Faculty Development in Developing Countries: Improving Teaching Quality in Higher Education

209 Pages·2016·1.263 MB·English

by  Cristine Smith (editor), Katherine Hudson (editor)

Faculty Development in
Developing Countries
Learner-centered approaches to teaching, such as small group discussions,
debates, role plays, and project-based assignments, help students develop
critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills. However, more tra-
ditional lecture-based approaches still predominate in classrooms in higher
education institutions around the world. Faculty development programs can
support faculty members to adopt new teaching methods, even in situations
where they face significant challenges due to lack of resources, ongoing con-
flict, political upheaval, or the legacy of colonialism in their educational
systems. This volume presents research and practice on faculty development
for improving teaching in developing countries. Based on the concept that
“we teach as we were taught,” the case studies in this volume describe ways
to organize professional development to help higher education faculty mem-
bers shift from lecture-based to active learning teaching for students who
will become the next generation of teachers, practitioners, professionals, and
policymakers in their respective countries.
Cristine Smith is an Associate Professor of International Education at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.
Katherine E. Hudson is a Lecturer of Higher Education and the Director of
Program Development at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.
Routledge Research in International and
Comparative Education
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
This is a series that offers a global platform to engage scholars in continuous
academic debate on key challenges and the latest thinking on issues in the
fast-growing field of International and Comparative Education.
Books in the series include:
18 Citizenship Education and Migrant Youth in China
Pathways to the Urban Underclass
Miao Li
19 International Service Learning
Engaging Host Communities
Edited by Marianne A. Larsen
20 Educational Borrowing in China
Looking West or looking East?
Charlene Tan
21 Nationalism and History Education
Curricula and Textbooks in the United States and France
Rachel D. Hutchins
22 Global Literacy in Local Learning Contexts
Connecting Home and School
Mary Faith Mount-Cors
23 Dialogue in Places of Learning
Youth Amplifi ed in South Africa
Adam Cooper
24 Faculty Development in Developing Countries
Improving Teaching Quality in Higher Education
Edited by Cristine Smith and Katherine E. Hudson
Faculty Development in
Developing Countries
Improving Teaching Quality
in Higher Education
Edited by Cristine Smith and
Katherine E. Hudson
First published 2017
by Routledge
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
PART I
Overview of Active Learning and Faculty Development 1
1 Faculty Development in Developing Countries: Introduction
and Overview 3
KATHERINE E. HUDSON
2 Advancing Active Learning Globally: Best Practices
in Faculty Development 16
MARY DEANE SORCINELLI AND AZIZA ELLOZY
PART II
Case Studies of Faculty Development Programs 39
3 Faculty Development for Education in Emergencies:
A University-NGO Partnership in Kenya 41
MARY MENDENHALL AND MARY TANGELDER
4 Learning About Teaching: A Collaborative Research
Exploration of Learner-Centered Pedagogy in Tanzania 64
MATTHEW A.M. THOMAS AND VICTORINI SALEMA
5 Faculty Development for Teacher Education in Afghanistan 86
JOSEPH B. BERGER, HASSAN ASLAMI, ROHINA AMIRI,
MUJTABA HEDAYET, AND HANNI S. THOMA
vi Contents
6 Transforming Teaching Toward Student-Centered Learning:
Faculty Development at Yunnan University, China 99
FAN YIHONG, WANG JU, DUAN ZHUYING, AND HUANG TIANHUI
7 Placing the Curriculum at the Heart of the Process:
Fostering Student-Centered Pedagogy in Rwanda 127
REBECCA SCHENDEL AND GARRET GANTNER
PART III
Recommendations 151
8 Lessons Learned: Content, Technologies, and Processes
for Faculty Development of Teaching 153
CRISTINE SMITH AND KATHERINE E. HUDSON
9 A Framework for Understanding and Gauging Faculty
Change and Evolution in Teaching 174
CRISTINE SMITH
Contributors 189
Index 193
Preface
During 2011 and 2012, the two co-editors of this volume (Cristine Smith
and Katherine E. Hudson) worked together on a project with Al-Azhar Uni-
versity in Gaza, Palestine and other universities there and in the West Bank.
Our role in that project was to train and support education faculty in these
universities to learn about and use learner-centered/active learning peda-
gogies in their classes for students training to be schoolteachers. We made
two trips to Palestine—one to Gaza and one to the West Bank—to provide
workshops for faculty members about integrating active learning into their
teaching practice.
While working with faculty from the three universities in Gaza, we were
constantly amazed by the passion of the education faculty with whom we
worked in Gaza. Despite conditions that were difficult (to say the least),
they were dedicated to their students and to their belief that being educators
was one of the only ways that they could positively influence the future of
Gaza and contribute to the futures of their own children and their students.
During the series of workshops, we supported faculty who were at every
stage of the learner-centered teaching continuum—from those who stated
adamantly that learner-centered teaching did not and could not work, to
those who accepted that active learning was a viable approach in theory but
could not be effective in their own classrooms . . . from those who made
modest forays into active learning by trying exercises like “think/pair/share”
in their classes, to those who jumped in with both feet. Although we were
certainly inspired by the few (mostly younger women) who belonged to the
latter category, in the evening when we talked through the day’s events, we
could often point to smaller and quieter shifts we observed that were equally
satisfying, such as when a determined skeptic participated in one of our
active learning activities, for example.
We had hoped to return to Gaza during October 2012 to help establish
faculty learning groups where faculty members could learn from each other
and from us while they experimented with active learning techniques in their
own classrooms. However, the Israeli authorities denied us entrance to Gaza,
and we were unable to continue our work with the faculty there.
viii Preface
Through our work in Gaza and at our home institution, the University of
Massachusetts Amherst, and other locations, we became increasingly con-
vinced that working with faculty who are teaching the next generation of
teachers, whether at the K-12 or higher education level, is critical to trans-
forming our approaches to teaching and learning. Indeed, especially in devel-
oping countries, there has been a significant focus in recent years on faculty
development for instructors in colleges of education so that they can model
the type of learner-centered instruction that future teachers can eventually
do in their own classrooms. However, traditional teaching methods have
proven particularly resistant to change (Brodie, Leliott, & Davis, 2002),
which is not surprising considering the number of years of experience that
most faculty have, both as students and instructors, of lecture-based instruc-
tion. When everyone, at all levels, experiences learning through lectures, it is
a difficult cycle to break.
When the Palestine faculty development project concluded in early 2013,
we decided to write this book, with the encouragement of the Palestinian
faculty. After reaching out to colleagues, we realized that others work-
ing internationally in faculty development had also focused on teaching
improvement, but that there was no resource specifically focused on the
particular challenges faced by faculty in developing country contexts. This
book is for researchers, practitioners, students, and policymakers who want
to understand the theory, research, professional wisdom, and practice of
faculty development in developing countries so they can plan and imple-
ment more effective projects to support faculty development in teaching.
Although this volume has expanded beyond our original interest in fac-
ulty development specifically for teacher education faculty, we believe that
learner-centered instruction in teacher training colleges or university classes
that pre-service teachers attend remains of crucial importance.
This book is based on our belief, strongly held, that learning only through
lectures—whether one is a child in school, a student in college, or a univer-
sity instructor in a faculty development program—is far from optimal in
building knowledge and skills such as critical thinking, creativity, and prob-
lem solving. Learning through more active approaches, such as small group
discussions, debates, case studies, role plays, project-based assignments, and
concept mapping, among other activities, is a superior way to understand
and apply new information and concepts. In this book, we will cite existing
research about why active learning is a better way to teach. However, one
does not need student test results to see the power of active learning, illus-
trated by an anecdote from our work. A Palestinian faculty member, visiting
a middle school (junior secondary school) during a study tour to Massachu-
setts, observed a group of students marshaling facts about the Civil War in
order to present arguments in a debate. Later, this faculty member told us:
“I see now why active learning works better . . . at least these students were
awake and excited while they were preparing for their history debate. When
students in my lectures fall asleep, I k now they are not learning anything!”
Preface ix
We have also seen, firsthand, that the primacy of lecturing in education is
a worldwide phenomenon, at all levels. We have seen that professors down
the hall from us at the University of Massachusetts, as in classrooms in
every country, still act as if listening is learning, as if memorizing is mastery,
and as if passing factual tests is evidence of being a good student. Lecturing
may be the only pedagogical approach that students and teachers experience
throughout their entire education, thus perpetuating the passive receipt of
knowledge through multiple generations.
The goal of this book is to present research, theories, professional wis-
dom, examples, and practical tools to improve the quality of teaching in
higher education in developing countries. Based on the concept that “we
teach as we were taught,” the book aims to help all of us understand how
best to support instructors in higher education move from a lecture-based
teaching approach to a more interactive, activity-based approach.
A few notes about what this book is and is not. It is not a book of research
articles, although the authors of the faculty development project case studies
included in this volume do present data about the outcomes from their proj-
ects. Our main intent is to present stories and examples, with deep description,
of initiatives from around the world that have supported higher education
faculty members to think about and change their teaching practices. We hope
this will give the reader a more detailed picture of components and interven-
tions in these projects so that readers can learn from the authors’ experiences.
Because this book focuses on developing country contexts, as co-editors, we
felt it was important that each of the case study chapters include the voice of
someone from those country and contexts. Each case study is co-written with
either a faculty member who participated in the faculty development project
discussed or was a faculty developer or colleague involved in the project.
This book is also not about faculty development as a broad category of pro-
fessional development. There are other books that delve into helping faculty
members become better researchers, improve their advising skills, or provide
high-quality service to their institution. Instead, our book focuses specifically
on training and helping faculty members to improve their teaching.
We are teachers, and we are also people who train others about teaching.
We believe that, as professionals, we will never be finished learning new and
perhaps better ways to organize and facilitate learner-centered instruction
for and with our students and those we train. We train others about teaching
because of our certainty that there are more effective ways to learn than lis-
tening to lectures. We hope that this book contributes to supporting faculty
members and students in higher education around the world.
Reference
Brodie, K., Lelliott, A., & Davis, H. (2002). Forms and substance in learner-centered
teaching: teachers’ take-up from an in-service programme in South Africa. Teach-
ing and Teacher Education, 18 (5), 541–559.