It’s OK to talk about your teaching!

Participants in the Advanced Teaching Day

How often do you sit down with a colleague and talk about your teaching? Have you ever talked about your teaching with colleagues? With anyone? Research is often the topic of discussion among academics but talk about teaching does not happen often enough. At the recent UWA Advancing Teaching and Learning Forum, a comment regularly made was that it was great to have an opportunity to sit down and talk about teaching. Did it take an organised forum for teachers to find the time?

One of the featured speakers at the Forum talked about the private nature of teaching. This theme of teaching as a private profession is one that runs through Parker Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach (1998). Palmer illustrates the extent to which teaching really is private:

Though we teach in front of students, we almost always teach solo, out of collegial sight – as contrasted with surgeons or trial lawyers, who work in the presence of others who know their craft well. Lawyers argue cases in front of other lawyers, where gaps in their skill and knowledge are clear for all to see. Surgeons operate under the gaze of specialists who notice if a hand trembles, making malpractice less likely. But teachers can lose sponges or amputate the wrong limb with no witnesses except the victims (p. 142).

Palmer advocates for teachers to spend more time talking about teaching and for teachers to assist each other in enhancing their teaching through peer observation. When we make changes to curriculum, start teaching in teams or agree to more collaboration, we need to transcend the private nature of teaching. We expose ourselves to scrutiny.

Too often is the cry that there is not enough time to ‘talk about teaching’. What events are coming up in your department? How many are highlighting colleague’s research? Are there any highlighting the good teaching that is happening in the department? And then there is the “not enough resources” pitch. That may be a legitimate claim but do we recognise the resources that surround us – our colleagues? Not just the outstanding teachers but all of our colleagues who may be able to help us make some aspects of our teaching more effective simply by taking the time to talk and share practices and problems.

Yes, it is OK to talk about your teaching. What about wandering down the corridor now and sharing what happened in class today with a colleague?

• Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.