Pedagogy: Professional Praxis is a professional development discussion group instituted in the Comparative Literature department in the fall of 2018 by Andrew Nelson. It focuses on detailed conversations regarding the craft, practice, and techniques of teaching while also providing a space for collaboratively working through difficulties and dead ends. The group is structured around two primary functions: providing support for the challenges of transitioning into university teaching and helping participants develop a depth and breadth of practical, portable teaching strategies. While the more immediate concern is with easing and smoothing pedagogical transitions (everything from “I’ve never taught before” to “I’ve never taught in Binghamton before”), the broader concern is with assisting in the production of teachers whose educational and classroom praxis is both robust and refined.
Because of our commitment to practical and granular problem solving, the meeting format is kept quite open. We meet for one hour every week to have friendly, informal, and lively discussions. Though the open format helps us address whatever concerns or issues are most pressing, there is also a proposed topic each week in case there are no immediate concerns. In addition to these regular discussions, Pedagogy sometimes hosts guest speakers who address and discuss their particular techniques and successes. Begun initially a student initiative, Pedagogy’s value to the department was quickly recognized and graduate students may now enroll in Pedagogy as a one-credit course. It has been and remains open to members of any discipline interested in teaching. We welcome new participants and would love to see you soon!
Themes discussed in previously held meetings of Pedagogy: Professional Praxis included:
1. Feasible expectations and general preparation strategies
2. Implementable approaches to increasing class-wide participation and discussion
3. Building, wording, and placing learning objectives into your pedagogy and lesson plans
4. Heuristics, structures, and techniques for deepening in-class analysis and participation
5. Addressing ESL writing issues
6. Techniques for teaching, correcting, and improving writing
7. Issues and approaches to skills, the canon, the direction of the university
8. How to move student writing toward analysis
9. Guiding structuring, and improving student reading
10. Adaptation for and inclusion of students with multiple ability levels
11. Choice, implementation, and bending/changing of grading rubrics
12. Return to Reading: How to assess and improve student reading
13. Eliciting and maintaining student participation
14. Essential or effective approaches to essay construction
15. Structure, technique, and craft of teaching close reading
16. Benefits and challenges of being observed
For further information, please contact Andrew Nelson at: anelso27@binghamton.edu
Binghamton University Comparative Literature 