice guide - Inspirational and engaged teaching

This principle is reflected and encouraged through:

• engaging students in critical discourse
• staff who are approachable and actively engage with students
• attention to the research/scholarship/teaching nexus

What does this mean?

Gunn and Fisk (2013) identified two key themes around individual teaching excellence:

being dynamically engaged in teaching practice and inspiring and practically scaffolding the potential dynamic engagement of one’s students. (p. 24)

Inspirational and engaged teaching is often cited as a fundamental characteristic of quality teaching (Watkins & Zang 2006; Kane, Sandretto & Heath 2004; Cotterill 2015). Dynamic engagement involves being committed to learning about teaching practice (e.g. through credentials, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, using approaches that enhance teaching, and affective characteristics). This type of teaching is seen to be multi-faceted whereas inspirational practice is like the ‘lighting of a fire’ (Cotterill 2015, p. 8) within students leading to a transformational change. Although a specific definition of inspirational teaching eludes us, Jensen, Adams and Strickland (2014) provide some guiding characteristics:

• teachers with knowledge and passion for the subject
• teachers that understand how students learn, encouraging students to become active participants in their learning
• teachers that provide constructive and challenging learning environments
• teachers who respect and treat students as individuals/partners/colleagues.

Much like an engaged student, an engaged teacher should be active in the classroom (e.g. asking questions and actively facilitating learning) (Bryson 2004).  Engagement can refer to the degree of attention and absorption in work activities (Shuck et al. 2013) but also includes an essential need for social engagement (i.e. establishing relationships with students and colleagues) (Pianta et al. 2012; Roorda, Koomen, Spilt & Oort 2011). Using a Community of Inquiry framework, teacher engagement encompasses the teaching presence (instructing, motivating and monitoring), cognitive presence (designing and organising teaching) and social/emotional presence (facilitating discourse, nurturing) (Borup et al. 2013; Garrison et al. 2010).

How are you facilitating this in your own teaching? How is the feedback you give on assignments supporting the development of their critical thinking? How are the questions you ask in class deepening students’ critical understanding of the subject? How are the learning activities structured to best facilitate critical discourse between students as well as between the students and staff?

Be approachable and actively engage with students

Teachers who are seen as approachable are indispensable to successful student learning (Devlin et al. 2012). This includes being friendly, welcoming and respectful of students. Apart from valuing students, involving them in the planning and evaluating of teaching activities or co-creating work can also help with engagement (Matheson 2019). Mann (2005) suggests the following:

• solidarity – looking to share mutual understandings
• hospitality – welcoming new students
• safety – fostering spaces of acceptance and respected where students feel listened to
• sharing of power – by using assessment appropriately, not as discipline
• criticality – nurturing and inspiring reflexivity in students.

Attend to the research/scholarship/teaching nexus

The relationship between teaching and research offers so many opportunities for student learning. We often use research to inform teaching, including our own research or research within our respective disciplines. Likewise, teaching can also inform research – what aspects of your teaching are amenable to being researched (e.g. pedagogies, evaluations, student-informed content etc.)?

Students can be involved in researching (e.g. data collection or analysis for larger projects); smaller research projects can be designed into assignments. Design learning activities around current research issues and explicitly teach research methods and skills. Teaching specialists also engage in broader scholarship, including integrating and applying research as well as using inquiry-based learning (Brew 2006; Tight 2016).