Understanding the Experience of Instructional Development

Susan Wilcox, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Paper presented at the International Conference,

Self-Study in Teacher Education: Empowering our Future,

Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, England August 5-8, 1996

 

Understanding the Experience of Instructional Development

My purpose in this paper is to make explicit claims about the process of instructional development and the nature of instructional development (ID) work. My understanding of ID arises from critical reflection on my own experiences as an instructional developer.

 

Background

In Canadian universities, the term instructional development (ID) refers to activities intended to improve the quality of teaching, and the process by which such improvements take place. The usual role of the institution in instructional development is to establish and support a unit, staffed with academics who provide programs and services for their colleagues.

 

I am an educator and a member of the faculty at a Canadian university, where I do instructional development work. My research is concerned with the meaning of instructional development. The purpose of my research is: - to help me establish and sustain a legitimate educational practice as an instructional developer; - to come to a deeper understanding of instructional development; and - to make a contribution to educational knowledge through extended inquiry and active engagement in ID. In this paper I identify four claims underlying instructional development practice and give a justification for each.

 

Framework

My ID practice is based on the premise that instructional development is an educational approach to the improvement of teaching (teachers improve instruction by learning to teach in ways that support student learning). Instructional development refers to the process of educating teachers, and to the process of learning to teach. As an educator/instructional developer, I am engaged in ID in both senses -- I am an educator (of teachers) and a learner (of educational practice).

 

Similarly, my inquiry into ID is based on the premise that it, too, is educational. By this I mean that the process and outcomes should be educative in the Deweyan sense; I contend that the research experience should lead to meaningful learning, helping me and others meet educational goals.

 

As an educator, the ethical ideal which governs and acts as a standard for my practice is fidelity to persons through caring. As a scholar, my pursuit of knowledge is guided by commitment to the ideal of truth (to try to be honest, to not intentionally delude myself or others). These two interests -- in persons and in knowledge -- form a framework for my educational research and practice: I fuse my commitment to the development of persons (myself and others), and my commitment to the development of knowledge (my own and others’), through a commitment to persons as knowledge-builders.

 

In my ID work, I try to express my commitment to persons as knowledge-builders by constructing, engaging in, and reflecting on educative ID experiences -- on my own and with other educators. The concept of self-directed learning (Candy, 1991) supports my commitment to developing teachers as knowledge-builders, because it is based on the idea that all persons are ultimately responsible for conducting their own search for personally meaningful knowledge. Therefore in my ID work I try to facilitate self-directed learning -- my own learning and the learning of faculty I work with. My intention is to model a self-directed approach to ID, to present an approach to ID that invites self-directed learning, and to respond with care to the challenge of faculty who engage in the process of ID in a self-directed fashion.

 

Nature of the inquiry

In this paper, I focus on what I know of ID and how I came to know ID through the experience of constructing an educational practice in the field of instructional development, and through critical reflection on that practice. My research follows what often is called the "heuristic tradition" Moustakas (1990). I have used my experiences as a developing educator/instructional developer as a case study, theorizing about the instructional development process on the basis of the particulars of my own situation. I want to ensure that my own conceptions of instructional development are explicitly and critically grounded in my personal experiences as a beginning instructional developer, and to broaden current conceptions of ID that are portrayed in the literature.

 

Procedure

Method

My claims are based on an analysis of a) daily journal entries concerning my instructional development work made from August 1994 until February 1995, b) journal entries kept sporadically from 1987 until 1996, and c) documents produced in my work over a period of approximately one year in 1994-95.

 

The 6 month instructional development journal was kept to help me better understand my approach to ID work. In 1995 I reviewed the entries twice, writing comments on the text as I reviewed it. In effect, through this analysis, I engaged in a process of dialogue with myself - - I commented on earlier entries, questioned my motives and underlying assumptions, made suggestions, connected various entries one with the other, and noted underlying themes. I did not have a formal procedure -- instead, I responded to the text as I would have done if the journal had been submitted to me by one of my adult education graduate students, with the additional step of sometimes using the entries as jumping-off points for new entries.

 

In April 1996, I reviewed all journals kept from 1987 until that time. Although these journals were not kept regularly, most of them included detailed reference to my instructional development practice and scholarship, and my teaching. Some were kept intensively for short periods, while I was engaged in specific learning projects. These journals I approached differently than the journal noted above. In this case I reviewed each chunk of journal (there were definite beginning and end points) as a whole, and then sat down and wrote my response to it -- describing my sense of it, and noting important themes. As I continued through the analysis, I noted the ways that each of the journals were different and/or similar. This analysis gave me a good sense of the changes in focus, interest, thinking, etc. over that period of 9 years.

 

Also in April 1996, I reviewed all the documents produced in my ID work in 1994-95. This included letters and memos, short ‘popular’ articles, texts of presentations to a wide variety of groups, proposals for funding, descriptions and evaluations of programs and workshops, records of consultations with clients, agendas and minutes of meetings, reports/recommendations prepared as a consequence of committee work, etc. Concurrent with this review, I again re-read the (now-annotated) ID journal from the same period. At around that same time, I was asked to prepare a teaching dossier/portfolio, to articulate a vision of the role of instructional development centres in universities, and to prepare my annual academic report. Shortly after I completed these tasks -- all of which necessitated critical reflection on practice -- I proceeded with the next step in my research, the step that is reported in this paper: to make claims about the nature of instructional development on the basis of my own ID experiences.

 

Process

As I noted earlier, my perspective on instructional development is shaped by the two roles I play: that of the instructional developer who facilitates the development of other educators, and that of the educator who is engaged personally in the process of development.

 

Becoming a student, as I did in this project, can be difficult. As Barnett (1996) suggests, it includes figuring out what it means to learn and be a learner, how a learner must interact with the educator, and the relationship that the learner must establish with the material. Likewise, analysis of my experiences as a beginning educator shows me that becoming an educator is difficult. One must construct a personal identity in relation to the thing that one wants to be and to know.

 

Analyzing my experiences meant that I had to learn to be patient with myself, and to drop some expectations about development that I did not know I still had. Generally, I think I am tolerant of my clients’ sometimes slow and frequently indirect developmental path. Noticing how frustrated I was with my seemingly inefficient approach to my own development eventually made me ask myself, "Am I trying to arbitrarily shape the story of my journey into something that it is not?" Bateson’s "Composing a Life" (1990) reminded me that my journey may very well be emergent, rather than goal-oriented. Bateson suggests improvisation (rather than the traditional heroic quest) as the more probable pattern and more meaningful metaphor for me, and her legitimization of such an approach allowed me to relax. Accepting that my purpose is to understand what it truly means to be an educator, I look carefully at the path I take. I see that actively and openly responding to people and to circumstances, combined with an attitude of "What is possible here?" is an overriding theme in my development. At the same time, one of the most powerful lessons I learn through the analysis of my journal is that I hunger for both a sense of coherence and a sense of competence. All of this is overlaid on the theme that guides my life: a desire for personal autonomy, particularly as a member of a community. It seems a complicated route to development, but perhaps the only meaningful one; it is certainly mine.

 

In the following section I make and support some preliminary claims about instructional development. I invite the reader to engage in dialogue with me as I make sense of instructional development; your response can help me to better formulate and articulate these claims.

 

Claims

1. A relationship with learners is essential to the development of the educator.

One of the most obvious and consuming roles I play as an educator is to help faculty make better connections with their students. These connections enable feedback from the student to the educator -- feedback on student learning, and on instructional performance -- so that the educator can improve the quality of instruction. In addition to this instrumental benefit of good educator-student relationships, there is another very important communicative benefit. I believe that a relationship with students helps the educator to develop a personal identity as an educator, and that this identity is the foundation for instructional development.

 

My journals show how essential this connection is; in the journals I saw the incoherence that was characteristic of my educational practice when I entered ID work full-time and no longer taught a regular course with a class of students. I lost the strand of my own development as an educator. What is an educator without learners?

 

As a developer I faced the ongoing need to establish my own educator-learner relationship with individuals and groups of faculty all over the university, in all sorts of situations. I am constantly gauging faculty interest in a topic, their view of me, and adapting to the circumstances so that a connection can be made. I look for the opening, often waiting, intuiting the starting points for learning relationships. Responding. Looking for ways to improve the pattern of educational activity on the basis of their need and my interlocking with that need.

 

How can I become an educator, without students and without the boundaries provided by classrooms, terms, curricula? I can follow all the conventional ID rituals (workshops, newsletters, consultations), and I discovered that this did provide some shape for my work as I struggled to develop a more authentic coherence. Are current ID conventions the only possible rituals for establishing educator-student relationships between developers and faculty? Are these conventions adequate for establishing the developer’s identity as educator? In many cases, it seems that they merely identify the developer as a technical expert, or as program administrator. My experience suggests that the rituals of ID may be inadequate for the development of developers as educators.

 

The irony in this situation is that I am committed to faculty as learners, but they don’t know that; in fact, they may not see themselves as learners. I am constantly aware that faculty are sizing me up so that they can decide whether a relationship with me is likely to help them. If they do see me as an educator, what kind of educator do they expect me to be -- a technical expert? Do they see me as their educator, or as the educator of others? What confusion results when I mix up my educator role with other institutional roles, e.g., as administrator or as scholar, or as employee? I know, always, that faculty are assessing whether and how they should interact with me, and it is a challenge to present myself in a way that allows them to recognize me and communicate with me as an educator.

 

Still, just as they are assessing me, I am constantly assessing them: where are they on the path to thinking and responding like an educator? Some I prompt to get started with their learning, others to go one step further. Inviting faculty to respond to bewilderment, boredom, anger, frustration, curiosity...with learning. I hope they will learn to be educators, and not just play the role of "professor who teaches". This is the path my own development must take, as well as theirs. I must learn to be an educator, in the role of instructional developer. To do that, for my own development as an educator, I need an educational relationship with faculty.

 

2. The process of instructional development is framed by the question "What learning is possible?" Becoming an educator is an attitude (seeing learning possibilities and accepting responsibility for realizing them) in combination with circumstances, and the competencies that arise through action in those circumstances (acting to transform a situation into an educational experience).

 

Teaching problems are situated in particular contexts. Instructional development happens in the spaces of possibility defined by intentions and constraints in local, specific, and immediate situations. Constraints on educational intentions present problems that must be dealt with, and they provide a frame within which development can take place. An effective educator asks what learning is possible in a given context, pushes the limits of what is possible, and accepts the limits of what is possible. Development is thus set in motion when a person playing the role of educator chooses to respond from an educational perspective, thereby allowing instructional development to proceed.

 

There is a tension between the situatedness of teaching problems and the human capacity for transcending boundaries, that is, the ability to step outside frames and re-imagine. This tension creates an opening where development can take place. Humans are not defined by situations -- this allows them to respond to the situation. But only to a certain extent. In fact, an educator’s capacity for critical self-reflection is an important constraint on what is possible.

 

I want to emphasize that educational problems can’t be transferred to someone else. Let me try to be more specific. For instructional development to take place in a given situation, the educator must assume responsibility for transforming the situation into an educational setting; the educator must be prepared to develop as a teacher so that she can respond to the situation, and to develop her teaching so that it is effective in that situation. If she gives the problem to someone else, the problem cannot actually be solved, because its very nature is defined by a context in which she is present, as teacher, in relationship with the students. If not taking responsibility for responding to a situation in an educational manner IS the problem, passing it (responsibility) on never addresses it -- instead, it reframes the problem in an inappropriate way, i.e., as a technical problem.

 

If development cannot be transferred to another person, the educator is faced with the reality of having to perform at his/her present level of competence, which may be inadequate (or else of finding assistance that is contextualized), and the developer is faced with the reality of not having the power to take direct action to improve instruction -- the developer must work through and with the educator. This means that educators and developers must learn to live with the fact that "what is possible" may not necessarily be what is needed or most desirable for the learners in a given situation.

 

I find that university faculty who are considering whether I (the developer) may help them to address their educational problems are constantly assessing the functional validity (Munby and Russell, 1995) of everything I do, say, suggest: Is a proposed way of thinking, of viewing the situation, of responding, likely to get them where they want to go? And I am always asking myself: How will something I do, say, suggest get a particular teacher where he/she wants to go in a particular context? My real challenge is helping faculty members internalize this question, make it their own, and consider the functional validity of what they believe and what they do.

 

3. An important role of the instructional developer in higher education is to represent the educational mandate of the institution, to bear witness to the need for faculty to take responsibility for the quality of teaching and the development of teaching and to approach situations from an educational perspective.

 

In effect, the developer acts as witness to the need for approaching situations from an educational perspective. It is easier to ignore an idea (of teaching as essential, of caring as necessary, of development as requirement) than it is to ignore the presence of a person, especially a person who is grounded, held fast by conviction, experience, openness, and authenticity. Faculty recognize parts of themselves in that person. They can then identify personally with the idea, through the developer, and are not free to ignore it. Faculty must then find a way to incorporate the developer’s perspective into theirs, to accommodate by reconsidering their own perspective/approach.

 

This claim about the role of developer is closely tied with my claim that development takes place in the limits defined by what is possible. Perhaps because the developer is witness to the fact that one can respond to limits through development, and educators are not let off the hook, able to shrink to fit the constraints, blame them on someone else, etc. I challenge faculty to grow in the face of constraints, in the situations in which they find themselves. I know that in helping faculty to see themselves as educators, my overriding goal (essence of my work) is for them to be self-directed, autonomous. They must CHOOSE to become educators -- only then can they really learn the role.

 

What kind of presence are faculty likely to respond to? What qualities enable a developer to "bear witness"? Stephen Brookfield (1990) emphasizes the need for trust between educators and learners, and says that educators must demonstrate authenticity and credibility if they wish to forge connections with students. The importance of credibility suggests that it may be worth considering the notion of authority. O’Reilley (1993) speaks of putting "authority where it belongs: in whatever is compelling, whatever speaks to the heart and intelligence." Munby and Russell (1994) talk about the various kinds of authority: of position, of experience, of reason. Upitis (1996) adds the authority of caring. Authority is important because it identifies something (someone) as legitimate. Yet it seems there are so many authorities....the authority of gender, or of body size, for example. And different people respond to different authorities. Sometimes it seems that a developer has to be all of them, or to know always when to use one authority over another.

 

Faculty members, of course, are quite skilled at calling upon various authorities to dismiss that which insults them AND that which challenges them. Although they can readily deny quite legitimate arguments of reason and of experience, I can speak directly to them by embodying arguments of reason and experience in ways that are new, unfamiliar, challenging, and creative -- and I can invite them to do the same. My presence as developer then becomes the holistic representation of authority -- that which is compelling -- and my physical/bodily presence can be a form of caring educational leadership.

 

I must maintain a unity of purpose ("What learning is possible here?") and seek out that same intention in my faculty colleagues. I must step around and about, dancing through all their arguments to the place where it counts: what faculty must do to call themselves educators. I ask them, "Who are you as educators, and how does your practice reflect that commitment and identity?" Faculty who aspire to being educators will hear me, and may choose to respond, when I express interest in them as educators and in the arguments they create for themselves as educators.

 

4. For development to take place, the educator needs an impersonal interest in teaching and learning beyond his or her commitment to a personal relationship with the learner.

 

Faculty centre their lives, their energies, and their interests on their disciplines, the "text" of their work. They invite the students to engage with them in the pursuit of understanding through this text. Similarly, instructional development is also possible through interaction with a text, which allows faculty to separate themselves from the situation, replay it and reflect upon its meaning. Is a videotape of teaching a text? Is a journal a text? Are records of work (documents) a text? Are hypomnemata (notebooks in which there is a constitution of oneself -- a collection of the already-said, -heard, and - done -- by which one is able to develop an impartial, separate interest in self) a text? Each may be an example of what can be described as the educational text of a situation, and I believe an interest in this text contributes to the process of instructional development. Let me explain, using the terms educator and learner in reference to both faculty member-student relationships, and developer--faculty member relationships...

 

It is generally accepted that the disciplinary text provides the interest, mutual perhaps, around which the educator and learner may build a relationship. More specifically to the problem of instructional development, if she is to be an effective educator, the faculty member is in need of an interest beyond her commitment to a relationship with the learner. Educational work allows faculty to marry impersonal interests and interpersonal relationships.

 

However, the "impersonal interest" in this case is a human one, an academic interest in life learning. The educator’s impersonal interest in education balances the educator’s personal interest in the development of learners, allowing growth of the educator to proceed, while at the same time fostering growth of the learner. Thus, mutual, parallel development is taking place.

 

The educator needs the interest as much as the learner. It allows the educator to maintain a presence with the learner while the learner develops in the presence of the educator. Without the interest, there would be too little to keep the educator in the company of the learner, because the responsibility would be too great and would be inappropriate, given that the learner is an adult and has responsibility for his own learning.

 

The learner needs the presence of the educator simply so that he is free to pursue his own development and own interests, knowing that the educator backs him, is there for him, that he is not alone as he pursues the particular interests that matter greatly to him. The presence of the educator mirrors the learner as a person, allowing him to believe that he is worthwhile, that his goals are worthwhile. This is like a replay of what takes place for learners when they are young, but the interest allows the relationship to be an adult one, and a mutual one. It is different from a therapeutic relationship. The text/interest may provide a common "problem" for the learner and educator to engage in, an excuse for the educator to maintain a presence for the learner, in the absence of a deep personal problem.

 

It is the presence that frees the learner to inquire into something of interest and to imagine what it may mean for his life. The educator is there for the learner when he needs assistance, but meanwhile is busy pursuing her own interests. The learner is free to leave the relationship/setting at any time. The educator is committed to being present as much as is possible for the learner. Without her impersonal interest, there is a danger that the educator will over-identify with the interests of the learner, or attempt to take responsibility for the learner’s growth, which must remain the responsibility of the learner.

 

Building on my claim that presence is of fundamental importance to instructional development, anything that permits presence of the educator must be attended to. An educator’s impersonal interest in the educational text of a situation can act as a bridge between educator and as learner, though not necessarily a bridge in the sense of a mutual interest; rather, bridge in the sense that it allows/enables the educator to maintain a presence that is powerful.

 

In summary, I conclude that instructional developers and faculty together may broaden the possibilities for learning in higher education by responding to particular circumstances from an educational perspective. Instructional development occurs when faculty develop as educators through interpersonal teaching-learning relationships with students, and through impersonal interest in the educational text of university teaching and learning situations; the same process of development occurs when developers become educators through interaction with faculty and through interest in the educational text of instructional development situations. The developer may help faculty and students forge better connections, and may highlight the educational text as a faculty agenda for learning.

 

Acknowledgements: Patricia Cranton and Mark Weisberg provided very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

 

References

Barnett, R. (1996). Being and becoming: A student trajectory. International Journal of Lifelong Education 15 (2), 72-84.

Bateson, M.C. (1990). Composing a life. New York: Plume.

Brookfield, S. (1990). The skillful teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Candy, P. (1991). Self-direction for lifelong learning: A comprehensive guide to theory and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Moustakas, C. (1990). Heuristic research: Design, methodology, and applications. Newbury Park: Sage.

Munby, H. and Russell, T. (1994). The authority of experience in learning to teach: Messages from a physics methods class. Journal of Teacher Education, 45 (2), 86- 95.

Munby, H. and Russell, T. (1995). Towards rigour with relevance: How can teachers and teacher educators claim to know? In T.Russell & F. Korthagen (Eds.), Teachers who teach teachers (pp.172-186). London: Falmer Press.

O’Reilley, M.R. (1993). The peaceable classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Upitis, R. (1996). On becoming a dean: Integrating multiple roles and authorities. Presented at the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Brock University, June, 1996.