Monthly Archives: February 2021

Reflecting on ETP1 – identity

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Yesterday was the first online version of the Establishing a Teaching Persona course – thank you to everyone who attended as we had some really productive discussions around teaching identities, and your aspirations are very inspiring – to provide insight and take the students beyond their knowledge, but being there to support their journeys; working together to create interesting and engaging learning opportunities and giving your students the fuel to fly; freeing student thinking and allowing their thoughts to grow with guidance; considering students’ individual needs and enabling them to reap the benefits of education.

We’ll be looking at ways you can implement these ambitions in the rest of ETP (please book on using Research Manager if you haven’t already as places are filling up fast!). I mentioned during the class yesterday that one of the most powerful ways that I’ve found to develop my teaching is through reflection. When I reflect on yesterday’s task, I could see some definite easy improvements in making sure the tech functioned as I wanted it to! I found your contributions to be really valuable, so I’ll be ensuring that we have plenty of space to discuss your thoughts and ideas in the remaining three sessions.

The final ETP is all about reflection, so we’ll be exploring how it might be useful for you then. In the meantime, you might find a guide that I wrote about reflective writing on teaching useful (Reflective writing guide for MAAP) – this is for participants for our MA in Academic Practice but goes through some of the models you might wish to use, and even if you’re not needing to do formal reflective writing at the moment, you might find it beneficial to do some reflective writing about your teaching in an informal journal or blog.

Establishing a Teaching Persona 2021 – development for PhD researchers who teach

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Hello!

Despite starting with good intentions last term, I haven’t updated this blog as often as I planned – like many of you who are juggling your research with many other responsibilities, some things have fallen by the wayside a little. I hope to keep you updated more frequently this term, with advice and resources which are useful to PhD researchers at City who are teaching or interested in teaching.

What you might find useful this term is the return of the Establishing a Teaching Persona (ETP) programme. ETP aims to build your confidence and knowledge about teaching and addresses the difficulties of negotiating between your identity as a PhD researcher and a new, teacher identity. You might already be teaching or have teaching planned – perhaps you’re wondering whether your students will respect you in the classroom; possibly you’re worried about how to run a tutorial or seminar, online learning, how to deal with awkward questions or students who don’t seem interested. Or maybe you’re just not sure about what teaching involves and want to find out whether it might be something you’re interested in for the future.

The series of four short courses are specifically aimed at people with limited or no teaching experience, and so covers many practical basics, but PhD researchers at any stage are welcome if you think that the content would be useful to you.

I began running this in 2018, and this year it takes place online. The session run for 90 minutes with a mixture of advice, reflection, discussion and activities. You can attend the whole series, or whichever ones seem most pertinent to you.

  • ETP 1 Teaching identities: Wed 17 Feb 10-11:30am
    This session looks at how you establish your teaching identity – what kind of teacher would you like to be? How can you establish boundaries with your students but still be approachable? How can you consider student diversity in your teaching?
  • ETP 2 Planning teaching and presenting: Tues 2 March 10-11:30am
    This session looks at how you can prepare and plan your teaching, whether you’re running a seminar, lecture or lab yourself or supporting another member of staff. What kind of presentation skills are needed for teaching and how can you develop these in the context of your own teaching persona?
  • ETP 3 Engaging students and enabling them to participate in creative learning: Thurs 18 March 10-11:30am
    This session looks at how you can engage students to learn actively during a session, and the benefits of taking a creative approach to learning. What does engagement mean? How might you encourage active learning in different kinds of teaching?
  • ETP 4 Reflection and developing your teaching: Wed 31 March 10-11:30am
    This session looks at the benefits of reflection to continue to develop the kind of teaching identity that you wish to create. Why is it important to reflect on your teaching? What areas of development might you want to focus on?

These are open to anyone registered as a PhD researcher at City, and can be booked via Research Manager. Please let me know (jessica.hancock @ city.ac.uk without the spaces) if you have any questions, or you can add a comment to this blog.

I look forward to seeing some of you there!