Reflection – getting your DUCKS in a row

One of the most effective ways of developing your teaching is through reflection. I’ve produced a guide to reflective writing (Reflective writing guide for MAAP) which takes you through some of the key models for reflection and how to use these in the context of teaching.

However, I’ve found that none of the existing models quite captures all the aspects of reflection that I find important, so I’ve come up with my own model – DUCKS.

Some of the elements I’ve found missing from the existing models I’ve used are the idea of collaborative reflective practice, both in the sense of using others to enhance reflection (like the peer lens of Brookfield) but also sharing the new ideas you come up with, or the difficulties you’ve encountered, to prevent each person reflectively reinventing the wheel and not getting the benefits of a community of practice. I have also noticed that often the people I speak to about reflecting on teaching are tempted to focus on the negatives rather than acknowledging positive parts of their practice to retain – this is a very human urge to concentrate on what we think we’ve done badly, so I think it’s important to emphasise the aspects of our teaching that are going well.

My new reflective model, DUCKS, builds on existing models to guide people through all the important aspects of reflection. This stands for Describe (what happened), Understand (making sense of what happened in conjunction with others and evidence), Change (what alterations you will make for the next time), Keep (what parts of the session worked well that you will retain or increase for next time), Share (reach out to others to talk about the issues and how you plan to overcome them, and to discuss what has worked well for you and might be useful for others – perhaps sharing with others who are teaching on the same module or programme, or in the same discipline). I intend this model to be easy to remember and to provide clear prompts to work through the reflective cycle in a slightly different way.

To provide an example of how DUCKS reflection might work, we might think about a problem that’s endlessly been debated over the last year or so – students not turning on their cameras for online teaching sessions.

  • Describe – None of my first year students are turning on their mics or cameras so I’m teaching to a series of initials and no one responds to my questions. I feel like I’m teaching into the void and it’s quite isolating. I worry that no one is learning anything and because they’re not answering my questions I’m not sure if they understand what I’m explaining to them.
  • Understand – Maybe my students just can’t be bothered to take part! Or if I try and put myself in their shoes, perhaps they don’t know each other well enough yet to speak out loud and are worried about showing their home to everyone. I know that I’ve felt awkward in some online meetings about whether I’ve got things set up right so people can see and hear me properly, and it was a bit embarrassing the other day when everyone could hear my baby screaming in the next room.
  • Change – I’ll suggest that students can use different backgrounds to protect their privacy to some extent, or maybe just blur out their background. I’ll make more use of the chat functions so students who don’t want to use cameras or microphones can still participate. Rather than expecting people to be able to type long answers out when they might be using a tablet or a mobile, I’ll do some survey questions – just asking people to type ‘Y’ for ‘yes’, ‘N’ for ‘no’ or ‘M’ for ‘maybe’, or asking them to type in a number to represent how they feel on a scale of 1-5. I’m also going to share a question before a brief break to give people a chance to gather their thoughts before they answer.
  • Keep – The existing structure of my sessions works well, and I think active learning is vital, so I’m going to keep a focus on  participation rather than just turning it into a transmission-based session where it’s all me talking. I’ve had some good student feedback about the accessibility of online learning, meaning they don’t have to commute onto campus, and the benefits of having things recorded, so I’ll continue doing these lectures online even when we’re able to teach face-to-face again.
  • Share – I’m going to speak to the rest of the programme team about doing more community building across the degree cohort so that students become more comfortable and familiar with each other.

I hope you find the DUCKS reflection model useful for developing your teaching  – please let me know if you do!

Reflecting on ETP1 – identity

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.

Would you like a City forum for PhD students who teach?

One of the best ways I’ve found to develop my own teaching is to talk about it with other people – sometimes it can be reassuring to know that other people are encountering the same issues as you (why has the attendance tailed off after the first few weeks? what do I do about the group at the back of the class who were chatting all the way through my session? what could be going on with the student who doesn’t seem to take part in any of the group discussions?). Often other people might have different ways of looking at something that you’re finding difficult – as they’re more removed from the situation, they will have a less emotional reaction to the behaviour of your student, and might be able to suggest reasons why the student might be acting in that way, and how to resolve the situation. It’s also really useful to share ideas for different kinds of activities, and different ways to get students excited about your subject and what they’re learning.

Some of you might have already developed informal ways of talking about teaching with your PhD colleagues – perhaps just over a cup of tea in your shared office after you come back from a seminar or lab session. But would you like the opportunity to discuss teaching with PhD students from across City on a regular basis?

If so, I could set up some forums for PhD students who teach at City, where we could get together to discuss ideas and share solutions for issues that you might be encountering. We could have a different theme each time – perhaps based around particular types of teaching, or maybe focused on specific aspects, such as technology or classroom management.

Does this sound like something you’d be interested in? If you would like to attend a City teaching forum for PhD students who teach, please use the comments below or my email (jessica.hancock@city.ac.uk) to get in touch with me. Alternatively, if you have another suggestion, let me know about that too.

A place to share your thoughts about your teaching

Have you had a particulaly good experience? What do you think worked well about it?

Have you heard about a useful teaching technique or method which you’d like to tell people about?

Is there something you’re not sure about (perhaps you’re about to do a new type of teaching, or you’re trying to work out why your students aren’t joining in with class discussions)? Ask here any get advice and suggestions from your fellow PhD students.

Please let me know if you’d like to contribute a post to this – your post can be added anonymously if you’d prefer.