Earlier this month on Faculty Development Day, we heard from Lauren Barbeau and Claudia Cornejo Happel about their framework of Critical Teaching Behaviors (CTB). They developed this framework based on an extensive review of the literature on effective teaching and learning to answer two questions:

What is good teaching? How can we identify it for purposes of discussion and documentation?

The CTB framework uses six categories to organize effective teaching behaviors: Align; Include; Engage; Assess; Integrate Technology; and Reflect. Each category includes an extensive list of behaviors, and a summary of the research that has shown them to be effective. The list of behaviors for each category is long, because there is no single “right way” to teach. Context matters! Each of us has our own style when teaching, and we each have to account for our disciplines, our students, the size of the class, the modality in which we teach, and many other variables.

Dive Deeper

I want to encourage you to take a deeper dive into the CTB. The last activity that day was to take an inventory of your own CTBs, identifying the strategies you already use and additiional strategies you want to explore. Upload a photo of your inventory and describe your plan for implementation, and we will send you a copy of the book. (If you need a copy of the inventory, you can download one here.)

Upload your Inventory »

The book includes much more information, including guidance on both implementing and documenting behaviors. It’s written in a straightforward style and is designed in such a way that you can easily browse for new ideas. We will also invite you to join a community of practice next fall, so you can exchange ideas with other faculty members doing similar work.

Happy teaching!
Fran