Overcoming Pedagogical Solitude: Triangulating New Approaches Through Community Building

For many of us, our teaching approaches are informed primarily or entirely by our past experiences as students. We build on these experiences to create our own classroom instructional models, typically in isolation from colleagues and mentors, and we hope for the best in terms of educational outcomes and iterative improvements. Occasional guidance and observation can be sought through the Center for Teaching Excellence and other resources, but we miss the everyday opportunities to learn from our closest colleagues and neighbors in our departments – those who know our curriculum and student needs best. This leads to teaching models being developed and honed in a primarily solitary manner.

This presentation will describe an easy-to-implement model for overcoming this “pedagogical solitude” by forming a cohort of “Teaching Triangles” within departments. Triangles are comprised of three faculty who agree to make one observation of each other’s classes and to have their class observed in return. Triangle members make a short written reflection in response to three prompts about lessons learned, suggestions offered, and perceived student engagement. Sharing within and among triangles occurs at a culminating group lunch. This program was recently implemented in the Department of Chemical Engineering, modeled closely after Duke University’s program. In this seminar and discussion, the method for implementing Teaching Triangles will be shared, followed by Q&A with three participants of the Chemical Engineering program.

Read more in our article "Overcoming Pedagogical Solitude: Fostering Collaboration and Innovation for Effective Teaching Through Teaching Triangles."