Improving learning and teaching through collaborative observation

Learning as a social and collaborative act: during the two cycles of observation, students and lecturers looked learning and teaching through a social lens and made sense of their own learning/teaching in connection with their peers’ and their teachers’/learners’ understandings and practices. (In)congruence of the inter-relationship between learning and teaching was illuminated during the discussions. Subsequently, actions were taken by students and staff to improve their practices based on their situated understandings of the reciprocal exchanges between learning and teaching.

Understanding and improving learning and teaching collaboratively is a process: during the two cycles of observation, students and staff went through a process of building relationships to create a safe professional environment for openly sharing their experiences and views. During this process, authentic views on learning and teaching were developed and shared between students and staff which prompt critical reflections on learning/teaching practices. Students’ confidence in critically evaluating their learning grew with their understandings on learning and teaching. This played an important part in their developing increasingly active role in the collaboration with their teachers.

As an unintended consequence of the collaboration, students and staff developed deeper empathy for their peers and their teachers/learners. This is an overlooked aspect in current policy thinking and discourse yet plays an important part in learners and teachers making sense of each other’s thinking and practices. It allowed students and staff to consider learning and teaching through other’s lenses when evaluating their experiences and taking a reflexive view when approaching learning and teaching