Ideological and Pedagogical Assumptions in Collaborative Teaching

Jean Lorelle Paul
University of Massachusetts
June 1999

INTRODUCTION

The infusion of technology into the traditional teaching arena has meant more and more collaborations between technological experts and teachers. Although some educators take the time and effort to learn educational technologies and can independently implement them, most depend on active collaborative arrangements with educators and administrators of distance education, video facilities, and information technologies.

This article examines how a priori assumptions about pedagogical styles, objectives, and underlying ideology profoundly impacted one teaching collaboration between faculty from traditional Arts and Humanities, faculty from a video teaching facility, and faculty from the Social Justice Discipline and examines the difficulty in addressing these assumptions during the planning of collaborations precisely because they are assumed in advance by team members. Why address what does not appear to be a problem? Yet embedded in what appears to be a mutual sharing of pedagogical objectives designed for a specific class are powerful disciplined-based ideologies, ideological goals, and values not made explicit when negotiating the curriculum. Unfortunately, these ideological and philosophical misperceptions can subtly alter the outcomes of even the most carefully planned pedagogical objectives. This may be more apt to occur in partnerships between traditional classroom teachers and technology educators. The Pedagogical Disclosure Instrument presented at the close of this article may assist collaborative team members in surfacing any hidden assumptions during the planning stages of the collaboration.

THE -ISM (N.) COLLABORATION

In April of 1997, I was approached by a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts to collaborate on a grant sponsored by the Institute for Public Media Art. The -ISM (N.) grant was an innovative teaching model combining learning about diversity with media literacy, group dynamics, and video production in a year-long, cross disciplinary course on seven U.S. campuses. The University of Massachusetts course was designed around adding a video lab to a pre-existing Social Justice course in the School of Education. A T.A. taught the main Social Justice class and a full faculty member coordinated the course setup. As the advisor to the student television station, I provided the facilities and training for the video component of the course. Altogether there were three University of Massachusetts teaching team members.

At the conclusion of the class, we found that although the practical objectives stated in the syllabus had been successfully met and the students had enjoyed the class, my colleagues were somewhat dissatisfied with the experience. I was perplexed by this. Although the student's final productions had not lived up to my highest expectations and a number of students had been challenging to teach, this was fairly typical in my teaching experience. Out of the three video projects, I felt two of them were satisfactory first attempts and the third quite good for a first time, collaborative effort by undergraduates. Overall, the students had mastered the rudimentary technical elements of audio and video even if they hadn't quite succeeded as well with aesthetics like storytelling. I wasn't quite sure why my colleagues were so disappointed.

At a faculty institute sponsored by the grant administrators in North Carolina, a breakfast conversation clarified for me why my fellow colleagues had been so disappointed. Two Social Justice colleagues were sharing their frustration over the artistic quality of the finished video pieces, disappointed that they weren't good enough for use in course instruction or workshops on campus. I suggested that I hadn't understood this to be the main objective of the class and that such an expectation was a lot to ask of undergraduate students, particularly given the many other teaching objectives set forth in the grant. Further, I pointed out that training videos were very advanced objectives for students still trying to learn the buttons on a camcorder. After a thorough discussion on this, one Social Justice instructor exclaimed, "I wish we had known this all along, that someone had clearly spoken this from day one." Apparently, their lack of understanding about the process of videography had led them to assume that the finished products would have a much higher quality. Anyone who teaches video will know that this is a very common misperception about the field of videography. The average person, watching professional quality video since childhood, is easily lulled into assuming that creating high quality video is also easy.

But other misperceptions surfaced at the Institute. For my part, I had entered into this collaboration under the incorrect assumption that Social Justice and Diversity were essentially one and the same, only to find out during a debriefing session at the Institute that they were not.

It became apparent that some of the other social justice instructors had encountered similar misperceptions and assumptions. At one school, the schism between faculty became so pronounced that the class was disbanded mid-semester.

HOW ASSUMPTIONS AFFECTED OUR COLLABORATION

In retrospect, while our specific course goals at UMass had been carefully articulated, the philosophical and general pedagogical objectives of one another's disciplines had not. We had never discussed the larger goals of each other's programs, our professional and personal objectives, or the nature and expectation of our students in our disciplines

At the end of the grant that we began to see that we had made several a priori assumptions from the start of the collaboration. For example, the faculty member with an Arts and Humanity background had assumed that video technology was an instructional aid or a tool rather than a separate discipline that might have a pedagogical foundation or method distinct to the video field. For this instructor, video teaching involved passing on a set of concrete, specific vocational skills separate from any pedagogical philosophy. In fact, my pedagogical approach was a constructivist approach and thus emphasized student ownership over the learning process, particularly the creative portion of it. This meant a hands-off approach as instructor. While I allowed for plenty of screenings and offered a great deal of critiquing as the projects progressed, I did not accompany the students to the edit room. I was deeply committed to the idea that allowing them to independently practice their new found technical skills would make the student's mastery longer lasting and more concrete than if I corrected them each step as they progressed. Additionally, my media philosophy is rooted in the Public Access Movement, emphasizing that media literacy is discovered in the act of doing and creating media. My instructional style thus emphasized process over product. Finally, the student TV station's culture was one which promulgated "student initiated activity" which nurtured student independence.

In summary, my pedagogical philosophy was more hands-off than most, meaning I was not going to be as influential in determining the quality of the final videos. My colleague's lack of understanding of my philosophy led us to have very different expectations for the course. My colleague wanted useable training videos and I wanted burgeoning videographers whose learning and self esteem was enhanced by a sense of ownership over the process of creating videos. Other authors have written about their similar experiences in collaborative teaching. 1

We found that assumptions about rank manifested themselves into the negotiation process as well. Teaching team members subconsciously accorded the faculty member from traditional Arts and Humanities highest worth, thus the non-technological component of the collaboration was granted a disproportionate voice in the planning, influencing group decision-making and the pedagogical outcomes established for the course. These assumptions about rank have been cited by other collaborations, for example, team teaching that involves T.A.s, or a pairing of Science and Humanities. 2

Similarly, content-privilege was assumed, with the result that practical and curriculum concerns about the Social Justice class often took precedence over the video lab during the planning process. For example, timelines and content load were established to satisfy the Social Justice class rather than the video lab. Little of the original Social Justice curriculum - by many accounts a "tough" course on its own - was pared down to make room for the time intensive video projects. So too, class size and makeup were designed for the Social Justice course. The need for a well- balanced, diverse class resulted in a class size of twenty - very large for a video seminar course. The methods of recruitment drew mainly communications students or social justice advocates, but not storytellers, English majors, or journalism students.

All these assumptions profoundly impacted the course experience, affecting learning outcomes, the final projects, and the morale of both students and instructors. The students did successfully gain a basic theoretical understanding of oppression but were not the social justice advocates my colleagues had envisioned. The wonderful training videos my colleagues wanted for social justice workshops turned out to be no more than good first time video projects, exactly as I anticipated. As a veteran video trainer used to highly motivated students, I was disappointed to find that those students interested in the social justice material found video production burdensome and time consuming. Likewise, the communication students often gave lip service to the social justice content. My colleagues were very surprised by this lack of interest since the Social Justice class the course was based on typically was an overfilled class with a waiting list. This, in turn, surprised me since most of the students I had encountered in any previous diversity training were highly resistant to the material.

These assumptions are often not obvious during the planning process and so not discussed. 3 In our case this was partly because the philosophical objectives and considerations were perceived to be in agreement but mostly because the many practical demands of planning the class were deemed too pressing to put aside for a philosophical discussion of one another’s disciplines. We were blinded by our own discipline-centered myopia.

We have all experienced this kind of myopia at one time or another. I offer the following analogies as examples.

In the early days of computers, a person teaching word processing often overlooked teaching a student the location of the on/off switch of a computer because it was so fundamental a knowledge element to anyone working in the field of computers, it was assumed everybody knew it was on the back side of the PC. Yet, such oversight in the teaching process can undermined the novice computer user's ability to use the computer at all, never mind word processing.

Music can offer another, more complicated example. The time signature is a code which, read correctly, defines the proper time and rhythm for the musician reading a piece of music. A common time signature in our culture reads "3/4". If you ask a musician to explain this code he will often reply "3/4 time means three beats to a measure, the quarter note gets one beat". This answer is correct but will forever keep a novice musician confused because a major piece of the definition is left out. It is this: In each and every musical measure (one unit of music divided by vertical lines on either side), first note of is always emphasized. It is this piece of information that makes the rest of the definition relevant but it is also so basic to most musicians that they don't bother to explain it. Without this knowledge, there is nothing to distinguish one measure of music from the text and the definition is meaningless.

THE PEDAGOGICAL DISCLOSURE INSTRUMENT

Many authors from the entire spectrum of teaching have written on collaborative teaching and many recommend prior discussion of the philosophical and pedagogical issues but few offer any specific frameworks for doing so. McIntosh and Johnson (1994) offered the Key Concerns Instrument, 4 a survey to be completed by each teaching team member to help disclose areas of concern, however it is fairly detailed and does not help identify assumptions about larger discipline related issues. One thorough study indicated that individual knowledge and personal values affect team curriculum but doesn't offer any suggestion other than more time in the early stages of planning. 5 One article, written about teacher/student-teacher team teaching, suggested that each team member write up three expectations on a list and openly share it. 6 Although it wasn't specifically addressing any "problem” in team teaching, this advice has interesting implications for disclosure between team members.

One author constructed several tools/instruments to assess various skill levels on team communication and roles and professional expectations but these lean towards practical considerations rather than philosophical ones. 7

Since most suggestions relied on self-initiated conversations and the difficulty is in getting faculty members to perceive the assumptions, a device was needed which would assist the process of uncovering them. I created the Pedagogical Assumptions Instrument to address this. The concept is straightforward: Ask each team member to put himself in the other team member's shoes. Each member of a team fills out a simple form which asked them to list the objectives, philosophical goals, personal goals, and student profiles anticipated for the other team member's discipline rather than their own. In this way, team members could identify misperceptions and assumptions during the planning stages of the class. It could even help identify perceptions about other problem areas such as the relationship of the team members.

THE PEDAGOGICAL DISCLOSURE INSTRUMENT

Part I. - This is to be answered about your team member's discipline rather than your own.

QUESTIONS REGARDING DISCIPLINE

1. Please describe the key learning objectives and theoretical grounding for a course in your team member's field of study:

2. What prior understanding do you have about the general ideology of your team member's field of study:

QUESTIONS REGARDING STUDENTS

3. Please describe the anticipated profile of students interested in your team member's field of study:
  1. a. Academic level of background of students (why would they seek to take this course?).
  2. b. Describe a typical student's motivation for choosing a course in this field.
  3. c. Describe the social group identity of a student taking a class in your field (doer v. thinker, visual verbal etc.
4. Describe some of the professional/career interests of a typical student taking a course in our field.

5. If you were to recruit students in this field of study, describe how you would do this.

Part II. This is to be filled out about your own discipline.

QUESTIONS REGARDING TEAM AND TEAM ROLES FROM Easterby-Smith and Olve. 8

6. Please indicate the model which you feel would best suit this team and your rationale for choosing this model:
  1. a. Star - One teacher holds major responsibility for course, collaborators function as guest lectures etc.
  2. b. Hierarchical - One senior teacher responsible for most of class, junior instructors assist in discussions etc.
  3. c. Specialist - Collect designing of curriculum by team members, each one taking major role according to specialty, all assisting in discussions etc.
  4. d. Generalist - Collective designing of curriculum but teaching divided by practical considerations rather than specialty.
  5. e. Interactive - Collective designing of curriculum, teaching highly flexible according to need at time of teaching rather than in advance.
7. Is the basis of this field of study primarily one of process or product?

8. Indicate three pedagogical or ideological objectives of your field of study that you feel should be shared by all team members at the outset of this collaboration.

Used early in the planning process and used in conjunction with the suggestions for addressing the practical difficulties of collaborative teaching, this instrument may be able to help team member's design a more successful course by allowing for better assessment of student's needs, more cohesive and integrated teaching objectives, and a clearer understanding of the roles each team member is expected to perform.

CONCLUSIONS

Collaborative teaching involves careful negotiation of two or more team members' pedagogical and philosophical aims but productive negotiation can only be attained if the team members are fully aware of one another's disciplines on a fundamental level. Too often the practical objectives stated in the syllabus may be met while underlying ideological objectives may not be.

If teachers are planning to engage in a collaboration with technology, it is important that they openly acknowledge that individual disciplines bring with them a cultural context and plan a thorough discussion about each other's discipline in terms of this cultural context. Do not assume that you understand the ideological and philosophical foundations of one another's discipline. This may be particularly crucial for partnerships that involve a technology provider as instructor as it is easy to assume that such an instructor will simply be teaching concrete skills.

One helpful approach may be to ask very specific questions like "What kind of student is most drawn to your field?", "Is your field more process or product driven?", or "Why did you first study this discipline?" as framing the questions in concrete terms may help disclose hidden assumptions.

It is also necessary to openly discuss the expectations around roles in your team. The work of Esterby and Olive will prove extremely helpful in starting discussion. 9 I suggest that the team member who is traditionally perceived as higher ranking institutionally (Professor over TA etc.) initiate this discussion as other team members, following the traditions of university ranking, may not feel it is their place to do so.

Finally, acknowledge that, although practical issues like syllabuses and curriculum development are critical needs during planning, philosophical discussions will take time and are equally important. Devote the time up front rather than relying on crisis management strategies later.

Teachers entering into collaborative teaching arrangements with technology experts should expect to encounter hidden expectations and assumptions that are unanticipated or overlooked during the planning process. These can create challenges that will fundamentally alter the learning outcomes, the curriculum objectives, and the relationship of the team members. Given the rate that technology is becoming an integral part of the teaching and learning experience, the more teachers can learn about avoiding these assumptions, the more effective they can be in their teaching a collaborative class. The Pedagogical Disclosure Instrument, as well as other instruments and tools created by others out of their experience team teaching could prove highly effective in minimizing any unanticipated aspects of collaborative teaching.

REFERENCES

Bowles, Philip David. (1994), "The Collaboration of Two Professors from Disparate Disciplines: What It Has Taught Us," Paper presented at the Symposium "Collaboration Pays Off: An Advance Program for At-Risk College Freshmen Teaches a Few Lessons to the Students, Faculty, and the Institution." at the Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference (44th, San Deigo. CA, November 30-December 3, 1994).

De Lorenzo, William E and Others (1997) "Teacher Preparation: A Team Approach," Paper presented at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (New York, NY, April 3, 1997). April, 27 pp. 9-11.

Easterby-Smith, Mark and Olve, Nils-Goran. (1984), "Team Teaching: Making Management Education More Student Centered," Management Education and Development 15(3), pp. 221-36.

Little, Mary. (1995). "Classroom Collaboration: Making it Happen!," Learning Disabilities Forum 20(4), pp. 30-36.

Martin, Kaye M. (1995), "Teacher's Collaborative Curriculum Deliberations," Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Francisco, CA April 18-22). 30 p.

McIntosh, Margaret E. and Johnson, D. LaMont. (1994), "An Instrument to Facilitate Communication between Prospective Team Teachers,". The Clearning House 67(3), pp. 152-4.

Raker, Richard. (1994), "Integrated Block Scheduling and Team Teaching in the STEP-UP Academic English Program at Tokai International College," Report, 8 p.

Robinson, Betty and Schaible, Robert M. (1995), "Collaborative Teaching: Reaping the Benefits," College Teaching, 43(2), pp. 53-59.

Trousdale, Ann and Henkin, Roxanne. (1989), "The Negotiated Curriculum as Praxis in the World of the Classroom,". 28 p.; Paper presented at the Annual Conference on Curriculum Theorizing (11th Dayton, OH, October 21).

Winn, Judith A. and Messenheimer-Young, Trinka. (1995), "Team Teaching at the University Level: What We Have Learned," Teaching Education and Special Education, 18(4), pp. 223-29.

Notes

1 Martin, Kaye M. (1995), "Teacher's Collaborative Curriculum Deliberations," Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Francisco CA April 18-22). 30 p.
(back)

Raker, Richard. (1994), "Integrated Block Scheduling and Team Teaching in the STEP-UP Academic English Program at Tokai International College," Report, 8 p.

2 Bowles, Philip David. (1994), "The Collaboration of Two Professors from Disparate Disciplines: What It Has Taught Us," Paper presented at the symposium "Collaboration Pays Off: An Advance Program for At-Risk College Freshmen Teaches a Few Lessons to the Students, Faculty, and the Institution." at the Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference (44th, San Diego, CA, November 30-December 3, 1994).
(back)

3 Ibid.

Robinson, Betty and Schaible, Robert M. (1995), "Collaborative Teaching: Reaping the Benefits," College Teaching, 43(2), pp. 53-59.
(back)

4 McIntosh, Margaret E. and Johnson, D. LaMont. (1994), "An Instrument to Facilitate Communication between Prospective Team Teachers,". The Clearning House 67(3), pp. 152-4.
(back)

5 Martin, Kaye M. (1995), "Teacher's Collaborative Curriculum Deliberations," Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Francisco CA April 18-22). 30 p.
(back)

6 De Lorenzo, William E. and others (1997) "Teacher Preparation: A Team Approach," Paper presented at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (New York, NY, April 3, 1997). April, 27 pp. 9-11.
(back)

7 Little, Mary. (1995). "Classroom Collaboration: Making It Happen!" Learning Disabilities Forum 20(4), pp. 30-36.
(back)

8 Easterby-Smith, Mark and Olve, Nils-Goran. (1984), "Team Teaching: Making Management Education More Student Centered," Management Education and Development 15(3), pp. 221-36.
(back)

9 Ibid.
(back)

Index of faculty articles

 
SPONSORS -ISM (N.) Home Page IPMA
 
© 1998 Institute for Public Media Arts
115 Market Street
Durham, NC 27701
919/688-0332