Jessica Zisa
PhD student in English
The study of literature is the study of linguistic artifacts and social contracts. Teaching these artifacts--whether they be 12thcentury or 21stcentury works—requires one introduce the students to a 3-D approach of sorts involving qualitative as well as quantitative analysis. For instance, students need to be given opportunities to build self-efficacy by engaging with texts and the cultural and historical moments surrounding them in a hands-on way much like they would in a biology lab. Like the lab instructor, the literary instructor is charged with the task of introducing them to multiple tiers of data and the tools to dissect what these tiers make visible as well as what they may obscure.
When I try to assess my own teaching style in relation to the results of my Big Five Personality Test, in which my highest categories were Agreeableness and Openness to Experience, Grasha’s five types of teaching styles defined in the table below can offer a template to work from. My discipline requires that I incorporate aspects of the expert and personal model, while also balancing formal authority with facilitator and delegator roles of engagement. For example, introducing a genre may require the expert and personal model style in terms of providing a teacher-centered approach that gives technical and contextual background. When teaching critical thinking and analysis, the style of facilitator and delegator with a trace of formal authority can help students practice developing their intellectual muscles through student-centered and self-discovery based activities. In other words, teaching styles must be in tune with learning outcomes and teaching objectives.
As a female instructor, I feel more self-conscious of how my voice of authority is being read or not read, and as a white female instructor, I am also aware of the power structures that my voice can carry. Finding one’s teaching style is a process that should never be static. While building one’s authentic teaching style involves drawing upon modalities of style with the learning objectives always in focus, I believe teaching English literature involves an evolving style of hybridity that is attuned to student responses both nonverbal and verbal.
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