Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 9 | Page 10

HIGHLIGHT #1 | 11 10 | JADE GEMMA WITTON Marchand, J.,  Pearson, M., &  Albon, S.  (2014).  Student and faculty member perspectives on lecture capture in pharmacy education. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 78(4), 74. Powers, C.A. and Carrol, M.A. (2016) Student Attendance at Pharmacology Lectures and Its Relation to Exam Performance: A Two Year Observational Analysis. The FASEB Journal, 31:810.4 Witton, G. (2017) The value of capture: taking an alternative approach to using lecture capture technologies for increased impact on student learning and engagement. British Journal of Educational Technology, 48: 1010–1019. DOI: 10.1111/bjet.12470the same? HIGHLIGHT #1 Title “What makes good teaching?”: Reflections from a Teaching Fellow in Law Author Stella Coyle DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.21252/ KEELE-0000021 Contact [email protected] Keele University I became a Teaching Fellow in September 2016 and it was recommended that I undertake the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education programme (TLHEP). I wasn’t completely new to university teaching; I had been a Graduate Teaching Assistant for three years while researching my PhD, with positive feedback from students and peer review from colleagues. I confess to having been somewhat sceptical as to what the TLHEP could offer me, and wary of the additional workload on top of a new job with a busy timetable. However, as the course progressed, I appreciated having dedicated time to reflect critically on my teaching, and I discovered how theories of learning and teaching could help me make more informed choices about how I teach. This is what Brookfield means by the ‘deeper benefit’ of critical reflection in addition to mere ‘procedural utility’, because critical reflection leads us to ‘know why we believe what we believe’. 1 This discussion on ‘What makes good teaching?’ is from my first TLHEP assignment. Like any student looking back on work she wrote last year, I am very aware how much I have learnt since then and I am therefore a little shy of sharing it! I hope readers will find it interesting nevertheless. What makes good teaching? It can be difficult to define what makes good teaching, not least because teaching is ‘a complex act, influenced by subtle conditions and swift teacher-student interactions’. 2 I have strong memories of certain teachers throughout my life: for example, the primary school teacher who encouraged me to read Orwell; the high school physics teacher whose vivid explanation of force remains with me 35 years later; the university lecturer who managed to make contract law interesting through his use of entertaining stories; and the master’s lecturer whose eccentricities of dress and personality complemented his ability to make us question our assumptions. Students remember good teachers for a variety of reasons, but there are several factors that contribute towards what is generally understood to be good teaching. This discussion draws on both the academic literature and on personal reflection from my own teaching experience so far. The overarching aim of successful teaching, for me, is to provide a collaborative and enriching learning experience which enables students to achieve their goals. An important ingredient in this 1. Stephen Brookfield, ‘The Getting of Wisdom: What Critically Reflective Teaching is and Why It’s Important,’ in Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (1995): 1-28, 25. 2. Allan C Ornstein, ‘The New Paradigm in Research on Teaching,’ The Educational Forum 59.2 (1995): 124.