My Learning and Teaching Philosophy: The School Community of Practice

I just completed a course called Principles of Learning for my doctoral program at Brigham Young University. During the course, we were supposed to think about how we defined learning and instruction as we considered different perspectives from the many theories we would read. Then, at the end of the semester, we would write a learning and teaching philosophy statement. I enjoyed doing the project and wanted to share it:

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It was the winter semester at Utah State University. The writing center was warm and pleasant, and much more preferable to being out in the bitter cold and wind outside. I was getting comfortable in my second year as a master’s student and my second semester as a tutor at the writing center. Working at the writing center for at least one semester was required for any graduate student employed as a writing instructor for the university. It gave graduate instructors an opportunity to see student writing from a different perspective. I had enjoyed my experience working as a teacher and a tutor, and decided to continue doing both as I finished my master’s program.

It was that time of the semester when the English 2010 students began bringing in the first drafts of their research paper. I found tutoring these students to be challenging--one reason being that I hadn’t taught English 2010 yet, and I wasn’t completely familiar with the assignments and objectives. As I read a particular student’s paper on building a personal cell phone network, I suddenly realized what was missing from many of the English 2010 research papers I had previously reviewed--including this one.

“Who are you writing this to?” I asked the student.

“What do you mean?” he replied.

“I mean, who needs this information? Who do you intend to read this and use this?”

The student gave me a blank stare. The paper had no thesis, no sense of organization or direction. It was just a data dump of research he had found. The student had not realized an authentic purpose or context for sharing this information, and his writing proved it.

This experience stuck with me and changed the way I taught. I first focused on helping my students think through who the audience tended to be for the type of writing we were working on, why the audience would use that type of writing, what the writer intended to accomplish by writing, and what specific features of the genre helped accomplish the writer’s goals. It was a good thinking exercise, but it wasn’t transforming my student’s writing.

What they needed in addition to this was authentic writing experiences! I situated my assignments in context where my student’s writing could truly be used: the school newspaper, scholarly journals, or proposals to the university’s student body leadership. At times I encouraged my students to submit their work to actual audiences and publications, but no one ever followed through. And most importantly, student writing tended to be the same, no matter how my teaching strategies changed.

Time and again, as I reviewed with my students the purpose and audience of the different genres we used for our assignments, the answers followed this theme:

“Why would someone write this?” I would ask.

“Because a teacher made it an assignment,” one would answer.

“So we can get a grade,” another would say.

“Yes, I know that’s why you are really writing, but how would this be used in the real world?”

My problem was that no matter how much I simulated the real world, the world in which my students were really participating was the world of school. Lave and Wenger (1991) explained this well in Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Learning, as Lave and Wenger explain it, is a form of enculturation, wherein a learner becomes more capable of engaging in a community of practice. “Engaging in practice,” they wrote, “rather than being its object, may well be a condition for learning” (pp. 93). But wasn’t I trying to help my students engage in practice in learning how to write? While I tried to bring some authenticity to my classroom by encouraging students to imagine they were participating in real communities, I was never truly able to capture the whole, real thing. “When directive teaching in the form of prescriptions about proper practice generates one circumscribed form of participation (in school), preempting participation in ongoing practice as the legitimate source of learning opportunities, the goal of complying with the requirements specified by teaching engenders a practice different from that intended” (pp. 96-97). Not only was writing in my class a different practice from what I intended, but the products were different from what I intended as well. My students’ writing was truly writing for a school community, wherein the content of the writing did not really exist for authentic purposes other than to show that the writer was attempting to follow the teacher’s instructions.

If much of our reason for sending our children to school is to prepare them to engage successfully in the workplace, and if formal, traditional methods of schooling seem unable to consistently and effectively replicate these communities, then what should we do with schooling? Are we wasting our time? I can see how participation in a theater production company at school would be getting close to being an authentic community of practice that is not just replicating a school community. But what about introduction to biology, or college algebra? Much of what is authentic to the workplace has been stripped away from these courses to get at abstract concepts and processes. 

I try to imagine what would happen if public schooling as we know it was disbanded. What would our children do? What would parents do, especially if any parent of the child had a full-time job? Disbanding school is just an unthinkable option with the way we currently live. I imagine too, though, if children would have as high of a literacy rate if we did not have the current schooling system. Sure, that literacy rate is not phenomenal--but it is better than what the world was like two hundred years ago. Successfully participating in a school community of practice requires an ability to read textbooks, assignment descriptions, and what the teacher has put up on the whiteboard. Students are involved in it for more than a lesson, or a course--but essentially their whole time participating in this community. It is a skill we value, and it is a skill that many of our students come out of school being able to do. What students learn about reading in school lays a foundation for developing additional reading skills in other communities they may join.

If learning is a process of participating more successfully, fully, meaningfully in a community of practice, then what can we realistically do with the traditional approach to schooling? An important step is to recognize that the school is its own unique community. While I attempted to get students to pretend that they were participating in a community other than school, because I couldn’t authentically replicate those communities, and because students weren’t authentically choosing to join those communities, we were never getting to the real thing. The writing was just for school. However, writing in a school community of practice can be an authentic, meaningful task for the school community. It is a useful way of demonstrating what someone understands, a chance to communicate ideas to someone else. Pretending that our classrooms are something else is just ignoring the reality of the situation. We need to explore the potential value that authentic participation in a school community could have for individuals and society and capitalize on that.

Second, when we recognize what a school community of practice can do and be, we need to focus on how to help students participate more fully, successfully, and meaningfully. I marvel at how often as a teacher I expected my students to know how to be a student and participate successfully in my class. Yet, simply having those expectations did not help my students learn to participate in ways that met those expectations. I found that I needed to spend time teaching how to read a textbook, how to plan and schedule things, or how to participate in a discussion in class or online. So many students are frustrated and jaded because they are largely left to their own devices to figure out how to participate successfully in the school community of practice. We can do better by apprenticing this participation more explicitly and effectively.

Finally, we need to make the school community a community worth participating in. Most students find participation in school to be utter drudgery. If students don’t really want to participate, then how will they truly learn? If we are going to improve traditional schooling, we need to focus on activities and projects that are more meaningful and relevant to our students. One such activity going on in schools in Utah County is a project where students make their own platform games. The project teaches computer literacy, math skills, and collaboration skills. Those skills are foundational to other types of practices students might join in later in life. Most importantly, students find the project fun, relevant, and engaging. If the authentic tasks of a school community of practice were worth participating in for our students, I believe learning would improve.

I do not claim that the items I addressed here will fix all our problems with traditional schooling. I personally feel that I can better explore ways to apply the three principles I mentioned. However, Lave and Wenger have introduced a powerful perspective on schooling that I believe can make an important difference. It will be to our benefit for educators and researchers to explore further how to apply this perspective to our approaches of educating our students.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

An Interview with Dr. Rich

I decided to interview Dr. Peter Rich from Brigham Young University about his work as and preparation to become a professor. I have had long aspirations to teach and research at the university level as my profession. I’ve already had some experience teaching at the university level. Dr. Rich provided a lot of helpful insights that I had not known before from my experience working with full-time faculty. Below is a summary of what I learned from my interview with Dr. Rich, as well as a discussion of what this means for me in my preparation for my future profession.

Research

I first began by asking Dr. Rich what his day-to-day work involved. Research was one important responsibility. Most people interested in this profession know the saying “publish or perish,” but for Dr. Rich, publishing is more than just meeting the demands of the job. “It hit me why we write: it’s to disseminate... knowledge, so that we can actually build a knowledge base, and stop making the same stupid mistakes over and over.” He related his graduate experience, studying video annotation tools. A lot of the people working in this area presented at conferences, but didn’t publish much of their working, resulting in little dissemination of their findings to other people interested in that area of research. He also stated that these people “were spending all their money in development, but nobody was sharing what they were learning from development with each other.” He realized that publishing research could really simplify and enlighten the work of those researching and developing on a certain topic. “It changed, for me, that I have to write to survive to I write to communicate to build on this community.”

Dr. Rich became a professor because he wanted to research what he was interested in learning more about. He was very interested in design and development, but from past experience, he knew research was more important to him. Because of that, he focused more on research courses rather than taking studio development courses. “The more tools you have in your toolbox, the more you’ll be able to ask and answer your questions.” Natural inquisitiveness helps as well to being a good researcher.

Because research is important, Dr. Rich works hard to set aside time to research. “I have to set time aside for writing, and I have to honor that time.” There’s a lot of autonomy as a professor. He likes the autonomy, that he has a lot of choice over when he works, how he works, what he researches. He particularly likes that he can shift his schedule to meet family needs. At the same time, having that autonomy can be a challenge. “You’ve got to be self-motivated and self-organized.... No one is looking over my shoulder.”

Teaching

Teaching is obviously an important part of Dr. Rich’s work. He teaches a 2-2-1 yearly course load (two courses in the fall, two in the winter, and one in the spring or summer). This course load depends on the type of institution—whether it is a research or a teaching institution. A teaching institution teaches more courses and puts greater emphasis on student ratings. Research institutions teach but put more emphasis on publishing and obtaining funds. UVU, a teaching institution, considers teaching four courses a semester as a full-time workload. At other research institutions, a 2-3 course load is usually typical, with summer as off-time. Dr. Rich mentioned that a first year professor’s course load at a research institution is typically a 1-1 or 1-2, allowing for more time to establish oneself in the research.

Dr. Rich explained a concept that sometimes occurs at other research institutions, called “buy out your time.” While some faculty are assigned courses to teach, these faculty may take funding obtained through grants to hire instructors to teach their assigned courses so they can give more time to research. Some faculty teach very little, which is interesting to think about in light of the work of a university. While teaching is important, little of a university’s funds come from student tuition. Much of the money a university has access to comes from donations and grants for research.

Teaching and interacting with students is one of his favorite aspects of his work. Grading is an important part of this work, but it is one of the least favorite aspects of his work. Giving feedback and reading through student work is sometimes tedious and technical, and at other times invigorating and enjoyable. Dr. Rich says you have to be prepared to give a lot of feedback on writing and projects.

Service

In addition to teaching and research, Dr. Rich spends a lot of time giving service to the university and to organizations in the field. Faculty members are asked to serve on all kinds of campus committees to help attend to the university’s needs. Serving on the IRB is a common one. Serving on dissertation and thesis committees is a major part of Dr. Rich’s work. “We chair usually between 8-12 students between masters and PhD, but then you are on another 20 or so committees.” This work involves giving a lot of feedback on student writing and projects. Once again, Dr. Rich emphasizes the need to like giving feedback on people’s papers, because that is a large part of what professors do. The university also values service given to the fields that faculty are a part of. This service is often given by serving as an officer for organizations in the field.

Dr. Rich particularly loves the collegiality present at BYU. He loves the atmosphere at BYU, and he loves his colleagues. In other departments at other schools, there can be a lot of politics and conflict. Here, he feels, there is more collegiality. Faculty members sometimes disagree with each other, but they can work with disagreements. At BYU, Dr. Rich says he also feels like he can “be me” and share what he thinks about gospel topics and how it relates to what he is teaching. Even the community around BYU, particularly the instructional designers, have been enjoyable to work with. Dr. Rich has invited instructional designers to provide projects and to serve as peer reviewers for students. These people have been very gracious and helpful. They have a high regard for BYU, which helps make for a successful and meaningful program.

Preparation

I asked Dr. Rich what advice he had to someone preparing to teach and research at the university level. For classes, Dr. Rich says that instructional design classes are very important. It is essential to know the basics of the field. At the same time, it is also important to take research courses. Writing, publishing, and participating in conferences are very important. Dr. Rich said, “Get in your mind now that you are going to do the article format dissertation – it will hugely benefit you.” Doing the article format dissertation will allow for more publications, and will be more practical.

When preparing for a dissertation, Dr. Rich said to not think in terms of single studies, but to establish a program of inquiry. The idea is that several studies can work towards developing this program of inquiry. People who focus on single studies have a bunch of great ideas and try to cram them all in to the single study. Their committee then recommends simplifying the project, and a lot of students walk away feeling that the committee ruined their project. Having a program of inquiry allows students to develop several single studies that can be simple and specific enough to be effective.

In regards to conferences, Dr. Rich recommends not just going to them, but serving in the organizations there. He served as a communications officer in an organization within AECT, and he got to know a lot of people on a deeper level because he served and worked with them. That is an experience that students can’t have who are just attending conferences. Getting involved really helps with networking, which in turn helps when applying for jobs.

Finally, Dr. Rich recommended getting involved in research projects with other professors. “Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you—step up.” Ask professors if you can do something to work with them on their projects. Sometimes they may have something to do, and other times they may not. But at least they know that you are interested, which can be helpful when they actually do have a project where they need help to complete it. “You’re in charge of yourself—get moving.”

Job Analysis

Job Analysis

I am reviewing job descriptions obtained from University of South Florida, University of New Hampshire, Worcester Polytech Institute, University of Illinois, and Purdue University in order to help me develop a plan to obtain employment as an assistant professor. Below, I report on the likely job tasks, working conditions, required skills, and average starting salary of the positions named in the job descriptions. After that, I will present where I am at and what I need to do to prepare myself to be a competitive candidate for similar positions after graduation.

Likely Job Tasks

From the job descriptions, the following were the recurring job tasks for an assistant professor:

• Teach undergraduate and graduate courses (face-to-face, online, and blended formats)
• Recruit and supervise graduate students
• Research
• Seek external funding
• Support undergraduate and graduate programs
• Support college initiatives
• Support the field

Working Conditions

Professors work in a very social environment. They interact daily with students, fellow faculty, and administrators. The work is quite variable: teaching, grading, lesson preparation, researching, advising, participating in committees. It is definitely not a 9 to 5 job. Some work may need to be done in the evening or on weekends. Professors can have a lot of autonomy. They may be quite constrained on time with all the responsibilities that must be met. Work can occur on campus, from home, or in the field depending on research, conference, and consultation needs.

It is quite likely that I may take a job in another state. The positions I am examining are located in Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Illinois, and Indiana. Many of the programs in the field of instructional psychology, technology, and design are located in the East and South United States (if I plan on staying in the United States). The likelihood of relocation is important to consider when preparing for a faculty appointment.

Required Skills

From the job descriptions, the following represent the prerequisites of candidates applying for the position of assistant professor:

• PhD in instructional technology and design or related field
• Have an established record of teaching, researching, and service preferred (many would like to see research and presentation record in relevant journals and conferences)
• Expertise in relevant theories and research methodologies (specific expertise sought from the job postings: human performance, K-16 education, engagement, educational assessment and policy, technology development and integration, and cognitive psychology
• Robust Technical Skills

Average Salary for Assistant Professor

Location	Salary	Cost of Living (compared to Provo, UT)
University of South Florida	$71,367	slightly higher
University of New Hampshire	$82,006	slightly higher
Worcester Polytech Institute, MA	$83,020	over twice as high
University of Illinois	$83,790	slightly higher
Purdue University, IN	$88,178	comparable

*Information obtained from glassdoor.com and cityrating.com

From the above analysis, it is evident that living in the Provo area is pretty nice. I was quite surprised to see the Purdue position as having a comparable cost of living but also having the highest average salary. Brigham Young University’s average salary was listed as about $77,000 for an associate professor. University of South Florida’s salary does not seem as competitive when compared to the starting salaries of the other universities. Perhaps it has a better health care package or something to offset the difference. This information, however, was not available on glassdoor.com. Obviously, when seeking employment, it will be important to take these factors into consideration when deciding which position to take and where to live.

Preparation

Strengths

Below are some of the experiences and skills I already have that will help me be prepared to be a competitive candidate for an assistant professor position in instructional psychology and technology:

• Experience teaching at the university level with three years of undergraduate teaching experience
• Great familiarity with the K12 system from experience working as a tutor and substitute teacher
• Ability to analyze and help improve writing from my writing education background, and tutoring and teaching experience in writing (which will be useful when mentoring students in their theses and dissertations)
• Technical writing skills developed from my graduate program in English with a technical writing emphasis (which will be helpful in doing instructional design and in research writing)
• Mentoring experience from my work as a mentor for the Teaching Academy at UVU, a faculty development program for full-time and part-time faculty
• Experience in instructional design and technologies through higher education teaching experiences (working with LMS and designing my own courses for blended formats), and through my work as a program developer for High Performance Tutoring, a K-16 private tutoring company based in Salt Lake City.

Needed Education, Skills, and Experience

Below is a list of skills, education, and experience I still need to obtain to be qualified as an assistant professor of instructional psychology and technology:

• A doctoral degree
• Technology skills – while I have some experience with Photoshop, Flash, and other development software, I am weak in internet development skills and technology
• Publications – I need to establish myself as a researcher to prove my abilities to contribute in scholarship as a professor
• Conference presentations – I need to participate in conferences so that others can get to know my interests, strengths, and research experience, and to be able to network
• Education in research methodologies – I need more education in qualitative and quantitative research if I am going to be able to effectively contribute to educational research
• Education in instructional theory of my interest – I need to be able to contribute uniquely as a member of a community of faculty researchers
• Teaching experience in instructional psychology and technology courses
• Skills in grant writing

Education Plan

Following are specific plans that I have to develop in education, experience, and skill:

• Working as a teaching assistant in our department (this winter semester and beyond).
• Going to AECT conference next year in California.
• Going to the Sloan-C conference on blended learning in Milwaukee next summer as part of a research team with Dr. Graham from BYU.
• Working towards publishing a journal analysis article with Dr. West from BYU this winter, and a chapter on blended learning theories with Dr. Graham this winter as well.

The theme I would like to take for my dissertation and education at BYU is in improving higher education, specifically with online learning, blended learning, and other best-learning and teaching practices in higher education, I also want to focus on faculty development. I hope to get involved with helping faculty implement the best learning and teaching practices that are emerging in educational research. I think there are some exciting opportunities to study this at BYU in the coming years. Having a blended learning initiative at a university level is becoming more of a reality. I would like to get involved in helping that happen and studying change, implementation, and faculty attitudes and experiences. I plan on doing the three-article dissertation in the above-mentioned areas so as to take up as many publication opportunities. I plan on taking these ideas and presenting them at conferences as well.