Like my students, I too am becoming. This is because learning is “co-constituted” between students and lecturers. Christie, Tett, Cree, Hounsell, & McCune (2007: 7) argue that students are co-producers of knowledge and meaning. Students become an audience who engage with the lecturer.

 

Just as learners cannot be separated from the learning, teachers cannot be separated from teaching. Due to this, teachers themselves cannot separate or avoid infusing their beliefs into their teaching. This is because “meaning is something we negotiate and contest over socially” (Gee 2008: 13). Stetsenko’s (2010: 7) view that learning and development are shaped by culture supports this concept, where “social practices are viewed as producing not only knowledge but also identities.” The influence of culture and community cannot and should not be ignored, as these can be tools that help students contextualize and engage with knowledge on new and deeper levels. It is instead recommended by Gee that these inherent biases and beliefs be made overt. This gives students and teachers the opportunity to debate and question the knowledge, instead of blindly accepting the ‘hidden agenda’.

 

Dall’Alba (2009) argues that we need to be aware of and challenge what we know about the ways things are or are done, in order to grow and change. In order to answer friction in my practice, I must question what I assume about teaching and what it means to be a teacher (Dall’Alba 2009: 6). Researching my own practice with reflexivity and intentionality allows me to interrogate what I “know” and who I am as a lecturer.

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I am currently working towards my PhD in Teacher Education Studies at the University of KwaZulu Natal. I believe that in researching my own practice I will become a better lecturer and this will improve my ability to help students negotiate the challenges they face. As students are changing and evolving each year, I too must change and adapt to them and the way that they learn best. In order to do this, I need to constantly research and reflect on my own teaching. I do this formally through my PhD studies which I started at the beginning of 2018, as well as informally through writing research articles, presenting and attending conferences, symposiums and workshops, as well as involvement in larger institutional projects.

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I am involved in the “Who Are Our Students” project, which falls under the larger Siyaphumelela umbrella. The Siyaphumelela (translated to “we succeed”) project is a national initiative aimed at enhancing student success across higher education institutes. This project is in an effort to counteract the inequity of past South African education where students are not coping with the demands of tertiary education, leading to low throughput rates. Despite efforts to increase access to higher education for previously disadvantaged and financially challenged students, graduations rates in South Africa remain lower than those of other Southern African higher education institutions. The goal of the Who Are Our Students project is to investigate success from a student perspective, to find out what challenges our students are facing within the institution and what possible interventions the institution can make to help students achieve success. We do this through interviews with students across faculties, campuses and qualifications, to hear their voice on these challenges. As a member of the team, I am involved in interviewing students, analysing and interpreting the data, and researching to draw conclusions in order to report back to the university management what we can do to address the students’ issues.

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The Who Are Our Students team has recently presented at the national Siyaphumelela conference this year (see Presentations for details). We are currently working towards a report to university management with suggestions for practical interventions that may enhance student success across the institution.

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As an active e-learning evangelist, I have attended many workshops and training sessions on blended and e-learning. In 2016, I completed the Faculty Certificate in Online Teaching to improve my practice as an online educator. I found the experience as a student in an online classroom enlightening, and I began to better understand how my own students might struggle navigating my virtual classrooms. This course also allowed me to virtually meet with and learn from a number of colleagues across the institution. I was able to learn the different ways they handled the challenges of group work, online assessments, larger classes, ethics, and other valuable topics. What is most important about this sharing is that they are teaching not only in the same South African context as I am, but also the same Durban University of Technology context where our students come from similar backgrounds.

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At the request of the Dean of Arts and Design at DUT, I worked closely with the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, in particular the Arts and Design e-learning specialist Marí Peté, to promote blended and e-learning across the faculty. This involved meeting with all willing departments to discuss their challenges and to highlight their successes with online teaching and learning. We found that across the faculty, lecturers were using blended learning in their classrooms in unique and authentic ways that suited their own practices. These were highlighted on a blog and in a presentation entitled “Glitches in e-learning” given at the DUT’s annual DigiFest and HELTASA 2017 (both co-presented by Marí and myself).

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I am currently in the process of completing the COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) course in order to meet and work with an international partner institution on an assessment.

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I believe that being-becoming is a constant process. We should never stop learning, striving and reaching towards self improvement.

 

Christie, H., Tett, L., Cree, V.E., Hounsell, J., and McCune, V. 2007. 'A real rollercoaster of confidence and emotions’: Learning to be a university student. Studies in Higher Education 33 (5) 567-581.

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Dall’Alba, G. 2009. Learning professional ways of being: Ambiguities of becoming. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(1), 34-45.

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Gee, J. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. Routledge.

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Stetsenko, A (2010). Teaching-learning and development as activist projects of historical becoming: Expanding Vygotsky’s approach to pedagogy. Pedagogy: An International Journal, 5(1), 6-16

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