FILE DETAILS
Audio Length: 32 minutes
Audio Quality: High Average Low
Number of Facilitators: One
Number of Interviewees: Four
Difficult Interviewee Accents: Yes No
Other Comments: The speaker had a strong accent making some words difficult to transcribe.
Names and university departments/faculties have been de-identified using [xxxx].
Facilitator: It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me and us here. The structure of the presentation usually would be interactive; I only have 30 minutes so I will just talk about the context: our University of [xxxx] context and my involvement in academic styles development and that is actually - that creates the space for peer reviewing. I have some research questions in mind since I see the peer review practice as separate from my own teaching practice. But I also investigate by means of action research, and I will show you some case studies. Don’t you think that's appropriate?
I heard the Provost speak of values this morning again. So what are our values when it comes to teaching and learning? So I think that is my focus when I have to focus on leadership, and it's interpersonal that it's not personal is not enough; it should be deeper than personal so interpersonal leadership, and then it's about the value of self-enquiry. I also heard about self-directed learning and yeah. So I am happy that I'm on the right track it seems.
It's also about transformation of leadership. If we talk about peer reviewing and yeah, if I read the literature they talk about changing. That's not enough; it's about innovation or transforming practice then I think we are doing the right thing.
So the ideas of transformation and leadership is apt, and we also read about action-leadership, and that is why I have this link between innovation or transformation and action research.
Now the scholarship of learning and teaching all of that is part of interpersonal leadership. It all deals with the self, and to have a vast list there and there are actually more. In the end it's about scholar leader [scores]. Now we had a meeting yesterday and we had a scholar leader scores on scholar leader scores and apparently my idea of scholar leader scores is not what it should be so let's - see what is my idea. What is my idea of peer review? From my context I am actually used to the words peer mentoring not peer reviewing. That was strange to me and our colleagues at the University of [xxxx]. To me peer review - am I gone now?
Interviewee: Yeah we lost you…
[Inaudible]
Facilitator: Pure mike, shame; don't put your hands in your pocket. To me it's actively engaging in scholar leader scores, about practice and being scholarly in acting upon [unclear] scores to me that is all part of this course. So it's not just speaking to one another, but the observing the non-verbal is also part of the discourse. Otherwise I would not know that my talking makes sense.
Okay now I'm deeply in trouble, but to me scholarship includes all of those things. We just had a session on curriculum design, curriculum planning and all of that, learning, facilitating learning, assessment, service learning of community engagement; I don't know what you're familiar with, professional development in general.
Now my [unclear] that is implied in the title might be a bit confusing. But it's about me with myself enquiry on my own bike from the basics - that is basic one I had to move over years to a transformational one like this. So I had to change my own practice before I could get involved in peer reviewing before attempting one of these. So it's the idea of me and my bike before getting involved with others and in turn then work on their professional development.
So we have different types of being in tandem with peers. Like that one; that is the gentle touch. So you have the colleague that you have to handle very gently, and then you will have the prima donna: she actually knows it all. So you have to handle her differently, and then you have the fast-laners. They just want to move on, and you have to keep in touch and so on. You get the free-riders, but they are not really much involved; they are just waving to the others. But in the end it takes two, so the whole idea of peer reviewing and peer mentoring is visualised in that.
Professional development as part of my professional development I have to not only look at my teaching, but also my peer review practice in a scholarly way. That is why use action research, and to do action research is for most of us like thinking out of my box. Why am I saying out of my box, not out of the box? So I'm - I base my action research work on [unclear] ideas and to the [unclear]. As I've explained at the meeting yesterday I see action research as paradigm that we can use for scholarly approach to our professional development. In peer reviewing it's all about professional development and using a mixed methods approach in that paradigm.
Now one of the first questions as I saw my own practice I want to know what is my way of doing, what is my thinking style that will influence my teaching style? The same goes with the peer review context. I want to know how I do I think, and if you are my peer, how do you think and how will we match and mismatch and so on, okay. That's my first research question and more. What evidence do I have for claiming that my peers do implement principles that we have discussed and talked about in practice? By means of photo evidence I can do that. What do peers say about my peer reviewing and we use a lot in terms of portfolios based on action research, it's not the portfolio of evidence it's a developmental portfolio.
Right and the theoretical framework since our higher education practice is so multi-dimensional we have to look at a lot of things. So it's professional learning, it's authentic learning, it's action research, it's multiple intelligence, it's self-regulated learning. In our context it's outcome-based education, it's whole brain learning, curriculum development. All these things we have to speak about, that is the bigger picture. So that's a lot, and there's the et cetera. So where do we start? Someone asks do we start with the curriculum or do we - where do we start?
Right, so one way of starting the process is by introducing whole brain learning to my peers where it's about learning styles. The rationale for using this specific one - Herrmann's Model - is that it's whole; so it's about the holistic approach. In the Coffield Report you have all the detail I have investigated several learning style theories and they have identified Herrmann's Model as one of six that you can use. To me it's a user friendly model. You go to Sternberg and those they are complicated with that I can't understand so I can't explain that to my colleagues.
So I would like to introduce this model to you, it's a metaphoric representation of the brain by means of the different hats. Now we have the intellectual quadrant there, what hats do you think will you wear if you have to represent that?
Interviewee: A beret.
Facilitator: A beret. Okay how about this one?
Interviewee: Oh better.
Facilitator: The intellectual self where it's about fact based learning, logical thinking, analytical thinking, we are all used to that. All school systems and unfortunately all university systems as well. Then for the safety [itself], what hat?
Interviewee: [Unclear].
Facilitator: Yeah, great stuff, yeah, yeah.
Facilitator: So where you plan everything, get everything in place, sequential learning, step-by-step learning. We are all used to that. That's part of the school systems and the university system. We are used to that. But we are more than that; we are also the emotional self, and this is - oh is it that bad?
[Over speaking]
Facilitator: Oh that's bad, oh okay. No, okay, no this is my Bafana Bafana cap. Where it's about interpersonal relationships and that is what we need in peer reviewing. More importantly to me it's about intrapersonal knowledge and relationships with the self, the emotional self.
Interviewee: Explain Bafana Bafana.
Facilitator: Oh Bafana Bafana cap, that is our soccer team.
Interviewee: Yep.
Facilitator: Right sorry and lastly it's about the experimental self. The Provost talks about taking risks and this is the one - for risk taking and having fun. It's about visual learning; it's about integration et cetera, et cetera. That is what I sell as point of departure for discussions in terms of peer reviewing. But the same principles should be applied in our peer reviewing; it should be fun, it should be visual, it should be structured, it should be all of this. Is that not true? So we all have our own view of peer reviewing coming from our own learning and thinking style preference.
A complimenting theory to me is Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Peer reviewers about the self-smart and people-smart, but again we need everything included, so it's a theory for the classroom as well as a theory for peer reviewing. Now as part of the theoretical framework I would have authentic learning, and in terms of the authentic learning that is my conceptualising at this point. My understanding of what is the meaning of authentic learning, so it's a real-life experience in your own practice.
The same with self-regulated or meta-learning, so if we want to see that inculcated in our learners how do we apply the same principles in our professional development? Indeed about interpersonal knowledge having self-knowledge in terms of your brain profile or learning style preference. If we work with Herrmann's model we have brain profiling like this. Now I would like to know, okay, this is my profile, I am very structured, but now I have this guy as my peer, and I have engage in conversations. So it could be a clash, it could be a mismatch, or it could be what I call a perfect mismatch. If we know this theory we know how to collaborate and actually inform one another, and enrich the whole process.
We did a study on all our first year students - not all there are nearly 8000, and we took a sample of 1004 students. So when you think that is the profile of the group of 1000 learners, a whole brain group. What do you think is the profile of an engineer?
[Laughter]
Facilitator: Why are you laughing? A medical doctor?
Interviewee: It depends who they are.
Facilitator: It depends; it depends. But for the group the [unclear] came out as the holistic group - O group, composite O group: the medical students, the engineering students. That is a bit skewed it's not because we are in psychology it's because of the smaller sample size, and the same of [Brauman] music. So if we have discussions in terms of transforming your practice that is what you have to do; you have to be flexible and you have to adapt because you will have all of those students in your class. Secondly you have to challenge them to get out of that comfort zone and work in other quadrants as well.
So I use this as the links for looking at everything I do, including peer reviewing. The rationale for using action research I can actually just refer to the scholarship of teaching - learning and teaching, scholarship of education, scholarship of higher education - I don't know scholarship. That is what it's about. If we look into the literature on action research we will find reference to identifying a problem. To me that's a deficit approach. It's the traditional research approach. So instead of asking what is wrong with my practice, I rather start with an innovative idea such as the whole brain learning concept. Part of a visionary approach to my practice plan for an innovation or the transformation of my practice, implement the plan, monitor and reflect on it, evaluate it. That's all part of this - each cycle of the spiral. You are familiar - are you familiar with action research?
So and it becomes, most of the time, quite messy. So you will start off with that nice innovative idea, and then you come across another one and you start another spiral and another one. But in the end you will have to address the problems, in any case. But at least we do not start there that is why I'd rather work with this asset based model, there you see different spirals.
Right case studies it's about my own practice, so I'm running formal program, and I'm involved in workshops and that is where it all started and starts usually. I had one experience apart from being the reviewer for other colleagues. I had this strange experience and that's made more sensitive even in terms of peer reviewing where we have education consultants for every faculty. So the one came the other day and she involved my program, and she saw my study manuals and material. She thought oh this is a great example, I'm going to take that to my workshops, her workshops, and show it to the other persons because it was integrated [unclear].
So in the end she accepted another job, and there was another education consultant appointed. At some stage she asked me for my study manual, I thought okay my good study manual, give it to her. The outcome the worst they'd ever seen. So I won't go into the details of how they managed the whole process, but to me it was not a nice experience. So sometimes it's perhaps it's good to be in that position so you know how to handle similar situations. There's a lot of things going on in different faculties: economic, management, science, engineering. We have our induction program, and it's about research supervision, so I'm asking the question: what is our holistic understanding of peer reviewing? It can't be only undergraduate teaching; it should be research supervision et cetera, et cetera.
Okay and a lot of other university - I include that because that is my experience, and that is where we learn how to peer review with other universities, from other universities, by peer reviewing other universities et cetera, et cetera. Examples from my practice I can't tell my colleagues now to be innovative and have fun and games in their classes if I don't do that myself. I can't tell them be interactive and engage your students if I don't that myself. I have this - I had this most critical colleague once but that was what he has written in his portfolio. That was his research question.