Creating a Community of Learners Among College Faculty Through the Use of Reflective Practice

by Cheryl M. Jorgensen, Ph.D., Joseph J. Onosko, Ph.D., & Cate Weir, M.Ed. University of New Hampshire

"I have a student in my class who has an Accommodation Plan developed through our Disability Support Office. It seems pretty sketchy. Are there some things I ought to know in order to best meet this student's needs?"

"The students in my large intro class fall asleep, turn in poor work, and seem disinterested in the material. I know I should be doing something other than lecturing, but how can I make the class more engaging while still covering all the material I need to?"

"I have my students do a group project at the end of the semester. Would rubrics be a way to assess each student's contribution to that project and have them evaluate one another's work as well?"

These are the kinds of questions that seven faculty members wrestled with during their first year as members of a "Reflective Practice Group" at the University of New Hampshire. They were one of four New Hampshire higher education institutions that participated in a project called "Equity and Excellence in Higher Education" (awarded to UNH's Institute on Disability by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education) that supported faculty to restructure their teaching practices in order improve postsecondary outcomes for diverse students. The project acknowledges that today's college students represent greater diversity than ever before: some are just out of high school, some took a few years off to work, some represent linguistic and cultural diversity, and others are making mid-life career changes. More and more of college students also have physical, sensory, cognitive, or emotional disabilities (Henderson, 1999).

The structured and unstructured conversations that faculty had in their RP groups exemplify classic "reflective practice" - defined by Montie et al. (no date) as taking a "deliberate pause to examine a behavior, goal, practice, or experience." RP is operationalized into specific strategies and actions by individual faculty or by groups of faculty members, for the ultimate purpose of improving student learning and performance.

Most reflective practice groups use "protocols" to guide their discussions (Allen, 1995). A protocol is a structured set of process guidelines that promotes meaningful and efficient communication and learning. Protocols keep groups focused on the topic at hand, discourage "yeah, but" thinking, and promote friendly critique. Gene-Thompson Grove, co-director of the National School Reform Faculty project of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (which originated protocols for K-12 school reform work) explains that "[protocols] permit a certain kind of conversation to occur, often a kind of conversation which people are not in the habit of having. Protocols are vehicles for building the skills and culture necessary for collaborative work. Thus, using protocols often allows groups to build trust by actually doing substantive work together" (Annenberg Institute for School Reform,1998).

A faculty member may want suggestions and feedback about the design of a course syllabus, a teaching strategy, course materials, the best use of technology, a design for an experiment, ideas for an end-of-course final project, or strategies to support a student with particularly challenging learning needs. She may want to look at the work that students produce and ask the question "Did they learn what I think I taught?" While there are more than 20 different protocols that are used to address different problems or situations, most have some common elements such as giving non-judgmental feedback, having the presenting faculty member "step outside" the group during a discussion of possible solutions to their problem, and giving the presenting faculty member control over which suggestions he might try.

Dr. Meg Peterson, a faculty member in the English Department at Plymouth State College who is part of two RP groups at her college, praised the RP process. "The hour that I spend in my RP group is one of the most productive of my whole week. After 10 years here at Plymouth, I have learned to stay away from those activities that sap my energy; RP re-energizes me. Not only do I see tangible results in my students' work, but participation in these groups has changed the way I think about my teaching."

Reflective practice has the potential to improve instruction, increase collaboration among faculty, and promote great success among the increasingly diverse students enrolled in college today.

The authors coordinate the "Equity and Excellence in Higher Education Project" funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, grant #P33A99035. It supports reflective practice work on four New Hampshire college campuses.