Feedback from Theory and Research

Brookfield (1995) suggests reading learning and teaching theory and research literature has the following advantages:

  • Help us investigate the hunches, instincts, and tacit knowledge that shapes our teaching
  • Help us better understand what we already do and think
  • Suggest alternative teaching strategies and learning activities
  • Break the circle of habit and familiarity
  • Reduce our sense of isolation by illuminating generic aspects of what we thought was only happening to us
  • Locate our teaching and our students’ learning in a social context

Looking through the lens of theory and research can involve:
  • Participating in professional development programs
  • Attending conferences
  • Reading discipline and teaching and learning journals
  • Refereeing conference papers or journal articles
  • Engaging in scholarly research about learning and teaching (alone or with others)
  • Being a member of a professional association with a focus on learning and teaching
  • Compose a teaching philosophy statement
  • Critical questioning what you read and recording your responses in a teaching portfolio:
  • Are the ideas presented by researchers predetermined by the paradigm in which they work?
  • To what extent are the insights grounded in evidence?
  • Is the writing culturally biased?
  • Are ethical issues acknowledged and addressed?
  • Whose voices are heard (or absent from the text)?
  • Whose interests are served by this research?
 

For further information:

Brookfield, S. (1995). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. UC Library LB2331.B677 1995.

Link here to other TLC resources pages and to key journals



|For more information email - Coralie.McCormack@canberra.edu.au|