THEME 4: Commons Teaching-Related Concerns

This section addresses participants’ broader teaching-related concerns and topics that occur outside the ongoing teaching preparation and planning activities. These are listed in order of most frequently cited.

COMMON TEACHING-RELATED CONCERNS

A: Teaching Culture/Climate
B: Parsing tenure and promotion guidelines
C: Summative assessment of teaching guidelines for teaching
D: Course evaluations
E: How to locate teaching ‘experts’ or ‘champions’
F: How to address the ‘nuts and bolts’ of teaching

A. Teaching Culture/Climate. A central theme that emerged in this study is the varied descriptions of a ‘teaching culture’ within a research-intensive university. Participants shared the challenges of working within U of T, described as “an intimidating place” (Assoc Prof, TS, Phys Sc) with “not much institutional support for teaching” (Assoc Prof, TS, Life Sc), and its impact on their continual growth as university instructors. Similar to the COACHE and ‘Speaking Up’ data presented in the introduction, several faculty members recounted few teaching-related discussions occurring within their departments. Many in the tenure stream felt pressured to produce research first and develop their teaching second:

I’m not sure about other faculty just getting tenure but I feel like I can put more time into teaching now that tenure has been granted…invest some R and D [research and development] time into my teaching… another tenure stream faculty decided to take some time to develop her teaching and put aside her research for a while and she is one of the best instructors and I learned a lot from her but I think it wasn’t good for her tenure case and she took a hit for that. (Assoc Prof, Humanities)

Participants described feelings of ‘isolation’ when it comes to seeking departmental colleagues to discuss teaching.

Happens in hallways but not at all in faculty meetings – can’t remember when we had a teaching oriented item on our agenda – how to teach better, how to teach across our areas, or how to implement better teaching. (Assoc Prof, Soc Sc)

Positive teaching climates, on the other hand, tended to include seamless and open spaces for highly effective mentoring to occur (structured and intentional combined with informal opportunities such as coffee/common spaces to congregate). Participants shared insights on the intricacies of how such teaching cultures emerge, and the ways in which they are supported. Further, they described that such strong sites of support for teaching can assist in the shaping of recommendations for other departments faced with less supportive teaching environments.

Several participants also illustrated ways in which various departments have heightened awareness of the importance of effective teaching. They shared ways in which faculty are supported in sharing and discussing this knowledge within faculty meetings, brown-bag series, receiving funding for SoTL activities, conferences, etc. (a facilitating environment). Participants identified how the physical space in which faculty work can enhance positive teaching climates (i.e., shared spaces, coffee/lunch opportunities). One very supportive teaching climate included a champion, a ‘visionary Chair’ whom faculty within that department credit with enhancing the culture: “the quality of teaching increased tremendously with different expectations developed for teaching. Instructors ratcheted each other up…tried= something others were doing.” A few examples exist in which isolated faculty either continue to work in such environments or actively seek out informal mentors or colleagues from other departments to pursue teaching-related discussions.

Faculty hired for their ‘teaching expertise’ have similar experiences as tenure stream hires. They perceived that they were being left to ‘sink or swim’ in their new academic roles, and they hesitated to share their feelings of perceptions of being an incompetent instructor because in their mind they felt they were hired based on excellence or competence in teaching. New faculty (mentees) and their mentors shared anxieties about teaching-related matters that can interfere or limit efforts to become effective teachers. Participants offered a range of ways to convey anxieties and a general lack of support in teaching- related matters: “sink or swim, flying blind, lost, isolated, floundering, relying on trial and error, judged as incompetent,” or “People will presume you know what you are doing, that you figure it out…sink or swim.”

I felt stupid if I asked about teaching, logistics, policy admin, workload in 1st year…more in survival mode with big classes, classes that students don’t want to take and you had to figure this out for yourself the first time and having the luxury of finding the finer points of course design may not be there – just ‘what can I cover tomorrow morning in class’ (Assoc Prof, TS, Phys Sc, speaking as a mentee and mentor)

A tenure stream participant who described her experience as “flying blind” expressed very real concerns about her emotional well-being and being negatively impacted by some of the more difficult classes that did not go well during the first year or two of her appointment. This anxiety spilled into research endeavours resulting in a less productive time period: “I experienced actual psychological strain when returning to the same class…and these experiences had a negative impact on my research” (Assistant Prof, Phys Sc). One mentor in Life Sciences similarly described the psychological toll for a mentee “whose knees were shaking when teaching at Convocation Hall” (Assoc Prof, TS, Life Sc).

B. Parsing tenure and promotion guidelines for teaching. The majority of participants (mentors and mentees) described the uncertainty in meeting divisional guidelines for teaching, referred to as ‘vague’, ‘crude’, ‘murky’, ‘blurred’, or as another participant remarked: “Promotion was a challenge but I relied heavily on CTSI for guidelines – definitely would have been helpful if I’d seen someone else’s documentation” (Assoc Prof, TS, Life Sc, speaking as a mentee).

A mentor with extensive experience sitting on promotion committees felt that new faculty face uncertainties in this important process that can impact their overall teaching and documentation of teaching effectiveness:

When some feel they have to publish research in the teaching stream, this isn’t the case and they can publish a curriculum document – doesn’t necessarily have to be published in a scholarly journal and this focus on publishing may in fact be taking away from interesting pedagogical work they could be doing. (Assoc Prof, TS, Humanities, Mentor)

A Tenure Stream new hire sought out/initiated meetings to ensure that they gained the correct information on the tenure process: “I initiated guidance – in the face of limited mentoring – with three senior professors one year in advance of tenure because the guidelines were uncertain” (Assistant Prof, Soc Sc, mentee).

C. Summative assessment of teaching. Participants discussed that they rarely, if ever, had been provided an opportunity to enhance their teaching during the summative assessment of teaching that can occur very late in the promotion stages. Several participants noted that they would prefer more formative feedback that could allow for steady improvements in their teaching and also prepare them for the stress of the in-class observation that would play a part in their tenure and promotion summative process.

D. Course evaluations. According to a few faculty members, course evaluations played a role in
heightening their anxiety about teaching matters. Departments that tend to emphasize course evaluations as the primary focus for summative purposes, often added to an instructor’s anxiety, rather than using these data to inform ongoing teaching improvement, and as a source to guide class observations. One of these participants felt that the summative use of course feedback tends to hinder trying new activities in one’s classroom and the tendency is to, ”just stick to what you know.” One participant cited the “competition between new hires to get our course evaluations at a high level” combined with the isolation of having to “fill in the gaps in your own teaching” as a source of anxiety (Assistant Prof, TS, Life Sc), mentee).

E. How to locate teaching ‘experts’ or ‘champions’. Several participants expressed uncertainty with who is a ‘connector’ or ‘champion’ of teaching, whether in their department or beyond it: “there are pockets of people” but how or where to locate “experts” on teaching topics such as classroom management (“how do I manage students who yell and talk loud in large classes?”), large classes, assessment, course syllabus design, different student learners (e.g., low student standards on pre-tests and needing to make accommodations and differentiate learning), diversity, use of textbooks, interpreting course evaluations, and educational technology. Furthermore, several participants had pressing questions such as how to coordinate/manage teaching teams with multiple TAs and co- instruction of lectures when teaching styles did not match. Of note, a tenure stream interviewee felt that knowing who or what resources to access early in one’s career would definitely be complicated if a new faculty hire was a multi- lingual learner: “I know [Department name] and the culture generally, but departments can’t leave it to chance that some faculty know their way around to locate resources, and others don’t” (Associate Prof, Soc Sc, mentee).

F. How to address the ‘nuts and bolts’ of teaching. Overall, many participants felt there were gaps in answering the ‘nuts and bolts’/logistics/administration- type questions (a few participants provided examples of Instructor Handbooks and additional documentation that address new faculty concerns in these areas). For many mentees and mentors, however, they spent valuable time setting up and administering courses (not including course syllabus design) making for inefficient and ineffective models at play. One Physical Sciences mentor felt strongly that many mentees needed to address teaching preparation in a more efficient manner – not downplaying the importance of this activity but shifting
the “disproportionate amount of time on it” (Full Prof, mentor). For one Associate Professor (Soc Sc, mentor) the focus became “minimizing busy work for instructors and TAs to free up time to spend prepping for lectures and heading off problems before they start – crisis management before the crisis starts.”

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

This section has addressed existing evidence on faculty mentoring practices and approaches more generally, and the added teaching focus, germane to the work of CTSI. Both interview data and the Divisional Environmental Scan at U of T provide context-specific material to inform CTSI-developed resources for a range of audiences at the University of Toronto. Section B elaborates on how these data can be further considered for such resource development.