Nudging toward a culture of teaching excellence at research-intensive institutions

Abstract

The Framing the Future 2030 report calls for schools and programs in public health to “embrace transformative educational practices”. A vital precursor to the wide adoption of these practices is to elevate the culture of teaching in our institutions. Unlike research, where team science and collaboration are valued, teaching is historically seen as a private endeavor, where the only witnesses to a teacher's successes and challenges are their students.

Many faculty seek to improve their teaching practices, but embracing transformative educational practices will require our faculty to harness their inquisitive natures, be willing to extend out of their comfort zones, and, above all, celebrate their successes and learn from their failures with each other. This sharing of experiences can accelerate the adoption of innovative teaching practices that work. We often seek to develop a community of learners for our students. These communities enhance the work done in the classroom, increase students’ intrinsic motivation, and foster their sense of belonging. Professional learning communities among teachers have been shown to improve teaching practices and foster instructor innovation. A fundamental characteristic of such professional learning communities is the willingness of the teachers to openly discuss their practices with their colleagues.

At the Yale School of Public Health, we have been engaged in concerted efforts to increase opportunities for faculty to discuss their teaching with each other. We hypothesized that these efforts would increase the faculty's willingness to share their teaching experiences. Our efforts included events like workshops, journal clubs, and other mechanisms designed to increase the perception that peer faculty also value being effective instructors. This talk will detail the operational steps we have taken, successes and failures in these efforts, and qualitative and quantitative analyses of seven years of faculty self-reports as indicators of our changing culture of teaching. These data also reveal possible positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the culture of teaching.

Attendees of this presentation will be encouraged to consider the state of the culture of teaching at their home institutions and whether their pedagogical development efforts are aimed at elevating this culture or improving educational practices despite it.

Learning Objectives

• Identify strategies for elevating peer discussions of teaching among faculty;
• Examine methods that can be used to measure a culture of teaching excellence;
• Describe possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the culture of teaching excellence.