Faculty Development: Semester-to-Semester Prep
Before the start of each fall semester, there’s an all-day semester preparatory training meeting with new and returning faculty learn about the goals of the program, the events for the semester, and gain extra professional development through various pedagogical training sessions and workshops.
In the morning, according to Lacey, “new faculty meet with the Mentoring Committee and me to go over things more relevant to new faculty—some logistical, some cultural” (Wootton, personal communication, 2019). At lunch returning faculty join new faculty and there’s assumedly bonding and discussion. After lunch, there are whole-group workshops and discussions about the program and changing pedagogy as a whole. Break-out sessions for different groups and types of instructors sometimes happen.
In the afternoon, the Mentoring Committee and WPA (Lacey) put on workshops and discussions they believe will satisfy the ever changing needs of new and returning faculty. Both term and adjunct faculty, new and returning, attend these sessions. In order to keep these needs of faculty for sessions in mind, Lacey noted that she and the Mentoring Committee “solicit ideas for the afternoon sessions, and we keep in mind topics of discussion in the program. When we revised our learning outcomes and then our main rubric, we discussed those. We often have a breakout session related to our summer text. Last summer, we had one on visually creative assignment design.”
According to Willard-Traub:
“Seeing faculty development as a means of producing new knowledge, I propose, allows participants to challenge the received wisdom of their fields and to come to a more rhetorical understanding of their identities. The collaborative construction of new knowledge and an emerging understanding of identities as rhetorical can help both to de+ne and to expand the boundaries of disciplines and the identities of individual instructors” (435).
By encouraging both new and returning faculty, term and adjunct levels, to attend these workshops and PD sessions, the “collaborative construction of new knowledge” mentioned here are at work where the transfer of pedagogical knowledge is brought together into one room for others to learn.
Faculty Review: Teaching Portfolios and Requirements
As discussed in early posts, while adjunct faculty are reviewed each year by the WPA, term faculty submit portfolios to the department chair and writing studies committee with a cover memo reflecting on their semester and arguing for reappointment or promotion, their CV, an annual report (which is a university-standard form), and class materials (such as a syllabus, major assignments, and one student paper they’ve responded to and graded). The office adds in their student evaluations as well.
Lacey noted that if there are ever bad evals, some might add a paragraph to their file before the evals, but overall, the faculty avoid focusing or discussing evals whether or not that are particularly impressive. Additionally, the writing studies committee that reviews the portfolios acknowledge that they are “not the only audience for these memos [or portfolios, as] the audience extends to the Literature department chair, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Dean of Faculty.”
Thus the writing must be professional and concise, yet general enough for others outside of the program to understand. Because of this wide audience, Lacey notes that she as a WPA would “not advise a faculty member to focus on what went wrong. If they received criticism in a previous memo, they should note how they addressed it.”
Outside-Departmental Professional Development: Getting the Campus Involved
As mentioned earlier, there is a Professional Developmental Committee within the Writing Studies program that focuses on professional (rather than classroom or pedagogical) development. For instance, the PD committee has done workshops on proposals for conferences, presenting, and getting published. Lacey noted that they also “handle the ‘reading groups’ that [are done] once a semester in the monthly Writing Studies Program meetings.” Each year, the PDC and WPA pick a theme and then once each semester there is a monthly reading meeting devoted to readings from the field related to that theme.
When I asked about any para-departmental PD sessions, Lacey noted that most faculty development is handled through the AU Core, “which oversees the writing-intensive courses in the disciplines.” Though, she noted, they do collab with other departments using the university’s teaching and research center, such as during their August all-day training session. Lacey also noted that there is a full-day conference the Friday before the spring semester as well, similar to the August conference.
Training Graduate Students to Take on Faculty Positions
At AU, graduate students interested in pedagogy and composition instructor sign up for a composition theory course called LIT 730 which prepares students for the practicum semester where they shadow and teach with a term faculty member in a WRTG 101 course.
According to Shelley Reid, GTAs must be supported in formative and supervisory ways (Malenczyk 254) as well as have their education merged with the rest of the regular faculty’s regular professional development (251). Additionally, Reid lays out a helpful table (248) of ways to emphasize different types of learning in TA preparation.
Preparatory Course: LIT 730
Staying true to these ideals, especially since Lacey studied WPA work with Reid, AU has a course within graduate instructor preparation called “LIT 730, Teaching Composition: Theory, Research, Practice, Transfer” where students are set to “understand some of the core approaches of composition pedagogy; draw connections between theories and research in composition pedagogy to experience and practice; engage in metacognitive reflection about theory, research, and practice in composition pedagogy; learn basic elements of writing instruction, assignment design and response, and course design; and, learn the fundamentals of working with research in writing studies” (Wootton, syllabus, Fall 2019).
Each week, students incorporate valuable composition pedagogical theory into their practice as teachers where they review which theories of teaching they mesh with better. At the end of the semester, they put together an “exploratory project” where students “venture a premise or provocative question [about composition theory and pedagogy] and then work out that line of thought, engaging with research to develop your thinking and support your assertions.”
According to Stancliff and Goggin, this kind of theory-focused, reflective pedagogy, “encourages the kind of teaching habits that can sustain careers, offering not formulae but conceptual resources for approaching the complexity of bridging intellectual paradigms, always the situation of teaching” (12). Thus, reflective pedagogy and metacognitive planning must be valued at AU.
Additionally, throughout the semester, they write various blog posts on in-depth questions in the field. One that I have always found interested was the question “What is ‘good writing’?” where students are asked to define what makes writing good and how some characteristics in writing are valued more than others, etc.
Mentored Shadowing & Pedagogy Spring Practicum
After graduate students pass their pedagogy and theory course in the fall they can apply for the practicum course in the spring. During this course, according to Lacey, students:
- Participate in a WTRG 101 course for a full semester with a term faculty member, shadowing and teaching a few lessons
- Meet with their term faculty mentor regularly as well as with a group of other grad students to talk about their class and work on their portfolios
- Shadow grade some assignments in the WRTG 101 course
- Participate throughout the class as a TA
Additionally, students create a portfolio at the end of the practicum where they include a teaching statement, syllabus, example lesson plan, and a shadow-graded paper. At the end of the course, their mentor fills out a recommendation form for the student to continue as an adjunct faculty member. For some graduate students, they take this course before they graduate from their program, so it is an easier transition into an adjunct role after graduation.
Works Cited
Reid, E. Shelly. “What is TA Education?” in Malenczyk, pp. 197-210.
Stancliff, Michael, and Maureen Daly Goggin. “What’s Theorizing Got to Do with It? Teaching Theory as Resourceful Conflict and Reflection in TA Preparation.” WPA: The Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administrators 30.3 (2007): 11-28.
Willard-Traub, Margaret K. “Writing Program Administration and Faculty Professional Development: Which Faculty? What Development?” Pedagogy 8.3 (2008): 433-445.
Wootton, Lacey. “Report 4: Orientation & Professional Development.” Received by Bethany Van Scooter, February 11, 2020.