**This is Competency 1 of the Certificate in College Teaching (CCT). You can learn more about the CCT competencies here.**
Core Competency 1 involves selecting appropriate pedagogical approaches to teaching concepts and research methods within a specific discipline or field. This competency requires taking coursework approved by your college (you can find the list of potential courses here).
Core Competency 1 involves selecting appropriate pedagogical approaches to teaching concepts and research methods within a specific discipline or field. This competency requires taking coursework approved by your college (you can find the list of potential courses here).
Course: EAD 871B: Collegiate Contexts for Teaching and Learning
Professor: Dr. Riyad A. Shahjahan
Completed: Spring 2022
Description: In this competency, I learned about how teaching and learning at the college level is affected by several factors, both internal and external to the university setting. This in turn can affect equity in regard to teaching and learning conditions. We learned these concepts through a variety of methods, including movies, books, journal articles, and discussion posts.
Through this course, students learn about how higher education is structured, and how the structure affects access, equity, and inclusion. Dr. Shahjahan's course was divided into three modules that explore these topics in depth:
Module 1 - Conceptualizing Teaching, Learning, and Sites of Learning Beyond the Classroom
Module 2 - Sociocultural Contexts of Teaching and Learning
Module 3 - Towards a Decolonizing Pedagogy in Global Contexts
You can read a detailed course description here.
Artifacts and Rationale:
Artifact: EAD 871: Collegiate Contexts for Teaching and Learning syllabus
Rationale: The syllabus was provided to students enrolled in the course. It shows the scope of the course, the expected outcomes, the required movies and readings for the course, and associated assignments (including a movie analysis, a novel analysis, and a Medium post).
The content in the course allows students to learn more about several of the different factors that can affect student learning, including what characterizes teaching and learning in collegiate learning and what conditions and forces shape sites of learning. We all know the personal situations that affect our own learning ability, but we are not always aware of what others have had to go through (or are currently going through) when navigating higher education. The material from this course provides insight into these different viewpoints, something that all educators (and future educators) should be aware of when working with students. Additionally, we learned about the collegiate structures in place that prevent access, equity, and and inclusion, and how we can potentially move towards a decolonized educational system.
Material Developed for the Course: Module 3 assignment - Decolonizing Visual Media: Citation
Rationale: For Modules 1 and 2, we were required to do a movie and novel analysis, respectively. For Module 1, I analyzed the movie Mona Lisa Smile, directed by Mike Newell (2003). I dove into the differences between traditional and nontraditional learning sites in the movie, as well as the idea of self-directed learning. For Module 2, I read Moo, a book about a Midwest university and the perspectives of several of the people associated with the campus, written by Jane Smiley (1995). I discussed the role of affect and space in my analysis of the novel.
My Module 3 assignment was a Medium post on a movie of our choice that represented a case study of decolonizing pedagogy in the collegiate context. I chose to watch Citation, based out of Nigeria and directed by Kunle Afolayan (2020). This story is based on true events from universities across Nigeria, Ghana, and Lagos, and follows the main character's experiences with sexual harassment and attempted rape by a new, distinguished professor. My analysis discusses how a decolonizing paradigm could be beneficial in situations such as those depicted in the movie, along with potential new learning experiences for the students in the film who are pursuing higher education. I follow this with limitations that come with this paradigm.
I am sharing this assignment as my chosen material to from the course for several reasons. First, it is created for public consumption, and uses several types of media that makes the material more accessible to viewers and a jumping point to learn more about decolonizing education. Second, this describes the story that many students have had to face and is an important topic to talk about, especially when thinking about some of the barriers and obstacles for students pursuing higher education.
Reflection:
What skills and techniques did I learn that will help me become a better educator?
This course discussed the long-standing structures in education, and how these can act as barriers for students. As an anthropologist, I have had critically think about the role of cultural differences and power dynamics, especially when considering the history of biological anthropology and archaeology. This course reminded me to think critically about teaching and learning contexts and how they shape student learning. This will make me a better educator because I now better understand these contexts and what it means to decolonize learning; importantly, I now know where to look for this type of scholarship so that I can keep myself updated with new teaching and learning research as it is published.
What things am I still uncertain about regarding this topic that I need to investigate further in the future?
I am not uncertain about the topics themselves, but I am uncertain about how to implement a decolonizing paradigm in the classroom because of the educational structures in place. I think that I would like to bring in guest speakers in my field with different backgrounds to share their research and their experiences in the field; bringing in different viewpoints can be a first step towards a top-down approach toward reorganizing and decolonizing higher education. I have several friends who have done this previously, and student responses have been overall positive. But I think that this will be a long process, and will not be perfect in the beginning. I will have to investigate these methods so that I can implement them properly in my own classroom.
How can I apply materials from this session to my own class to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning?
The assignments in this course stuck with me, and are something that I think I will implement in my own future courses. The discussion posts are an assignment that I've had previously, but I have not had a movie analysis before. I can see this being an assignment that students enjoy (I know I did!). I also want to implement students writing something like a Medium post. I think this is a great way to get student research out to the public, rather than in a vacuum that exists between the student and the educator.
Professor: Dr. Riyad A. Shahjahan
Completed: Spring 2022
Description: In this competency, I learned about how teaching and learning at the college level is affected by several factors, both internal and external to the university setting. This in turn can affect equity in regard to teaching and learning conditions. We learned these concepts through a variety of methods, including movies, books, journal articles, and discussion posts.
Through this course, students learn about how higher education is structured, and how the structure affects access, equity, and inclusion. Dr. Shahjahan's course was divided into three modules that explore these topics in depth:
Module 1 - Conceptualizing Teaching, Learning, and Sites of Learning Beyond the Classroom
Module 2 - Sociocultural Contexts of Teaching and Learning
Module 3 - Towards a Decolonizing Pedagogy in Global Contexts
You can read a detailed course description here.
Artifacts and Rationale:
Artifact: EAD 871: Collegiate Contexts for Teaching and Learning syllabus
Rationale: The syllabus was provided to students enrolled in the course. It shows the scope of the course, the expected outcomes, the required movies and readings for the course, and associated assignments (including a movie analysis, a novel analysis, and a Medium post).
The content in the course allows students to learn more about several of the different factors that can affect student learning, including what characterizes teaching and learning in collegiate learning and what conditions and forces shape sites of learning. We all know the personal situations that affect our own learning ability, but we are not always aware of what others have had to go through (or are currently going through) when navigating higher education. The material from this course provides insight into these different viewpoints, something that all educators (and future educators) should be aware of when working with students. Additionally, we learned about the collegiate structures in place that prevent access, equity, and and inclusion, and how we can potentially move towards a decolonized educational system.
Material Developed for the Course: Module 3 assignment - Decolonizing Visual Media: Citation
Rationale: For Modules 1 and 2, we were required to do a movie and novel analysis, respectively. For Module 1, I analyzed the movie Mona Lisa Smile, directed by Mike Newell (2003). I dove into the differences between traditional and nontraditional learning sites in the movie, as well as the idea of self-directed learning. For Module 2, I read Moo, a book about a Midwest university and the perspectives of several of the people associated with the campus, written by Jane Smiley (1995). I discussed the role of affect and space in my analysis of the novel.
My Module 3 assignment was a Medium post on a movie of our choice that represented a case study of decolonizing pedagogy in the collegiate context. I chose to watch Citation, based out of Nigeria and directed by Kunle Afolayan (2020). This story is based on true events from universities across Nigeria, Ghana, and Lagos, and follows the main character's experiences with sexual harassment and attempted rape by a new, distinguished professor. My analysis discusses how a decolonizing paradigm could be beneficial in situations such as those depicted in the movie, along with potential new learning experiences for the students in the film who are pursuing higher education. I follow this with limitations that come with this paradigm.
I am sharing this assignment as my chosen material to from the course for several reasons. First, it is created for public consumption, and uses several types of media that makes the material more accessible to viewers and a jumping point to learn more about decolonizing education. Second, this describes the story that many students have had to face and is an important topic to talk about, especially when thinking about some of the barriers and obstacles for students pursuing higher education.
Reflection:
What skills and techniques did I learn that will help me become a better educator?
This course discussed the long-standing structures in education, and how these can act as barriers for students. As an anthropologist, I have had critically think about the role of cultural differences and power dynamics, especially when considering the history of biological anthropology and archaeology. This course reminded me to think critically about teaching and learning contexts and how they shape student learning. This will make me a better educator because I now better understand these contexts and what it means to decolonize learning; importantly, I now know where to look for this type of scholarship so that I can keep myself updated with new teaching and learning research as it is published.
What things am I still uncertain about regarding this topic that I need to investigate further in the future?
I am not uncertain about the topics themselves, but I am uncertain about how to implement a decolonizing paradigm in the classroom because of the educational structures in place. I think that I would like to bring in guest speakers in my field with different backgrounds to share their research and their experiences in the field; bringing in different viewpoints can be a first step towards a top-down approach toward reorganizing and decolonizing higher education. I have several friends who have done this previously, and student responses have been overall positive. But I think that this will be a long process, and will not be perfect in the beginning. I will have to investigate these methods so that I can implement them properly in my own classroom.
How can I apply materials from this session to my own class to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning?
The assignments in this course stuck with me, and are something that I think I will implement in my own future courses. The discussion posts are an assignment that I've had previously, but I have not had a movie analysis before. I can see this being an assignment that students enjoy (I know I did!). I also want to implement students writing something like a Medium post. I think this is a great way to get student research out to the public, rather than in a vacuum that exists between the student and the educator.