Developing new faculty voice and agency through trustful, overlapping, faculty-faculty and student-faculty conversations

ABSTRACT

Faculty-faculty conversations and student-faculty conversations typically unfold as separate forms of faculty learning. We present an approach to new faculty development through which faculty-faculty conversations in pedagogy seminars overlap with student-faculty conversations in pedagogical partnerships. Writing as three new faculty members and one academic developer in a bi-college consortium, we review scholarship on building trustful conversation in faculty development; present the overlapping forms of faculty-faculty and student-faculty conversation that constitute our approach; share how the three new faculty members developed voice and agency in their pedagogical practices; and note both challenges and other versions of this approach.

KEYWORDS:

• New faculty development
• pedagogical partnership
• trustful conversations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alison Cook-Sather

Alison Cook-Sather is Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Education at Bryn Mawr College, and Director of the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. Her most recent scholarship focuses on pedagogical partnership for equity and justice.

Emily Hong

Emily Hong is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies at Haverford College. Her work as a visual anthropologist centers on feminist, decolonial, and engaged approaches to ethnographic research and filmmaking.

Tamarah Moss

Tamarah Moss, PhD, MPH, MSW, Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College is an assistant professor, whose main research areas are in pedagogy and social work education, as well as culturally responsive health and social services delivery and evaluation.

Adam Williamson

Adam Williamson is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Bryn Mawr College interested in the fundamental biology of the immune response. Research in his lab seeks to reprogram cells called phagocytes into cellular eating machines for therapy.