What is a Pedagogical Pattern?

The most important innovation to emerge from the work of GSCC is the identification of patterns of pedagogical practice. In effect, a pedagogical pattern is a mirror that reflects back the components or “themes” of a faculty’s teaching practice. By seeing practice deconstructed in this way, faculty can understand, reflect and zero in on areas where a change in practice could lead to improved student outcomes. Here, we provide a summary explanation of how we have identified the patterns in the work of participating faculty.

In Semester 1, we observed classroom practices (as reported by our Faculty Design Team), and qualitative coding was conducted by the GSCC team, and then reviewed by our evaluation team, SRI. This work ultimately generated 31 themes.

As we moved into Semester 2, faculty used these 31 themes (each with its own clear definition), to tag their own practices in their ePortfolios. These 31 themes were eventually grouped into ten categories:

• STUDENT SUPPORT – INDIVIDUALS (accessibility, caring, whole person, college transitions, self-efficacy)
• CLASSROOM CLIMATE SUPPORT (inclusiveness, enjoyment, comfort)
• VARIETY IN INSTRUCTION (mixed learning activities, variety in presentation, technology, contextualization)
• CHALLENGE IN INSTRUCTION (higher order thinking, reflection on learning, high expectation)
• ORGANIZATION IN INSTRUCTION (structure in presentation, connections, time on task)
• TAILORED INSTRUCTION (scaffolded learning, differentiated instruction)
• INSTRUCTIONAL EVALUATION (assessment, feedback, baseline of student knowledge)
• GROUP ACTIVITIES (community building, peer engagement)
• INSTRUCTOR PERSONAL QUALITIES (passion, authenticity, presence)
• INSTRUCTOR SKILLS (mastery, adaptability, persistence)

SRI plotted these categories against each instructors’ weekly self-determined themes in order to create visual representations of the patterns, two examples of which are shown below (names are pseudonyms).

Click on the image to see a larger version.

To read these charts, the x-axis represents the weeks of the semester (e.g. S2 W1 is Semester 2, Week 1), and the y-axis speaks to each of the 10 theme categories. The small circles or triangles represent one or more tags in a given category for a given week.  In this example, Cooper tagged with at least one of the Classroom Climate Support themes (inclusiveness, enjoyment, comfort) for weeks 12 and 13 of Semester 2, and again for weeks 1-3 of Semester 3. Davis tags frequently in the Instructional Evaluation (assessment, feedback, baseline of student knowledge) and Challenge in Instruction (higher order thinking, reflection on learning, high expectation) categories both semesters. Side by side, you begin to see that there are qualities unique to each instructor’s pattern.

Analyzed all together, SRI has found that the GSCC faculty preliminarily fall into 4 distinct pattern types. During the 4th semester, as the faculty work with their patterns to adjust their practice to improve student outcomes, more data will be generated and evaluated. This should allow for a deeper understanding of the validity and value of pedagogical patterns.