Teaching Partners

Improving Teaching and Learning at UW-Stevens Point

Teaching Partners at UW-Stevens Point are faculty and teaching academic staff who are paired and asked to begin a discussion about teaching and learning. With the assistance of their partner, they learn a process to help begin critically evaluating their own teaching practices. Partners are paired across disciplines to give them an opportunity to meet colleagues in a field outside of their own and to be exposed to new teaching perspectives. Participants generally agree that taking part in this program:

  1. increases their perceptions about the importance of teaching as it relates to their job
  2. helps develop a greater sense of collegiality and community with their partner and within the college
  3. initiates critical reflection on the meanings, intentions and beliefs that drive their teaching and learning practice

The Teaching Partners program respects the autonomy of each faculty member as each partner's work is directed toward reaching the goals that they set for themselves. Collaboration and collegiality are at its heart and are supported through many structured and unstructured discussion opportunities during the year-long process.

Initiated by the College of Professional Studies in 1993 this program has served more than 90% of the college faculty and is now being implemented in other colleges on campus. For more information please contact the program coordinator, Kristi Roth at (715) 346-2889, kroth@uwsp.edu.

Purposes:

  1. CPS faculty/staff perceptions about the importance of the teaching component of their positions will increase.
  2. CPS faculty/staff will develop a greater sense of collegiality and community as they focus together on teaching and learning.
  3. CPS faculty/staff will more critically reflect with others about teaching and learning, thinking not only about practice but the meanings/intentions/beliefs that drive their practice.

Rationale:

The rationale for the Teaching Partners program reflects the work of Wildman and Niles (1987) who concluded that three conditions are necessary in order to bring about change in the process of teaching.

  1. Autonomy: participants must have substantial freedom to direct their own growth.
  2. Collaboration: Collegial collaboration breaks the grip of psychological isolation from other professionals that often characterizes the workplace.
  3. Time: Efforts at professional development that ignore the fundamental relationship between time and complex learning are likely to yield negligible or even negative results.

The Teaching Partners program reflects these three conditions. The program respects the autonomy of the individual faculty member as each partner’s work is directed toward reaching his/her own goals. This collaborative program stretches over an academic year, recognizing the fact that there are no “quick-fixes” when making changes toward teaching improvment.

Assumptions:

The Teaching Partners program is based upon the following assumptions:

  • Effective teaching can be identified.
  • Effective teaching comes about over time through reflection and feedback.
  • All teachers involved in this process want to be the most effective teachers they can be.
  • All teachers, even those considered the very best, can become more effective.

Process:

  1. Dean and Coordinator (Kristi Roth) invite 10 faculty/staff to participate and select pairs.
  2. Fall meeting introduces the process.
  3. Partners meet, choose one course on which to focus, discuss the course, its goals, methods tried.
  4. Each semester, Partners visit each others’ chosen class while the teacher is out of the room and work with the students to solicit helpful information about what is and is not facilitating their learning (Student-Guided Instructional Diagnosis-SGID).
  5. Partners share information from students and discuss possibilities. Faculty makes some changes and explains to class why others cannot be made.
  6. Partners meet again in January and in May to discuss teaching topics. Additional seminars may be scheduled.
  7. Partners have access to $100 each for their professional use; the College funds two Partners attendance at a teaching conference; teaching journals are circulated among the group; Partners are added to the UWSP listserv on teaching.

Useful Sites: