I teach in the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership in the College of Education, Nursing, and Health Professions. Most students in our program are full-time professional adult learners, who bring a wealth of experience and specific practitioner-oriented needs. A unique aspect of being a faculty in this program is advising and mentoring students on their doctoral dissertations. The work of guiding and supervising doctoral students’ dissertation research projects demands time and individualized guidance. When planning or enacting my teaching and advising, I have our students’ prior knowledge, skills, strengths, and needs in mind.
In a piece I wrote on teaching philosophies (Loya, 2021b), I delineate the elements that instructors must reflect on as we consider the views and values that undergird our teaching. These elements encompass our views of reality/ontology, knowledge/epistemology, values/axiology, and pedagogies/methodology. In here, I expand on how these components define and are enacted in my instruction. My teaching is anchored in theoretical (i.e., sociocultural learning theories) and pedagogical (i.e., learner-centered) approaches that have empirically been proven effective. They afford me a reflective practice of teaching and learning where all students’ voices and perspectives are welcomed and embraced. In sum, I describe my instruction as inclusive and participatory.
My views and beliefs about teaching and learning are framed by sociocultural learning theories (also called social constructivism). From a sociocultural learning lens, learning is socially constructed, facilitated through social interaction, mediation, and carefully planned and implemented activities, assignments, assessments, and environments (Kelly & Green, 1998; Vygotsky, 1997/1978). Under this view, learning cannot happen in isolation. In my classrooms, I place learners at the center and redefine the role and responsibilities of both the instructor and the students. I plan all aspects of my teaching, from the content, to the pedagogies and assessments, with the goal of creating and maintaining spaces conducive to learning (Weimer, 2013). My goal is to foster environments where everyone feels welcomed, included, and participates in knowledge reception and creation (Loya, 2020). Both sociocultural theories and learner-centered instruction emphasize the importance of the learners, the roles and responsibilities of all participants, and the environments and social interactions required for effective teaching and learning. I explain next how I incorporate these aspects into my teaching from an inclusive teaching stance.
An Inclusive View of Learners. I teach in a practitioner-oriented doctorate for working adults with professional and personal lives and priorities; to be responsive to their needs, my courses include practical components that students can use immediately in their workplaces and in developing their dissertations. Specific learning outcomes vary by course, but the development of writing, critical thinking, and intercultural competence skills are part of all my courses. My instructional goals are shaped by professional values that transcend a single course, including upholding academic excellence, advocating for social justice, supporting student success, and promoting inclusive and formative learning settings (Loya, 2020). More than helping students obtain good grades or recall concepts, I seek to facilitate students’ journey in gaining the insights, expertise, and skills necessary to become educators who can advance scholarship, policy, and practice in higher education leadership.
When teaching, I am attuned to students’ prior knowledge and level of competence to adjust the course content and its delivery. Part of promoting an inclusive learning environment requires recognizing and valuing students’ unique strengths, skills, and needs; this in turn demands flexibility in all parts of the teaching and learning process. To accommodate to learners’ differing needs, abilities, and backgrounds, I employ a variety of instructional strategies and assessments. These include individual, paired, small group, and whole-class activities. Depending on the course, students are asked to present, reflect, think-pair-share, research online, work on case studies, build professional portfolios, and write scholarly papers. To facilitate mastery, for example, any writing assignment has at least two submissions, so students can receive timely, constructive, and extensive feedback on areas to be reworked.
Redefined Engaged Roles and Responsibilities. Learner-centered instruction helps me redefine the roles and responsibilities of students and instructor, making us both responsible and expected to fully participate in the teaching and learning process. As facilitator, I use my expertise to help students make decisions and understand those decisions; I guide them as they go on an unknown path, walking next to them, but letting them walk on their own. When I plan activities and assessments, I make sure learners feel supported and know they are expected to fully contribute to shared learning and knowledge creation (Loya, 2020). I am not afraid of silences in the classroom, and whether in a large guest lecture or a small seminar, my students quickly realize these are spaces for active engagement and participation.
Including multiple assignments and assessments allows students with unique abilities, challenges, and strengths to demonstrate learning; this in turn encourages their engagement and contributions. When possible and appropriate, I include tiered-assignments and peer feedback assessments to bolster students’ understanding and proficiency. For instance, in an introduction to research methods course (Research Skills for Educational Leaders), students visit the library; find scholarly sources, annotate and present them in summary matrices; then write a short synthesis or literature review on what will likely become their dissertation topic. This intentionally tiered set of assignments helps students understand and practice each step of writing a review of the literature. By the time students learn about methods they can use what they know from previous studies to inform their methodological decisions. Finally, in my classrooms I not only teach but also model learning, and share my own writing and studying processes and techniques when appropriate and helpful, showing life-long learning traits.
Conducive Environments and Respectful Social Interactions. From a sociocultural view, learning can only occur through social interaction and in the proper environments. One way that I create physical environments conducive to learning is through setting up the room in a square as much as possible. In remote platforms, we begin class with whole-class check-in time, where everyone is invited to share as they are comfortable. Students often lead class discussion or give presentations. These activities are aimed to facilitate not only interactions but intense and informed dialogue in all my doctoral seminars. But that is not sufficient. To fully engage in teaching and learning, students must be prepared and supported. Other ways in which I mediate learning is through careful selection of reading, analysis, and discussion of content. I create activities for students to reflect on their readings and share with peers, and I constantly monitor class discussion to ensure everyone has opportunities to participate, listen, and deepen our shared insights. As a social justice educator, my syllabi include a diversity statement and my personal pronouns.
I communicate to students verbally and in my syllabi that full engagement is required in my courses to learn. I include active learning activities and assignments to help students gain knowledge and skills, improve their writing, and promote their metacognition (reflection on their own learning). Through assigned readings and multiple, flexible assignments, students acquire content and have an opportunity to practice or demonstrate understanding. Then, through respectful class discussions and engagement in activities and assignments, their understanding or mastery deepens.
An important part of teaching and learning involves reflection and metacognition (Loya, 2021a). Mid-point in the semester, I ask students to reflect on what they have learned until then and to provide feedback to identify if anything needs to be revisited, practiced, or introduced to deepen learning. To use a sociocultural term, coined by Vygotsky (1997/1978), I help students move through zones of proximal development; that is, help them achieve something they would not have on their own. By asking them to reflect on what they have learned, I also prompt their metacognition, which deepens learning.
I constantly reflect on my own teaching and in the values and beliefs that support it (Loya, 2021a, 2021b). After teaching I deconstruct what happened in the classroom, noting what was successful and seeking to understand the principles behind those magic moments. I also reflect on cases when something did not go as planned, pondering what can be done to correct it or improve it. Sometimes if an activity is not going as planned, I ask students to suggest alternatives. This is particularly powerfully in the Instructional Development Seminar, where we discuss how to engage students in instructional decisions. In addition to considering students’ feedback on formal course evaluations, I ask students in class for direct and anonymous feedback, mid-course and at the end of the semester. I also invite peers to observe and comment on my teaching. Altogether, these sources of feedback inform my decisions for immediate and future changes in pedagogies, assignments, assessments, or content, keeping learners at the center. That is, I use metacognition to improve my teaching and learning about teaching. Lastly, since teaching and learning is also one of my areas of research, I use the literature to inform my instruction and my reflection on it.
Loya, K. I. (2020). Creating inclusive college classrooms: Granting epistemic credibility to learners. In C. Osaki & L. Parson (Eds.). Teaching & Learning for Social Justice and Equity in Higher Education, Vol. I: Foundations(pp. 117-135). Palgrave Macmillan.
Loya, K. I. (2021a). Facilitating college teaching improvement: A model of inclusive college teaching. Journal of Pedagogical Research, (5)3, 1-14. http://doi.org/10.33902/JPR.2021370558
Loya, K. I. (2021b). Teaching philosophy as a mechanism for a more inclusive teaching and learning process. Academia Letters. Article 409. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL409.
Vygotsky, L. (1997/1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. In M. Gauvain & M. Cole (Eds.), Readings on the development of children (pp. 29–36). W. H. Freeman and Company.
Weimer, M. (2013). Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice (2nd.). Jossey-Bass.