Unpacking Brookfield's Assumptions of the Skillful Teacher: Reflective Lens On Practice.

Brookfield (2015) purports four assumptions about skillful teaching. These include:

1. Skillfull teaching is whatever helps the students to learn.

2. Skillful teachers adapt a critically reflective stance toward their practice.

3. Skillful teachers have the insight to recognize that to do good work they need to have constant awareness how students experience their learning and how their actions are being perceived by students.

4. College students of any age should be treated as adults.

Assumption 1: Skillfull teaching is whatever helps students to learn.

As Brookfield (2015) points out, there is no need to be bewildered by the added complexity this assumption adds to our teaching practice due to the inherent variarion in modes of learning among students. The take away message of this assumption for me is a call to reflect on my habits of mind and enacted practices in teaching to evaluate their usefulness in enhancing the learning objective for students. Whether these habits of mind and practices are built on previous experience, uninformed assumptions or burrowed from trusted collegues, taking this assumption seriously means having the vigilance to scrutinize their applicability to the dynamics in the learning space I find myself in presently. It is the awareness to constantly question if my actions are barriers to learning or increasing learning.

I recall my own enthusiasm in wanting to implement collaborative instructional strategies such as group work and peer teaching as oppose to lecture based instruction. This was driven in part by my review of literature in which these were highlighted as effective tools for engagement. Fortunately, due to the team teach context of practice, I had the insight to connect with my senior colleague about my ideas.

I realised that cultural context as it relates to precedent was an important consideration and any change had to be strategic and would have to factor in curriculum instruction, student knowledge and skill level. Any push to implement the literature ideal would have been a serious deterrent to learning resulting in losing my credibility as an instructor as students would have been more likeky to see this style not as an opportunity for engagement but a cause for a riot to replace an instructor who do not know what she is doing. New and different instructor with a completely different instruction strategy would have been too much to bring in the learning space all at once. Helping students learn meant postponing the literature ideal and keeping the familiarity to their mode of instruction.

Assumption 2: Skillful teachers adapt a critically reflective stance toward their practice.

Brookfield (2015) insight that if the point of teaching is to support learning then our instruction must follow informed pedagogic actions is self-evident and yet it can be missing from our enacted teaching practice. Assumption two is giving the instructor access to information that can be used to secure evidence based practices, the gift of critical reflection.

The author provides four lens the instructor can use for critical reflection on professional practice. These lens are that of the learners eyes, which we can gain through summative or formative feedback or critical inquiry questionnaire, the eyes of colleagues, literature review and our own autobiography in our own idiosyncratic experiences.

I consider myself fortunate to have entered my educator role in a team teach context because it ensures that I have no choice but to adapt a critically reflective lens to my professional practice. The benefit of that is having a set of eyes that help with blind spots and a support system to bounce ideas off on.

I have been fortunate to be a part of a team with members who are committed to the vision of learners success, open to perspectives other than their own and who have been willing to share their years of experience and expertise. As a team, we have used open communication, collaboration and our shared dedication to deliver our best to learners to guard againgst the five dysfuctions of a team described by Lencioni, 2002.

We each know and own our tasks and communicate on how to pivot when things are not going as initially planned. This kind team teach environment has been a rich resource for learning at work for me. Unpacking the lens of colleagues and learners have had the most impact on my growth as an instructor.

Assumption 3: Skillful teachers have the insight to recognise that to do good work they need to have constant awareness how students experience their learning and how their actions are being perceived by students.

Assumption three could be viewed as a subdivision of assumption two as it is an unpacking of the learners lens; an attempt to experience the learning environment in the same way the learners do. Since we know the learning experience we are wanting learners to have, the ability to see what they are seeing allows us to have an index to guide our teaching techniques. In addition to a end of lecture quiz, I will implement a summative feedback at the end of each module that I teach.

Assumption 4: College students of any age should be treated as adults.

Brookfield (2015) highlights that learners in the college classroom do not mind teachers who are authoritative but they do disdain authoritarian instructors.

It has been my experience that this observation holds true. My experience in professional practice so far has been with learners who are pass the lower age range of early adulthood having already completed some form of higher education or stepped into the learning space with years of previous work experience.

These adult learners expect that their concerns and difficulties are not only taken seriously but more importantly addressed. I appreciated Brookfield (2015) frankness in stating that adult learners are suspicious of instructors who promote the idea of them being equal co-learners because promoting that idea creates a learning partnership that fosters mistrust. This assumption is a reminder for me to conscious of the fact adult learners of any age have already developed or is developing their sense of self in college. As such, I have an obligation to make sure that my interactions in communication and interaction reflect an adult to adult dynamics.

To end, I deem it necessary to answer two important questions:

1. What is the object of skillfull teaching?

2. What do we need to understand about becoming a skillful teacher?

Skillful teaching is about accelerating learning and involves everything the educator does to increase the likelihood of learning. This includes facilitating clear and effective communication, applying instructional strategies that both motivate and engage learners, use feedback instruments that allow one to monitor learning and pivot appropriately to secure learning. It also include providing learners with timely feedback.

Additionally, is what Knowles refer to as climate setting, which is what the instructor does to create an atmosphere that emanate psychological safety and mutual respect particularly when professional practice involve adults (Merriam and Bierema, 2015). Brookfield (2015) offered the profound insight that in order for instructors to do good work, instructors need to have insight of both how the learners are experiencing the learning space and the learners perceptions of the instructor's actions. Looking through the lens of the learners, allow for reflection and correction as needed.

I concur with Brookfield (2015) observations that teaching is frequently a gloriously messy pursuit in which shock, contradiction and risk are endemic and that there is no philosophy, theory, or model that could possibly capture every single aspect of the uniqueness that is within each teacher's individual experience. These two observations give insight into the reality that skillfull teaching is a life's work. No instructor is born with the innate ability to advance learning in the learning space. They must equip themselves with the ability to read the dynamics of that space. Skillful teachers are made skillfull not born skillful.

References

1. Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The skillful teacher (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

2. Merriam, S. B., and Bierema, L.L. (2014). Adult Learning Linking Theory and Practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

3. Le Lencioni, P.M. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team. Jossey-Bass.