Being and developing as a university teacher: The role of emotions and social reflection in developing as a university teacher in different pedagogical development contexts

Virve Pekkarinen, kehityspäällikkö, Laurea
virve.pekkarinen@laurea.fi

Lectio praecursoria

Over the past two decades, there has been significant growth in higher education. According to the OECD Education at Glance Report on Higher Education, published in 2022, the proportion of young adults aged 25-34 with higher education degrees, in the OECD region, has increased from 27 percent to 48 percent, thus almost doubling since 2000. In Finland, the share of higher education graduates has been high since the beginning of the millennium, at 39 percent, and has continued to rise to just under 43 percent today. The Finnish government has set ambitious targets to further support this growth, aiming for a higher education attainment rate of 50 percent by 2030. In practice, this means that every second young person will graduate with at least a bachelor’s degree, and around 60-70 percent of the generation, will enter higher education. As a result, the educational backgrounds and skills of those entering higher education, are increasingly diverse.

In addition to the growing number of graduates, the constantly changing and rapidly developing world impacts higher education institutions and the education they provide, calling for them to adapt to these changes. The labor market is different than it was 20 years ago, and the skills students need to enter it, are different. Furthermore, over the past decade, the digitalization of learning and teaching has increased significantly and has been further accelerated by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, in recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an essential part of teaching and learning, with its various applications.

Quality learning requires quality teaching. Providing students with the skills they need to enter the future labor market, can no longer be achieved through traditional teaching methods alone, but must involve a wide range of methods, including also digital teaching methods. These changes also affect the type of competencies required of university teachers, which has created a clear need for higher education institutions to develop the competencies of university teachers.

Before considering how university teachers’ professional development takes place, it needs to be considered what university teachers’ expertise is and what competencies they should have. A characteristic feature of universities compared to other educational institutions, is the strong connection between research and teaching. While university teachers’ expertise in academia has traditionally been linked to mastery of a specific body of knowledge and teaching skills, the perspective in this dissertation is broader. It includes a more experiential understanding, seeing expertise as context-dependent and socially created through social interaction with others in changing contexts.

Furthermore, the concept of pedagogical competency is not entirely unambiguous, as there are several different traditions and approaches to defining it. Rationalist approaches have their roots in the positivist paradigm and define human competency as a set of attributes that people use in their work. In practice, this is manifested in the higher education context in the attempts to operationalize the qualifications of a good university teacher, into measurable criteria that can be use, for example, to assess the teacher’s progress in their academic careers. These criteria are often general, simplistic, and quite narrow list of specific characteristics.

This dissertation argues for a broader, interpretative understanding of competency, rooted in phenomenology. The interpretative approach understands that skills and competencies are based on and formed with a person’s perceptions and understanding of their work, and that competency is a social construct that results from the interaction between the environment and the individual, in different contexts. It is not only the competency that is important, but also how people experience their competency.

Besides the different traditions and approaches in defining expertise and pedagogical competency, an important question is also, who makes the definitions? In previous studies, expertise and pedagogical competency have often been defined by people, other than university teachers themselves, for example, researchers and policymakers. In this dissertation, it is the perspective of university teachers and how they experience themselves and their competency as teachers, that is central. The aim of this dissertation has been to create an understanding of how teachers perceive university teachers’ expertise and pedagogical competency, and how they experience their being and developing as a university teacher.

How then does development as a university teacher happen and what does it require? The role of reflection as a prerequisite for developing as a university teacher is already well-recognized in previous research. Reflection is typically defined as a cognitive human function, and it is used to refer to the knowledge of an individual, about their mental functions, and their ability to observe and evaluate their actions and thoughts. Some researchers, however, consider that there are, besides the cognitive aspect, also emotional and social aspects.

When considering expertise and competency as being created socially, social reflection with peers and colleagues, and the emotional aspect also need to be addressed. Unlike reflection, emotions in university teaching have long been a rather under-researched area. Some also consider that emotions do not belong in a higher education context, because they are seen as the opposite of rational thinking and therefore an expression of emotions is not especially encouraged.

The second aim of this dissertation has been to increase the understanding of the role of emotions and social reflection in university teaching and in being and developing as a university teacher. The focus has been on what kind of emotions university teachers experience in teaching, how the teachers reflect on their teaching, and what role emotions and reflection play in developing as a teacher. Emotions are considered in this dissertation as individual emotions that can be discussed and shared with others.

The third aim of this dissertation has been to explore how different development actions and contexts can support teacher development. Perhaps, one of the most common measures to improve the quality of university teaching has been the creation of university pedagogical training programs and courses for academic staff. Pedagogical training courses have been shown in previous studies to be an effective way of supporting teacher development. On the other hand, pedagogical training has also been criticized for being ineffective, as what is learned during pedagogical training, is not always transferred into the teacher’s actual teaching practice.

It has also been suggested that development through practice, for example, via participating in educational development projects, may enable teachers to develop their teaching and learn new skills and competencies. However, relatively little research has been done on the effectiveness of educational development projects, and evidence of their effectiveness is scarce. This dissertation examines both a pedagogical training course and an educational development project as pedagogical development activities and contexts, and the aim has been to explore how the two can support development as a university teacher.

The three research aims, and the questions related to them, were explored in three sub-studies. The participants altogether were 113 university teachers in two Finnish multidisciplinary universities. Three different sources of empirical data were used to conduct the research, namely surveys, reflective writings, and semi-structured thematic interviews, providing both qualitative and quantitative data. The data were analyzed using theory-guided qualitative content analysis and statistical analysis methods.

The results of the dissertation portray university teachers’ expertise as multifaceted, highlighting their extensive knowledge base and varied professional roles, indicating the close link between teaching and research. However, the relationship between teaching and research does not seem to be completely equal, as the role of a researcher was perceived as primary and the role of a teacher as secondary. In many universities, a university teacher’s advancement in their academic career is often based on research merits rather than teaching merits. Thus, it seems natural for teachers to prioritize research over teaching. Since the motivation to improve one’s teaching is not necessarily always only intrinsic, that is, teachers want to become better teachers, but there are also extrinsic motivational factors, such as career development, investing in teaching, and teaching development should be worthwhile for teachers career-wise.

The results of this dissertation suggest that when universities strive for high-quality teaching, a more balanced relationship between research and teaching could be beneficial.In practice, this could mean, for example, that universities pay more attention to teaching merits having more weight in the career development process. This could motivate teachers to implement and develop high-quality teaching, and also, invest in developing as teachers.

The results also show that university teachers’ expertise is not only based on knowledge, skills, and roles related to research and teaching, but it was also perceived to include emotional and social aspects,andthat emotions, reflection, and social reflection play an important role, in how being and developing as a university teacher is experienced. The teachers reported experiencing various positive, negative, and mixed emotions in their teaching.Positive emotions were experienced to strengthen the positive experience of their pedagogical competency, and of being and developing as teachers. Negative emotions, were not, however, experienced as discouraging, but also negative emotions were experienced to be able to encourage development. I will read a few examples of these experiences:
Being successful in teaching, of course, strengthens me as a teacher. I feel that things have gone well and it feels good

Failing in teaching kind of reminds me of the humanity in also being a teacher, I do not lose my professional confidence because of it. Maybe it just points out certain development points that I need to pay more attention to in the future. … I see it as an opportunity … to learn as a teacher

In addition, the teachers experiencedsocial reflection with others, for example, their colleagues, to help them interpret the teaching-related emotions and support them in developing as teachers and their teacher identity:

 I reflect on my teaching both by myself and with my colleagues. Quite often, when I have an idea on how to develop my teaching, even if it would be a bad one, I go to a colleague and reflect on how it would work, how it could be tested in teaching . . . It is so fruitful to be able to ponder and take on new ideas to be tried out in teaching . . . In addition, there are flops every now and then. It is very important to have peer support to reflect on and understand that it was not such a big failure.

Based on the results, I suggest that expertise and pedagogical competency as part of it is not seen as only a cognitive construct that can be defined as a list of measurable criteria but is seen as a broader, experiential phenomenon, that also considers the importance of emotions and social reflection. In practice, this means for example, that when planning pedagogical development activities for university teachers, attention should be paid to the possibilityof collaborating, having meaningful conversations, and forming networks with peers. In addition, the development activities should enable the teachers to enjoy changing pedagogy while developing their teaching.

As teachers may be interested in different pedagogical development activities, and one kind may not be suitable for all, it is essential to ensure that a variety of opportunities for pedagogical development are available. The results showed that both a pedagogical training course and an educational development project can support teacher development. An important question related to pedagogical development activities is, what makes them successful? Although examining the effectiveness of pedagogical development activities was not the main focus of this dissertation, it was possible to identify characteristics that support the development of teachers and therefore also contribute to better effectiveness of the development activities. The results indicate that longer-term pedagogical development activities, be it a pedagogical training course or an educational development project, enabling multidisciplinary social networks, and fostering theory-practice integration, can support teacher development.

In conclusion, the results of this dissertation can be useful for universities and higher education institutions in designing strategic academic development processes, for example in designing activities to support the development of university teachers’ pedagogical competency. 

Kirjoittaja väitteli kasvatustieteen tohtoriksi 10.6.2024 Itä-Suomen yliopiston soveltavan kasvatustieteen ja opettajankoulutuslaitoksen osastosta. Väitöskirja verkossa: https://erepo.uef.fi/handle/123456789/31877