STEMskiller: Skill Set Map for Mentors of Early Career Researchers

LEARNING, TEACHING, AND SUPERVISING

In general

By engaging with others in mentorship, management (e.g., management of research group staff), or classroom/online instruction environments, teaching and learning (also referred to as pedagogy, education) necessarily comes into play whenever knowledge and skills necessary for the particular situation must be transferred from mentor to mentee/student, even at advanced levels. Often teaching and learning styles are inherited from previous experience or developed “on the fly” by new mentors, managers, and instructors—but many resources exist to assist mentees in improving their teaching and learning skills while building upon (increasingly “evidence based”[1]) prior experiences of others as well as pre-existing pedagogical theories, often developed in response to societal trends and developments.[2]

[1] Wikipedia. (2020, March 9). Educational research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_research

[2] UNESCO. (n.d.). What UNESCO does in higher education. https://en.unesco.org/themes/higher-education/action. “Increasing globalization means higher education is constantly evolving to respond to the rapidly changing demands of local and global labour markets; the increasing use of technology which offers multiple opportunities to access quality education; and the expectation that tertiary education systems and institutions will equip graduates with the knowledge, skills and competencies to contribute to the sustainable development goals.”

Useful Learning, teaching and supervising general resources:

Aalto University. (2020). Pedagogical training - main page. https://www.aalto.fi/en/services/pedagogical-training-main-page

Sample required curriculum and courses that could be used as a model for universities which do not yet include such training for instructors.

Berkeley Graduate Division Graduate Student Instructor Teaching & Resource Center. (2020). (a.) Facilitating laboratory sections. https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/lab-sections-intro/, (b.) GSI online library. From same-named menu at: https://gsi.berkeley.edu/

(a.) Guide to improving teaching and learning in laboratory settings, including: pre-lab assignments, the pre-lab introduction, during and after the lab, asking effective questions, and managing lab partners and groups. Includes summary PDF.
(b.) Highly-relevant resources: award-winning teaching ideas;language and teaching resources for international GAs/GTAs/GRAs;how students learn;workshop handouts and videos;teaching gallery (videos of instructors in action doing different activities in linear algebra, chemistry, engineering, and psychology); and faculty talks on teaching.

MIT Teaching+Learning Lab. (n.d.). Guidelines for teaching @MIT and beyond. https://tll.mit.edu/help/guidelines-teaching-mit-and-beyond

Research-based guidelines grouped into three main categories of teaching/learning activity: design, delivery, and assessment. Includes definitions of each category and links to additional resources for more detailed information within each category, including examples for implementation.

Wikipedia. (2020, June 1). Pedagogy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy

Concise definition of pedagogy: “most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, refers to the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Both the theory and practice of pedagogy vary greatly, as they reflect different social, political, and cultural contexts.”

Tags: All IPS; all PSR; all GL; all Comp

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Table of contents:

2.0. In general

 

Author: Stephanie Krueger

Peer Reviewer(s): None

Last Updated: October 28, 2021

 

Editor: Stephanie Krueger Last modified: 28.10. 2021 12:10