Educational Autobiography

I’m actually finding writing my educational biography a lot harder than I gave it credit for… the more I sit back and reflect on my education the more I wonder if I’ve ever really been properly motivated by my educators?  It’s probably better that I start the story of my educational misfortune nearer the end with some employment history as I feel that this is the area where I’ve been forced to self educate and I’ve discovered the most about how I learn…

Throughout my career as an engineer I’ve had numerous bosses and I can honestly say that very few of them have been inspirational to me during my career.  The chosen inspirational few have all come with their various faults and shortcomings (as we all do), but I’ve been able to see beyond these as they’ve retained a certain quality that’s made me think… “you know what, I could live for 100 lifetimes and I’d never be able to do that…” or “… how on earth do they have such perception or intuition?”.  Being in the presence of greatness for me is a hugely motivating experience and (Pink, 2010) makes a very convincing argument as to the benefits of motivation to the learning experience.

In fact I think I’ve only left one job I’ve had since graduation where I’ve genuinely been sad to stop working for that specific boss.  This is because either the boss I enjoyed working for has seen the light and gone off to do something far more rewarding before I’ve moved on and left a sizeable vacuum after their departure or quite frankly I’ve struggled to find a quality within them as an employer that I’ve wanted to aspire too… sure some of them have been nice people but professionally I’ve been left wanting.

When I’ve left a company I’ve always missed the people I’ve worked with without exception, colleagues and team mates have always been very supportive and a key factor why it took me so long to hand my notice in, but generally I’ve found most of my bosses have been promoted to their corresponding level of incompetency (Lazear, 2004) and then stalled at that point as they struggle to adjust to their new roles and I’ve slowly lost either faith or respect for them and this has been a deciding factor to leave the company.

I’m not what you’d call a people person, I’m very comfortable talking to people but only if there’s good reason for me too (I’d make a dreadful hair dresser as I really don’t care for polite chit chat) but once I’ve found a reason to start talking to someone I find interesting, I usually find it difficult to stop asking questions and trying to understand their experiences and I can relate to (Ausubel et al., 1968) wanting to measure someone’s experience before they can learn, although I’m usually trying to measure my own experience from those that are more knowledgeable.  The peers on the @pgcap course for example I find absolutely fascinating with such a broad range of experience and capabilities and the biggest benefit I’ve identified from the programme so far is having the opportunity to meet these types of people and access their experience and understand their different approaches, allowing me to suck the good ideas from straight between their ears and I’m finding it similar to some of the service learning processes I’ve been reading about by (Rodriguez-Falcon and Yoxall, 2010) where learning happens from engaging with your community, or in this case my peers.  Interestingly this engagement with my peers and having them teach me what they know and me returning the favour is one of the stages from the 7 stage process identified by (Race, 2010, Race, 2006) and whilst the context is slightly different and less formal I still feel the comparison is valid.  This can be further expanded by taking on board some of the guidance and aspirations set out within the UKPSF which I feel are critical to the success of education generally such as:-

Commitment to development of learning communities

and

Evaluation of practice and continuing professional development

Both of which I’m beginning to appreciate more fully the advantages of having been subject to such a diverse spectrum of talent, unfortunately I’ve felt that at the University and in my educational past, the process can sometimes become overly competitive and collaboration falls by the wayside, but I’ve resisted falling into the trap for the past few years and I intend to approach my teaching and learning experiences in an open and sharing manner.

I’m comfortable in my own company and can work quite happily with little interaction with other people, but I love working in teams and it’s my preferred method of working, especially when I perceive myself as being the least qualified or experienced member.  I thrive on watching a master at work… this is when learning really happens for me at an accelerated rate, watching someone who is genuinely gifted at what they do and watching them do it well is an experience that never grows tiring or tedious.  If they’re able to articulate to me why they’re doing things a particular way with some form of narrative or description, then for me this is a perfect learning environment. Speaking with someone who’s particularly talented is a real positive experience for me and it’s easy to dismiss some of these successes as being down to natural talent, but as has been discussed at length by (Gladwell, 2009, Syed, 2011) with a little application and a lot of hard work, improvement and development of skills can be achieved to levels matching those with natural talent.

Unfortunately as the years roll by, society becomes busier and busier and the capacity to mentor and to transfer experience and information so that the student has the capacity to convert it to knowledge is becoming increasingly scarce.  I agree with (Poitras and Poitras, 2011) and I long for the days where a master would take on an apprentice and train them  to become a true craftsman, but with the pressures of every day modern life, the ability for the educational jedi to mentor and nurture lowly padawans such as myself is becoming an increasing rarity.  Just the simple opportunity of being able to see what formwork looks like in the flesh rather than having it described to you makes for a much more solid learning framework and this transformational curriculum style of teaching with flexibility in learning environments is positive in my experience and indeed this is reflected in the UK PSF that has the following as one of its key indicators, which fits well with flexible spaces and a variety of opportunities for the students.

Developing effective environments and student support and guidance

And this brings me back to my educational biography, where I think for the vast majority of my educational experience from primary school through to University I’ve pretty much felt underwhelmed on my educational journey.  I’ve been taught by some very competent and (politely speaking) less than competent teachers over the years, I’ve failed at numerous points of my academic life due to lack of application on my part, only to find this failure has forced me to find another non-mainstream educational route, where I’ve been able to relate to what I’ve been taught and why I need to learn it and this has made all the difference to my own realisation of why I need to learn.  Doing a quick tally of various educators I’ve been entrusted to through the years including primary school, secondary school, colleges, universities and, professional educators out of these 50 or 60 so educators I’ve been subjected too only two or three have stuck in my mind as being pleasurable experiences, with the rest firmly assigned to the box labelled, “going through the motions”.  It’s interesting as I start to get to grips with some of the literature that these poor educators are described adeptly by various researchers (Ramsden, 2003, Catalano and Catalano, 1999) but even though the existence of lazy educators who throw the entire onus back on to the students is well known and shouldn’t be encouraged, their prevalence is still quite high.

Why do I hold so few positive memories of educators? I really don’t know, as a student I know I’m a nightmare to teach because I can come across as being argumentative when learning, but this is simply my enthusiasm for wanting to know why all the time, I find it difficult when learning a new concept just to accept a fact without knowing why.  Indeed this is a challenge I’m facing at the moment with accepting that I can be evaluated and graded through writing a blog, despite the evidence of positive experiences using this system discussed by (Feest and Iwugo, 2006) but the fact that I’m actually taking a step back and reflecting on how feasible this is and that I’m able to identify where on the reflection cycle described by (Moon, 2001) I am, has to demonstrate that I’m starting to expand my thinking and indeed it is starting to filter into my teaching practice both at a conscious and subconscious level.  Although part of me wonders if I always taught that way, but never quite knew why… either way it’s a new day, a new dawn for me I think.

I do however respond very positively to people that are clearly making an effort to do their jobs well and to impart their understanding of the world passionately and unreservedly… when I meet someone like this then I’m usually inspired and enthused to the point where I struggle to focus on anything else but the learning experience.   Educators that identify the value of what they’re teaching with a  real world application perhaps through integration of story telling (McDrury and Alterio, 2003) are a vital component to my learning and the benefits of industry involvement in engineering education are well documented (Lamancusa et al., 2006, Dutson et al., 1997).

I bet the few remaining readers of this drawn out rambling diatribe are all wondering what does any of this really have to do with my educational biography.  Well I think for me the few positive experiences that I’ve had in education have all been born by people who are more than one-dimensional. I’ve been taught maths for example by knowledgeable mathematicians and by experienced teachers brimming with pedagogical theories and techniques.  Both of these types of educators have left me reaching for a sharpened pencil to jab in my eye at times purely to maintain some form of interest… however, once these two types of approaches are combined and you’re being taught by someone who is a brilliant mathematician, can show you how it relates to the real world, has 50 different ways of teaching you when you don’t get it the first time, and is superbly adept at picking just the right technique to suit your method of learning, then the experience is almost magical and can help to build expertise (Litzinger et al., 2011).

Historically I’ve been encouraged to play the shallow learning game (Race, 2006) to cram just enough information between my ears to be successful at an exam and then to effectively forget all of that learning never to be harvested or applied again.  I’ve heard this process informally compared to masturbation, a pointless task, ultimately requiring a great deal of energy but resulting in no long term benefit.

Occasionally though I’ve been encouraged by a very small number of people to go the extra mile and engage in deep learning (or strategic learning masquerading as deep learning) to the point where my understanding is so far engrained into my psyche that I’m able to articulate it in a multitude of ways and have a mass of examples and stories that I can use to help transfer the knowledge building process.  (Higley and Marianno, 2001, Robinson, 1998, Catalano and Catalano, 1999, Ausubel et al., 1968, Sowey, 1995, Martin, 2003) have all shown that once this level of understanding exists then you’re able to approach subjects from unorthodox angles, linking into principles the students can relate too and then extrapolate them into new areas of study and actually make learning fun!

I’m really grateful to the few shining beacons of educational brilliance (and family) that have managed to drag me across the educational finish line to a point where I can hold my head up high and point to a brimming trophy cabinet of engineering achievements.

The effort involved has been worth it and that’s the sort of educator I want to be… I don’t want my students to feel short changed at any point when they’re in my lectures, I want them to actively feel like they really must learn this ‘stuff’ because it’s useful, relevant and actually quite good fun.  Similar to Randy Pausch, one of the lecturing legends who recently passed away, I want to enable the dreams of others.  Some of the qualities that I aspire to are encapsulated within the UKPSF guidance, which I feel is quite a vague document that in the hands of the uneducated could be misinterpreted and misapplied, but hopefully as more and more lecturers pass through PGCE and PGCAP programmes the embedment of the UKPSF guidance will become second nature.  I’m also hopeful that as my peers are awarded their teaching awards, that they actually become ambassadors for good teaching practice and share their experience, perhaps hosting 1o minute sample lectures, with a 20 minute rerun complete with the ‘directors cut’ narrative about why they decided to teach that topic in that specific way… perhaps if I reach those dizzying heights, I’ll make the effort to set something like that myself, but I’ll worry about it if I get that far.

As a professional engineer I’ve refused to hide behind the engineering terminology and jargon that is so prevalent in the industry and instead adopted a very straightforward, inclusive approach to the team members and this has reaped massive dividends for me in my career and for my reputation as an engineer and it’s something I’m genuinely passionate about maintaining and to be successful in a hard fought industry you have to work hard, as engineers are not made in heaven (Cook, 2011) they are beaten into shape through their experiences.

I want my students to benefit from an inclusive approach and to take the positive experiences away with them, I want them to become the future mentors that they may so badly lack after their graduation, I want them to become great engineers that don’t hide behind complicated formulas and strange vocabularies, I want them to actually look forward to coming to my lectures and to develop a hunger for learning, I want them to go into industry brimming with self belief and well placed confidence, producing fantastic designs that change the skylines around the world, designing buildings where everyone on that building site comes home safely at night time and no-one is an unfortunate victim of sloppy thinking and through the cutting of corners but mostly I want them to be able to fulfil their dreams and influence the world in a positive way which is something that so few of us get to experience on a grand scale.  My action plan is simple, perhaps overly simplistic, but my main focus is to ensure that my teaching skills are as broad as my engineering skills, by not being closed to new ideas and instead trying them in a safe environment where their potential failure won’t impact on the students I think I can achieve this.

I think I’ll never truly be an academic, I’ve wanted to be a structural engineer since I was 6 and developed an understanding of what an engineer was at a very early age which is perceived as a positive by (Capobianco et al., 2011) and having worked hard to be successful at this I don’t think I want to let go of being an engineer.  Having seen quite a few of my childhood friends die from drugs or sectarian violence, I’m all to aware that life is short… and I fully intend to not regret a day.  I’ve openly embraced the philosophy that “every day is a school day” for years and thrust this mantra onto my graduates and in an age where people are frightened to move outside their circle of comfort or influence (Covey, 2004) quite frankly I’m game for most things (providing they’re sort of legal) and indeed having watched people frozen through fear of change over the years, I’d rather give it a go and be sacked for doing something than nothing.  I’m fortunate that my discipline recently set an essay question for students to list out what they thought made a good engineering lecturer (Collins and Davies, 2009) and the top answers were…

• Approachability (56%)
• Use of real-world examples (56%)
• Diversity of teaching tools/media (49%)
• Enthusiasm (42%)
• Good communication skills (40%)

These were a close match to a similar exercise set in 2004 and show that students experiences are similar to my own misgivings with my education in that I wanted to understand relevance of what I was being taught and wanted to be inspired with some enthusiasm from the lecturer… I hope that I can cover both of those parts in my own way, but the part that frightens me the most is the approachability part, I’m a kitten once you get to know me, but I look like a bailiff and I’m far from a wall flower, perhaps I should let my hair grow so I don’t look so scary?  But I guess the biggest opportunity I have to learn, develop, reflect and update is listen to my students… they’re not the only ones that benefit from feedback you know! This two way dialogue and hopefully my entire approach will sit well with the UK PSF, but more importantly than that to me, I hope it sits well with my students. Plus, if the Young Ones have taught me anything, it’s that you reap what sow…

My personal approach to learning is quite uncompromising and is best summed up by the little green ball of wisdom known as Yoda “Do, or do not, there is no try.” (Kershner, 1980)… May the force be with you all…

EDIT 1:

Thanks to some initial feedback from my mentor before the closing deadline for submission of my Educational Biography it would appear that I’ve done an excellent job of hiding my action plan in amongst the waffle and reflection above, so hopefully with a little extraction from the above I can crystallise my plan as a set of key deliverables and be more specific about my intentions… this will also make it much easier to measure myself in the future to see how successful I’ve been.

I’ve also linked these back to the relevant UKPSF stages that I feel can be covered within this aims… ambitious I know, but I think they’re achievable on the whole, initially through a series of short term improvements, but mainly through continuing on with a series of long term commitments.

Action plan item 1. (UKPSF AA1, AA2, AA4, CK5, PV2 & PV3)

Following from my own difficulties in education, the (Collins and Davies, 2009) survey outlined above, the UKPSF guidelines, and my own professional background I will ensure that I will identify to the students the relevance of what I am teaching to their future professional careers.  I will invite feedback from the group and further promote the classroom as being a safe environment where no question will be classed as the ‘daft question’.  This will start at the planning stage of my teaching, carrying through to delivery, assessment and feedback from the students to help improve future deliveries of the courses that I teach. I will welcome feedback from my students, peers and professional educators and actively seek it out and engage with best practice communities internally and hopefully externally as my confidence and abilities grow.  I will treat every day as if it is a school day and learn something new from students every day.

Action plan item 2. (UKPSF AA1, AA2, CK3 & CK4)

I will design and deliver my lectures without hiding behind jargon and overly complicated language and promote the use of a wide variety of teaching techniques and technologies to give my teaching breadth (including, but not limited to reflection and values based learning) and to cater to a variety of learning styles.  This will require me to expand upon my current skill set and learn skills not ordinarily associated with teaching engineering.

Where possible I will try to promote open discussion within the classroom and integrate worked and unworked examples as a resource for the students.  Through the development of digital resources, physical models, story telling and analogies I intend to reinforce the learning experience for the students in as many ways as possible to support their learning styles.  I will not however push inappropriate technologies for technology sake, any technology used should be transparent and support learning, not hinder it.

Action plan item 3. (UKPSF AA6, CK6 & PV5)

In addition to maintaining my CPD requirements for my professional memberships, I will actively commit to dedicating the same consideration to my teaching development.  I will not allow myself to fall into a comfortable circuit of delivering the same lecture every year until its soul has been eaten and I no longer feel part of it (something I found demotivating in my own experience when being subjected to these kinds of lectures).  Instead I will continue to develop my materials and seek out new ways of teaching.  I will strive to “be the change I wish to see” and be at the front of best practice.  This could well involve creating a schedule of visiting presenters, associated site visits and using existing resources creatively including teaching locations.

Action plan item 4. (UKPSF AA1, AA5, CK2, PV2 & PV4)

I will share my research with my students in an accessible and open manner.  As a new academic I have a certain empathy with the trials and tribulations of academic writing, referencing, researching and I will continue to encourage research and an inquisitive mind within my students.  In parallel to my PGCAP course I am also sitting in various SPORT modules and WordScope to help with my PhD and will identify these and similar modules to the students to increase their ability to learn, I will help them to learn more efficiently.  To facilitate this I intend to either create a module or reinforce an existing module with additional material on lightweight structures, building upon the interest shown by the students in their final year dissertation topics set in these areas where I hope to encourage and support students to publish their work where appropriate.  I will also continue to run team taught session with the library staff on research techniques similar to the MSc one I organised earlier this year.

Action plan item 5. (UKPSF AA6, PV2, PV3 and PV4)

I will become an academic martini… I will collaborate wherever I can… anytime, anyplace, anywhere within my own physical limitations (occasionally I sleep) whether it be teaching, assessing, designing, researching or publishing.  I will create fruitful, open and valued relationships with anyone prepared to collaborate on positive activities, regardless of their experience, discipline, institution or political standing.  I will expand my boundaries far beyond my current comfort level, doing at least one thing every day that scares me.

References

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