dchen – Deb Chen, PhD

Providing Effective Feedback Workshop

It was a room full of participants from diverse roles and disciplinary backgrounds, all curious about what a “strength-based coaching approach” looks like in providing feedback to their students.

“I will be more intentional in finding their strengths… for them to build on.” – a workshop participant’s takeaway

Through small group discussions, we surfaced and reflected on our intentions, assumptions, and current practices around why, when, and how we provide feedback to our students. We had generative dialogues around asking for permission in offering feedback, alignment of feedback and (student/course/program/etc.) goals, and our own comfort given feedback’s inherent relational nature. Given their own unique teaching contexts and (time) constraints, participants were critically considering the logistics of implementation and evaluating the value of this strength-based coaching approach.

Through a number of role-play scenarios, we challenged ourselves to incorporate some of the four core elements of this coaching approach:

- - - Strength-based,
    - Dialogic,
    - Reflective, and
    - Incremental.

This experiential learning activity illuminated for the participants the need to become more aware of the diversity in their students’ perspectives and experiences and to “stay curious about their students”. We also explored a few strategies to incorporate elements of this coaching approach through different modalities of feedback (e.g., written feedback, peer feedback, etc.).

I will “consider the student’s perspective and experience in receiving the feedback” – a workshop participant’s reflection on what they would do differently

Of course, this coaching approach is not without its limitations and risks: level of trust that exist in your relationship, student maturity and readiness to engage with constructive feedback, time and workload constraints, etc. are all important considerations as you experiment with a strength-based coaching approach in providing feedback.

To me, this is the core of a learner-centred practice that supports students’ holistic success.

A Strength-Based Coaching Approach to Providing Feedback

The CTLT Summer Institute offers fundamental teaching development opportunities for new instructors at UBC. Many of the sessions on offer this year are developed and delivered in collaboration with faculty members, with aims to expose new instructors with diverse perspectives and experiences to reflect upon.

The parallel process of learning that I am engaging in this time around is the Offering Effective Feedback session that Pamela Rogalski and I will be co-facilitating – introducing a strength-based coaching approach to providing feedback.

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In this session, we plan to hold space for participants to reflect on their current feedback-giving practice and its alignment with their intention, to engage them in role-plays to experiment with a strength-based coaching approach in order to fully consider the perspectives of their students as they receive feedback. We will provide ample opportunities for our participants to reflect and to engage in incremental improvements through dialogue as ways to model a collaborative coaching approach to support students’ holistic success. We will also embrace the generative/emergent nature of coaching in our session and discuss the limitations/challenges that comes with taking this approach in our higher education context. Our hope is that our participants will come to appreciate the integration of a strength-based coaching approach to providing feedback in their classrooms.

I look forward to seeing how this experiment unfolds in September!

Coaching in Educational Development

I have recently completed my UBC Certificate in Organizational Coaching program through Extended Learning. I was consistently invited to lean into the discomfort in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1935) and this learning journey has been powerfully transformative for me.

Zone of Proximal Development by Lev Vygotsky (1935).

Bringing in my lenses as an educational developer, a distress services provider, a scientist, and a life-long learner, my evolving conceptualization of coaching is a mutual commitment to the process of learning that ultimately enhances my client’s internal capacity to make meaningful and sustainable changes toward their stated goals. I strive to show up as my authentic self, with presence, curiosity, and vulnerability that support my clients to dive into the learning zone, or the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1935). As a thought partner, I bring integrity, honesty, and accountability into conversations to explore, discover, collaborate and design the pathways to my clients’ intentional success.

It is exciting to learn how others draw on their expertise to incorporate coaching into various educational contexts (Lofthouse, 2019). At UBC, there is a growing coaching culture and I have access to a wealth of resources as an internal coach. I am committed to gathering stories from fellow internal coaches to learn how they leverage their coaching skills to affect change within UBC.

As an early career educational developer, I will have to continue to increase my level of self-awareness and self-regulation within my work context as I try to bring a coach approach to my work. I am eager to integrate this newly developed coaching skills to partner with faculty members to “develop teaching quality, to enable inter-professional learning, and to facilitate positive and productive relationships through cultural change in educational communities” (Lofthouse, 2019). I hope to deepen relationships with educators by creating intentional learning spaces for dialogue, modelings a strength-based practice, and extending their skills and knowledge through co-construction!

References

Lofthouse, R. (2019). Coaching in education: A professional development process in formation. Professional Development in Education, 45(1), 33-45.
Vygotsky, L. (1935 [2011]). The dynamics of the schoolchild’s mental development in relation to teaching and learning (trans. A. Kozulin). Journal of Cognitive Education & Psychology, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 198–211.

Fostering Appreciative Resilience

While the virtual format of the EDC 2019 Conference did not allow for fostering new and deepening existing relationships with fellow EDs from other institutions, it offered a rare opportunity for us – colleagues who otherwise work in isolation within the same institution – to connect, learn, and reflect together. The protected time to engage in rich discussions around resilience and well-being in our professional work was invaluable for me as an early career ED; the experience really illustrated that resilience is much more than an internal capacity or attribute – external resources, influences, and environment also play a central role in fostering or depleting our individual and collective resiliency.

appreciative resilience model — Appreciative Resilience Model. By Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell.

Reflecting on the week’s learning, I am taking up on Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell’s challenge during their keynote and articulating my preliminary thoughts on how I can foster more resilience in self and others:

At the personal level:

I am committed to “begin with the end in mind” (Covey, 2004) and to gather more “intentional evidence” in my own work by articulating my goals, identifying appropriate evidence to evaluate success, and designing the process to minimize the intention-impact gap (Hoessler, Ives, & Martin, 2019). The promise of specific and evidence-based feedback offered by this structured framework resonates deeply with me. This systematic approach of intentional evaluation may also offer inspirations or even opportunities to engage in action research.

At my own institution:

It was apparent that we thrived when we connect with one another and share our successes and challenges at work; I would like to be intentional in supporting resilience in my colleagues and in instructors. I am committed to proactively in reaching out to those whom I work with – simple check-ins to acknowledge their work and to invite informal discussions, with goals to make them feel appreciated and cared for (Wetherall, Hannon, & Martin, 2019). Relationships require effort and social investment to blossom and deepen; I hope that I will help foster resilience in others by fostering our mutual relationships.

Beyond my institution:

I enjoyed the collegial collaboration in creating our EDC presentation with fellow early-career EDs across the country (Building bridges instead of walls: Drawing on collective wisdom to navigate the contradictions of educational development as an early career professional). I felt that this supportive learning community is instrumental in regenerating my sense of resilience, motivation, and hope in my work. Having a safe space to celebrate our successes and to share our struggles with each other reminds me of our individual and collective capacity to support resilience in ourselves and in others.

Going back to “Hope” in Joan and Jeanie’s Appreciative Resilience Model, perhaps we may even be able to influence our environment – institutional culture and structures – to further foster resilience!

How do you foster resilience in yourself and others?

References:

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic. New York: Free Press, 2004. Print.
Hoessler, C., Ives, C., & Martin, P. Intentional Evidencing within multiple stakeholders’ goals: Evaluating what matters for our centre’s identify, our institutional needs, and our ED souls – EDC Evaluating Educational Development Action Group. EDC Conference. Concurrent Session. February 21, 2019.
McArthur-Blair, J., & Cockell, J. Appreciative Resilience and Educational Devleopment. EDC Conference. Opening Keynote. February 19, 2019.
Wetherall, D., Hannon, N., & Martin, J. Supporting and Fostering Our Faculty Resilience. EDC Conference. Concurrent Session. February 20, 2019.

Early-Career Educational Developers Action Group

I have recently joined the newly formed EDC Early-Career Educational Developers Action Group – to co-investigate the experience of being an early-career educational developer (ED). While my hope is to contribute to this worthwhile effort for new EDs navigate their role, I know the real beneficiary will be me throughout this process – with structured opportunities to collaborate nationally, to reflect my own lived experiences, to articulate my questions, to examine my assumptions and beliefs, and many more learning opportunities. Already, I experience a deep sense of trust, belonging, and comunity, despite the fact that I have never met any of the group members in-person and have only connected virtually on a few occasions.

Guided by our current contexts and emerging needs, we collaborate to develop resources to build our collective capacity in navigating challenges and opportunities in our roles as early-career EDs. At the moment, the group is gearing up to present an interactive workshop at the EDC 2019 virtual conference – Building bridges instead of walls: Drawing on collective wisdom to navigate the contradictions of educational development as an early career professional. Our goal is to consider how we, as individuals and as a community through EDC, can better support EDs’ resilience in their navigation of the contradictory nature of the work, with special emphasis on supporting EDs early in their careers. We are looking forward to learning with and from the EDC community.

Our longer-term plan is to conduct a series of surveys and interviews to distill the unique experiences of early-career EDs with goals to put together a guide for new EDs!