Din utveckling som kursledare



Kursledarprogram WCS 2025

Lärandemål


Efter avslutat seminarie ska deltagaren kunna:

  • Understand the different stages of the development as a course leader
  • Understand the difference between teaching styles
  • Evaluate their own development as a course leader
  • Evaluate their own teaching style and understand how it affects their teaching
  • Understand why we do exercises like “Reflect on …”

Background reading

  • Peter Kugel: How professors develop as teachers, 1993
  • Anthony F. Grasha: A Matter of Style: The Teacher as Expert, Formal Authority, Personal Model, Facilitator, and Delegator, 1994

George Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful”

What teachers focus on


Phase I: Emphasis on teaching

  • Focus on self: “Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing it well?”
  • Focus on subject: “Am I covering the material? Am I giving good explanations?”
  • Focus on students: “Are the students learning? Are they engaged?”

Phase II: Emphasis on learning

  • Student as receptive: “Are the students receiving the information? Are they understanding?”
  • Student as active: “Are the students applying the information? Are they analysing?”
  • Student as independent: “Are the students creating new knowledge? Are they evaluating?”

Focus on self


  • Many of us begin as “assistants” and teach with a more experienced teacher
  • When we first teach, we’re in terror: “Will I survive?”
  • We’re afraid that we might not know the answer to a question
  • As a student, we could hide, now we’re in the spotlight
  • Problem: We know about the dance, but not much about teaching

Common problems and “solutions”

  • Covering too much or too little material
  • Don’t know how to explain the material
  • Don’t know how to see if the students get it
  • …
  • “Solution”: Practice, experience, and feedback

Focus on subject


  • We develop a better understanding of the dance
  • We can speed up the students’ learning by telling them what we figured out
  • We know so much that we don’t have enough time to cover everything
  • We are excited about questions, they let us dig into the details
  • Problem: sometimes we give so much information that students don’t know what to do with it
  • Consequence: students never need to figure things out for themselves

This is not all bad. Remember that everybody has different reasons for taking dance classes.

Focus on student / student as receptive


Up until here, the focus was on teaching. Now we shift focus to learning.

  • We realise that all students are different, so we mix telling and showing
  • We mix harder and easier material, so there’s something for everyone
  • Questions tells us something about where students are in their learning
  • We ask questions to figure out what our students understand

Focus on learning

Student as active

  • We need to make the students think about what we tell them
  • How exactly students learn is different, some learn by doing, some by watching, some by thinking
  • We start to see ourselves more as coaches than as experts
  • Limitation: we still tell the students when to think and what to think about
  • Risk: some students get annoyed when we force them to think instead of telling them what’s right, they could feel like they don’t learn anything

Student as independent

  • Idea: we give students the tools and then let them choose what to learn
  • Consequence: students become experts on things we know little about

Our development as teachers is not linear. We will jump back and forth between the stages.

Discussion in breakout rooms


Discuss

  • Do you recognize yourself in any of the stages?
  • Do you recognize your teachers in any of the stages?
  • What do you think about the focus on teaching vs. learning? Is one of them more important than the other?

Teaching styles

Teaching styles

  1. Expert → Experten
    Läraren fokuserar på att förmedla ämneskunskap och visa sin expertis för att utveckla studenternas kompetens.

  2. Formal Authority → Formell auktoritet
    Läraren betonar regler, standarder och tydliga förväntningar kring vad som är korrekt och acceptabelt.

  3. Personal Model → Personlig förebild
    Läraren undervisar genom att visa hur man tänker och arbetar, så att studenter kan observera och efterlikna.

  4. Facilitator → Handledare (eller Facilitator)
    Läraren vägleder genom frågor och stöd så att studenter utvecklar självständigt tänkande och ansvar.

  5. Delegator → Delegator (eller Delegerande lärare)
    Läraren ger studenter stort ansvar att arbeta självständigt eller i team medan hen fungerar som resurs.

  6. Bonus in dancing: Entertainer

Discussion


Discuss

  • Do you recognize yourself in any of the teaching styles?
  • Do you recognize your teachers in any of the teaching styles?
  • Do you think one of the teaching styles is better than the others? Why or why not?