"Teaching is perhaps the most privatized of all the public professions. Though we teach in front of students, we almost always teach solo, out of collegial sight – behind closed doors." (Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach)

Across the UW campus, many faculty members and TAs have responded to the isolation of teaching by meeting in groups to reflect together on their teaching and their students’ learning. These groups go by a variety of different names: Teaching & Learning Seminars, Brown Bags, Teaching Circles, Connected Teaching, and Reflective Practice Groups, to name a few. The common feature of these groups is that members value the opportunity to meet with colleagues and discuss issues related to their teaching.

This web page provides examples of different types of conversations about teaching and learning that are already going on, suggestions for organizing and sustaining group meetings, and resources for those who are interested in starting conversation groups of their own.

On this page you will find

• Examples of Conversations about Teaching at UW
• Starting a Conversation Group
• How CIDR Can Help
• Other Resources

View or download Talking with Colleagues about Teaching, CIDR Teaching and Learning Bulletin 5(3). This issue of the Bulletin features conversations about teaching taking place through:

• Mathematics Brown Bag Series, UW Mathematics Department
• Talking Over Teaching and Learning (TOTAL), UW School of Oceanography
• "Connected Teaching" Meetings, UW School of Nursing.

Other Examples:

• Computer Science and Engineering: Education and Educational Technology Group
  "UW CSE's new Education and Educational Technology group is interested in methods and tools for teaching computer science and applications of computing to education in general. We have two main meetings each week: the 590ED research seminar, where we discuss published research, and an informal group meeting, where we quietly scheme about revolutionizing the way UW teaches computer science .... We ... also organize 590ET, a CS education seminar intended for practitioners, rather than researchers."

• Practical Pedagogy Colloquium
  UW Department of English: "This group provides a forum for TA's teaching 100-level courses to hang out, share, gripe, and workshop assignments."

• Scholarship of Teaching Research Group at UW Tacoma
  "We are a four-person interdisciplinary research team -- comprised of education, nursing, and business administration faculty. Our research team is focused on developing our teaching practice while producing relevant scholarship that advances the use of self-study of teaching at the university level." (read more)

• Circles Have Enriched Teaching, Research, on Bothell Campus
  "To strengthen our capacities for interdisciplinary work at the UW Bothell campus, 33 faculty and academic staff joined teaching and research circles during the 2002-03 academic year ..." (read more)

• Teaching Meetings: Providing a Forum for Learning How to Teach
  An article by UW Bothell Librarian Sarah Leadley argues that "developing or improving as a teacher happens not when teachers are working in isolation but when teaching and learning are the subject of serious discussion and inquiry among its practitioners." (read more)

To get started, ask yourself these questions:

What teaching and learning topics would you like to discuss with others? Possibilities include focusing on teaching and learning issues relevant to:

• your current courses and students
• your department or discipline
• particular groups of students (for example, students in their first year of the major, non-majors in introductory science courses)
• developments and trends in higher education (for example, integrating instructional technology, working with diverse groups of students)

With whom would you like to discuss these topics? Possibilities include colleagues who teach:

• in your department or discipline
• in related departments or disciplines
• similar groups of students
• similar types of courses (for example, writing-intensive courses, large lectures)
• at a similar stage in their careers (for example, fellow TAs, new assistant professors)

How would you structure your meetings? Possibilities include:

• reports on what's going on in classes
• efforts to implement innovations or respond to challenges
• specific topics or questions raised and addressed by group members
• discussion of recent books or articles on teaching and learning in your discipline or in higher education
• guest speaker and discussion

CIDR is available to help your group in a variety of ways. CIDR staff can consult on organizing a group and setting an agenda, and we can also help you find materials or other resources that may be useful for your group. We can also help facilitate occasional group meetings, if that would be helpful.

The CIDR Reading Room contains books, articles, and videos on topics related to teaching and learning in higher education. Contact us if you would like to browse the collection or borrow materials that will contribute to your group's conversations.

• UW Teaching Academy
  The Teaching Academy was created as a forum for winners of the UW Distinguished Teaching Award to share their insights and instructional expertise with colleagues, and to contribute to campus dialogues on all aspects of teaching and learning. You can contact the Teaching Academy by sending a message to tacademy@u.washington.edu

• Making teaching community property: A menu for peer collaboration and peer review (Hutchings, 1996). The introduction and contents of this helpful resource book can be viewed online. The book is available for loan from the CIDR Reading Room.

• Overcoming the Solitude of Teaching, Thriving in Academe (May 2000). "When faculty talk together about what they do in the classroom, they learn from each other and promote the scholarship of teaching." This article introduces the concept of "Teaching Circles" and provides guidelines for creating and sustaining them.