Teaching

A Philosophy of Teaching and Learning: My Developmental Journey

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.      

–Doris Lessing

I have been teaching and thinking about teaching and learning for a long time, and my developmental journeys as a educator and as a scholar have been deeply intertwined. Both have revolved around a career-long commitment to the education of professionals for effective practice. That work is interdisciplinary in nature, linking the organizational and administrative sciences with the field of education and the study of human development.  My area of specialty is management and leadership education: how people acquire and employ the skills needed for success in their interactions with relevant others.

My work over the years reflects a commitment to two over-lapping audiences: (1) individuals preparing for leadership success across sectors, projects, and organizations; and (2) educators and academic leaders in colleges and universities. This dual commitment has translated into a variety of activities and products – teaching and training, curriculum and program design, leadership of educational programs and units, and publications for scholars and for practitioners. It includes appointments and projects across:

• institutions:  Wheelock College, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Harvard University, Babson College, University of Massachusetts-Boston, and others

• professions: teaching, management, ministry, engineering, healthcare, librarianship, public service administration 

• sectors: business and industry, manufacturing, banking and finance, education, non-profit, healthcare, government, STEM fields, the arts, the social services       

• student audiences: undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, continuing education, executive, professional.                        

Common across all has been the search for ways to foster ongoing learning, change, high impact contribution, and creative expressions of the human spirit at work. 

The arc of my journey has been shaped by a host of variables, including happenstance and luck; and I have been blessed by a rich mix of opportunities. Three stand out: (1) seeing the role of developmental thinking in teaching and learning; (2) exposure to diverse role models in the classroom; and (3) embracing life as a reflective practitioner.

Developmental Thinking, Teaching, and Learning: Discovery of the Educator’s Challenge

Let me begin with a teaching story. The setting is a fictional university classroom in a leadership course. Envision yourself as the professor. 

You have selected a case for discussion, hoping to explore political dynamics in decision making. Case discussions are opportunities for students to think through organizational problems, articulate a diagnosis, and devise appropriate strategies for responding. When things work well, students acquire content knowledge – in this case, the political nature of institutional decision making. They learn about their thinking and how it differs from how others might approach a situation. They also reflect on their beliefs, learn to appreciate multiple perspectives, and recognize the subtle value differences that underpin alternative diagnoses and actions. 

You have selected the case wisely: it is well-written and addresses issues you hope to explore.  You are prepared and confident.  You know the case well, have taught it many times, and can illustrate key points without constraining student participation. You have videotapes of the real case participants and will introduce them to challenge students’ assumptions about the key players. Students were given the case and study questions in advance.  Experience over the term leaves you assured that they will prepare. After all, class participation is a significant percentage of the final grade. The day of the case discussion arrives.

The class goes well. You deftly lead the discussion. Most of the class participates. Two students, Carlos and Kim, bring particular energy to the discussion. At the close of class, Kim even summarizes key learnings and ties them nicely to topics addressed in previous classes. You notice one student, Melissa, has said nothing and spent much of the class surreptitiously checking her iPhone. You assume she is not prepared. Class ends.    

As professor in this scenario, would you be satisfied? In my early years of teaching, I would. I had put together a sophisticated teaching design, executed it well, and was able to engage the majority of the class – a satisfying, professor-centered view of the educational process. The method or topic might change on any given day – an experiential activity, lecture, or group project instead of a case – but my instructional energies were focused on my understanding of content and delivery skills. I explained classes that did not go well as poor student preparation or as reason to invest more in fine tuning my teaching methods or applications. I encouraged students to prepare – and provided aids, instruction, and incentives. And I worked harder on polishing my instructional skills – teaching as theater of education. 

It took time to recognize the missing piece in the equation. Instructor skills are important. There is always room to hone the craft. However, even the finest skills do not assure student learning. Polished class designs and activities that work well with one group or student can fail miserably with another – even when content is well-delivered and audiences seem comparable, interested, and prepared. Why?

I set out to answer that question – a choice that transformed my approach to teaching, learning, and scholarship. I began to explore the linkages between human development and educational processes; proposed a developmental schema for matching teaching, evaluation, and assessment methods with a learner’s cognitive and socio-emotional capacities; and launched a strand of scholarly inquiry, writing, and instruction that spans my career. (And I am humbled that a project launched by the Journal of Management Education to trace the impact of these ideas across published scholarship in the field of management education over the last decades indicates they have had staying power for others as well.)    

The implications of development differences in the classroom were the theme of my first conference presentation. The line of inquiry led to a paper that won the Fritz Roethlisberger Memorial Award, “Developmental Diversity and the OB Classroom:  Implications for Teaching and Learning;” another piece that was finalist for the same award years later; and other publications that developed its pedagogical applications or theory base. The ideas prompted an invitation from the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society to present “Understanding Teaching and Learning: An Application of Developmental Theory” in honor of the Society’s 30^th anniversary: a set of ideas selected by the organization’s membership as having been most influential in expanding their understanding of teaching and learning. That session spawned a special edition of Career Planning and Adult Development Journal, and I wrote the lead article. The ideas were foundational in my understanding of diversity and how to teach about that complex issue. It launched a diversity project that resulted in a well-received book, Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking from the Heart.  

Equally important, developmental thinking changed how I teach. A return to our fictional classroom for a deep look at a case discussion through the eyes of three developmentally-different students – Carlos, Kim, and Melissa – illustrates the challenges.

Imagine, for example, what an energized and freewheeling case discussion looks like for Melissa who sees the world in yes-no/right-wrong terms. Melissa is a first generation college student who comes expecting the instructor to provide “the right answers” and organize the class so that she can take notes on what she will need for the final exam. Case discussions, where the instructor says little and encourages students to speak to each other, seem confusing and foolish. Bombarded with all kinds of questions, information, and potential “right answers,” Melissa is left frantically searching for what the instructor “really wants.” Rhetorical questions, devil’s advocacy, and other case teaching techniques that encourage enlivened debate leave students like Melissa frustrated. Deprived of even tacit ways of assessing what is important enough to write down and memorize, she can feel manipulated or angry because so much time is wasted before “the right answer” is finally revealed – if indeed, it ever is.

Classes like this fail to meet Melissa’s developmental learning needs. Melissa equates truth with authority. She wants to hear only from the professor. That is an honest position reflecting where she now sits on a developmental continuum. She can be provided experiences from which she can learn to embrace more complex understanding, but she is not there yet – and that’s OK.  Since she is developmentally predisposed to externalize blame, Melissa is likely to conclude that “this course is just a lot of talk” and that the professor is a bad instructor who wastes time letting students spout off instead of teaching them what they need to know.    

Case discussions are easier for students like Carlos who bring budding recognition of simple pluralism. Carlos is at a developmental stage where he understands that people have different views. But in his mind, listening to others is a hurdle that the instructor wants students to jump before announcing “the right answer.”  In that sense, Carlos is like Melissa in questioning why the instructor spends time on discussion when students already know the facts of the case from reading the assignment. Case discussions look like a ploy to encourage participation for its own sake or a game to expose student naiveté or lack of preparation – or professor know-how.

Carlos will hang in longer than Melissa, but at a hidden cost to him. Students like Carlos are developmentally predisposed to conform to authority. They work hard to meet instructor expectations. While Melissa is more apt to get angry, Carlos may feel guilt or frustration. “If I think these case discussions are a waste of time,” Carlos might muse, “then maybe I’m not getting what the professor expects me to get – but I don’t know what that is.”  So Carlos may feel personal failure combined with disappointment in the instructor for not simply telling him what he needs to know or do. Or, Carlos may dutifully and actively participate in case discussions, hoping that if he works hard enough, he will eventually “catch on,” even though he is missing the learnings that the professor assumes from his engagement he is getting.

Case discussions better fit the developmental capacities of students like Kim. She was engaged in the discussion and demonstrated behaviors that pleased the professor because Kim expects diversity, complexity, and uncertainty.  She understands that a case may contain multiple truths and different, even conflicting, answers that all may be arguably correct. She relishes opportunity to explore and articulate her own perspective on issues. While Kim is interested in hearing from the professor, she would be bored or insulted if asked to accept the instructor as the sole source of truth. She would feel stifled in a course that expects students simply to write down and report back someone else’s beliefs or answers.

Instructors implicitly target students like Kim when planning case discussions or classes designed to tackle the ambiguity and complexity of knowledge and interpretation. They may not understand, or accept, that many of their students are not as developmentally ready. Major studies of students during the college years – for example, the work of William Perry or Richard Light – confirm that.  And even with older students and seasoned professionals, age and a plethora of experience are no guarantee of movement to higher or more sophisticated ways of reasoning and viewing the world.  

Does the story of Melissa, Carlos, and Kim suggest that case discussions – or any particular teaching method – be reserved only for developmentally ready students?  No.  But there are ways to teach that allow students like Melissa, Carlos, and Kim to all learn in the same classroom.  Acknowledging that and respecting the developmental diversity in every group pushed me to expand my approach, practice, and skills.  

Diverse Role Models: Diverse Teaching Methods and Curricular Designs

I feel fortunate that my graduate training involved work with creative educators who held different beliefs about the form and focus of good teaching. Their instructional styles pushed the edge of the teaching envelope and left me with a sense of pedagogical joy, variety, and playfulness. I studied, for example, with:

• an MIT social anthropologist who relied on ethnographic-constructivist teaching methods

• a traditional researcher who ran rats through mazes to learn about truth and human nature

• an historian of science whose lectures provided a focus on the context and social meaning for ideas

• a proponent of personal case analysis to develop skills as a reflective practitioner

• three action researchers who sent students into the field to learn about organizations by attempting to influence them

• a philosopher whose group facilitation skills challenged beliefs and understandings

• an instructor who proposed a well-known experiential learning model and demonstrated its power by engaging students deeply and provocatively in experiential exercises and activities

• traditional case teachers at the Harvard Business School – the birthplace of that methodology for management education. 

And, there were others with teaching methods and agendas that fell somewhere along an instructional continuum from highly traditional to radically innovative.  All took teaching seriously. I left graduate school assuming that all faculty did and were well-trained pedagogically during their doctoral studies.  

As a result, I have always invested in teaching and have worked with others to do the same. Equally important, I embrace the pedagogical versatility and openness that developmental teaching requires:  

• a range of methods: small and large group discussion, lecture, traditional cases, experiential activities, video, the arts, role playing, creative writing, performance, and more

• active learning: project, field-based, problem-based, and service learning, especially important in cross-cultural and in global settings; innovation and design labs; internships; and more

• learner-centered pedagogies:  personal case writing and analysis, action and experiential learning, reflection papers, application memo writing, creative writing, diagnostic instruments, collaborative learning, peer teaching,  and so on

• honest feedback on behavior and on project quality.

I aim for a pedagogical mix that maximizes the chance that some part of each teaching design will fit every student’s learning style and developmental comfort. I aim for the same variety outside a classroom setting. Award-winning work at Truman Medical Center, Kansas City’s safety net trauma center, founding the Truman Center for the Healing Arts, designing first and second year Center programming, and leading the Inter-generational Teen Health and Wellness Theater Project are examples of that. The Center’s educational purpose was two-fold: (1) encourage life-long learning for employees at all levels of the medical center through the engagement in the arts and humanities; (2) create an organizational culture of resilience and personal restoration; and (3) develop and retain a committed and caring professional workforce. I may be long forgotten, but am proud that the Center is still thriving more than twenty years after its founding and serving as a model for the power of the medical humanities.       

Embracing the Reflective Practitioner Life: Enhancing Teaching and Learning by Doing

A third significant influence is embracing the reflective practitioner’s life.  The late Professor Donald Schon of MIT, with whom I studied, proposed that professional education must center on enhancing an individual’s ability for “reflection-in-action.”  The reflective practitioner learns by doing and reflecting on the doing, developing capacities for life-long learning over a career. His philosophy has remained at the core of my teaching, scholarship, and career. 

For example, it has translated into askibng participants to apply theories and concepts through “consultancies,” service learning, or community outreach, with regular opportunities to reflect on self, choices, and consequences during and after the activity, such as the “Organization Change and Development” course I taught while at the Bloch School of Management. In another course, “Leadership for Public Service,” student groups shadowed local political and government figures to see theory in action, and parallel activities enabled students to use that project as a laboratory to examine their own and others’ task group leadership. Of the executive MBA courses I taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, two were intense, off-campus residencies (leadership and international management) that involved complex activities for cohorts of 30+ students over multiple weeks. The international residency included living and studying in three cities in China. Students consistently spoke of the courses as transformational.     

As a reflective practitioner, scholarship has flowed from my instructional work.  Teaching at Harvard’s Radcliffe Seminars, for example, involved graduate-level courses for adult women, many under-employed minority heads of households. This deepened my understandings of gender and race dynamics. If also informed a book (Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking From the Heart); and “Women’s Experiences and Ways of Knowing: Implications for Teaching and Learning in the Organizational Behavior Classroom” (a finalist for the Roethlisberger best article award). “On Becoming a Scholar: One Women’s Journey” is a personal reflection on my evolution as a scholar – and remains a mainstay in many graduate and doctoral programs today. “When Authority = She: A Male Student Meets a Female Instructor” grew from classroom exchanges with an older male graduate student.

Working with scholars as editor of the Journal of Management Education offered opportunity to learn from and influence the birth and direction of the scholarship on teaching and management education.  It inspired a series on the challenges: “On the Art of Teaching Management,” “On Poetry and the Soul of Management Education,” “On Learning About Diversity: A Pedagogy of Paradox,” “On Creating Leaders: A Pedagogy of Courage and Passion,” and others. This in turn led to service as a founding editorial board member of the esteemed journal, Academy of Management Learning and Education.

Reflecting on the Journey:  Philosophy of Teaching

In summary, my pedagogical journey has led to a philosophy anchored in four tenets:

• Individuals learn best when new knowledge is grounded in their life experience and current world view. Good education provides opportunities for learners to reflect on how they make sense of their reality.

• Learners begin their learning journey at a specific developmental and knowledge starting point. Developmentally-appropriate methods and strategies are vital.   

• It is every professor’s responsibility to understand their own developmental preferences and to respect developmental diversity in their students. A student’s failure to learn suggests a mismatch between his or her needs and a professor’s pedagogical approach and supports.

• Successful teaching is transformational – whatever the subject matter or whether the teaching is formal or informal, from an instructor’s role or a leadership position, in a for-credit classroom or executive learning environment, or within or across disciplines. It encourages deep growth:  increases the learner’s capacity to understand self and the world, take personal responsibility for choices and future learning, deal with cognitive complexity, and apply more complicated intellectual and ethical reasoning to an increasing complex world.