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Professional Development

Instruc­tors require four kinds of knowl­edge to be an effec­tive edu­ca­tor.

Col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty instruc­tors most often come to the posi­tion with­out strengths in all four knowl­edge areas. When instruc­tors are build­ing their pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment plan they should con­sid­er a bal­anced approach of all four com­po­nents and a vari­ety of for­mats such as con­fer­ences, work­shops, sym­posia, book read­ing, peer obser­va­tion, port­fo­lio devel­op­ment, and schol­ar­ly activ­i­ties such as action research and stu­dent engaged projects.

A handy Venn dia­gram has been devel­oped to help out­line these four kinds of knowl­edge. See below for image and PDF of image.

Most often instruc­tors tend to focus on the bot­tom left area (knowl­edge of area — sub­ject, dis­ci­pline, trade etc) to ensure they are cur­rent and teach­ing the most appro­pri­ate con­tent. But the top two areas are equal­ly impor­tant in terms of hav­ing knowl­edge about how stu­dents learn the discipline/subject area. Instruc­tors need to be acute­ly aware of what pri­or knowl­edge stu­dents often bring to the class­room and what com­mon mis­con­cep­tions and con­cep­tions they hold about the top­ic or dis­ci­pline to be stud­ied. The sci­ence of learn­ing (how learn­ing and think­ing works) has a sig­nif­i­cant impact on under­stand­ing learn­ers and their learn­ing jour­ney. When edu­ca­tors have a broad­er under­stand­ing of how the brain works along with mem­o­ry, cog­ni­tive load and atten­tion, they can bet­ter design a course and respond to stu­dent needs.

Learn­ing design is anoth­er core knowl­edge piece that often isn’t always picked up on the job. Learn­ing design is the skill set about how to ‘build the learn­ing house’ (aka the course) from foun­da­tion to the roof and all that is in between. This is more than just fol­low­ing a text­book set of chap­ters and slide decks. Learn­ing design starts with good learn­ing out­comes and then cre­at­ing an aligned course with linked appli­ca­tion activ­i­ties and demon­stra­tions of learn­ing. Learn­ing design ties all the pieces togeth­er with the foun­da­tion­al knowl­edge of teach­ing and learn­ing prac­tices and ped­a­go­gies and then links all cours­es under the pro­gram or cre­den­tial area for an holis­tic learn­ing expe­ri­ence.

Cred­it: Based on Stephen Chew’s 2023 arti­cle, The Types of Knowl­edge for Effec­tive Teach­ing (Research Gate Link) this frame­work includes knowl­edge of learn­ing design as a core area for effec­tive teach­ing. 

Dia­gram: Liesel Knaack, 2023 | Hand­out of Image: PDF Ver­sion

Self-Enrol Bright­space Cours­es (Can­not find this page, per­haps it is sim­ply a link to Bright­space? If so, lets explain that there are cours­es avail­able for self enroll­ment in bright­space that instruc­tors can use for Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment. We won;t list what the cours­es are, as this will change, but will pro­vide a basic link to that loca­tion of Bright­space.)