Shift Happens: Teacher Identities and Success

I’ve been working with new college teachers for about twenty years now, and I’ve come to a conclusion, based entirely on experience and observation: 

Those who make a successful transition in their professional identity from “subject matter expert who teaches” to “teacher of subject matter” make the best teachers for college students.

Why is this so important? It leads to better teaching and learning, that’s why.

Teachers come to the college setting from many diverse walks of life (trades, business, industry, social service, the arts, health professions etc.) and seem to fall into two categories:

           1) They are very good at what they do, but have a drive to share their expertise with        coming generations;

           2) They have not been able to find satisfying work in their field, or are ready to move on from it for various reasons.

Interestingly, people from both categories can make excellent teachers.  The key thing is that they realize that their expertise is a “necessary but not sufficient” foundation for good teaching.   

It’s obviously necessary that a teacher know the subject matter, but information and skills in almost all fields are changing and growing so quickly that even that foundation will need to be constantly repaired and built upon if the teacher is to remain current and effective in modelling and conveying the requirements of their field. As important, however, is the realization that knowledge is not enough, that the ability to teach well requires a whole new area of knowledge and skill: that of adult learning. And those who struggled to learn their subject themselves are perhaps more likely to realize that more is needed if student learning is to be successful. 

That old saw “those who can’t do, teach” has a grain of truth to it: “those who struggled to do, may know best what is needed in order to learn”.  If the novice teacher does not experience this epiphany, his or her courses are quite likely to fall into the “lecture and test” mode.  The emphasis is on “somehow” pouring the knowledge from the teacher’s brain into the vessel of the student’s brain, and then testing to see if it got there okay.  As most of us know, there’s “many a slip ‘tween cup and (in this case) student brain”! These kinds of teachers assume that if they just “tell” what they know, then the students will learn it, too. This may have been enough back when we were teaching the elite, well-prepared 10% of the population—need I explain that this is no longer a description of our student population?

When a new teacher’s primary allegiance is to his/her discipline, it may be some time before equal (or any) attention is paid to learning how learning itself happens: how to design curriculum and lessons to incorporate the active strategies that research has amply proven are best for learning; how to provide frequent formative feedback to students so they can test their growing mastery; how to create evaluation tools that measure the more important, deep learning that we hope our students are gaining. 

Until that allegiance begins to shift, teaching is effective only by chance.  Once the identity begins to move in the direction of “professional educator,” teaching becomes more deliberate, more diverse, more reflective, and, in consequence, more effective. And that makes for much higher job satisfaction, less burnout, and better results at all levels. 

Much of my work in recent years has been focused on finding ways to start and support that shift.  I am always thrilled when I hear my colleagues say “I’m a teacher ... of ... ”.   

Shift happens!

Ruth Rodgers

Teaching & Learning Specialist
Centre for Academic and Faculty Enrichment (C.A.F.E.)
Durham College