New Vision for Teaching

Commitment to informing and guiding the development of adjunct instructors

BY TYNAN POWER

In January 2024, SSW launched the Teaching and Learning Institute, a two-year pilot program of pedagogically-focused professional development for current and former adjunct instructors. The idea for the institute came out of the School’s desire to ensure its five Core Principles of racial justice work are centered, informing and guiding all aspects of the program.

“We realized there is an opportunity to do some deep collective learning on our classroom practices,” said Associate Dean Megan Harding, M.S.W. ’07 who worked with Alberto Guerrero, M.S.W., Ph.D., and other SSW faculty to bring the institute to fruition.

“There’s no such thing as ‘arriving’ as a teacher…this is lifelong learning. For me, there's great joy in collective learning, investing together using the five principles as a centerpiece.”

The curriculum of the Teaching and Learning Institute unpacks those principles pedagogically, while also working to expand and strengthen teaching skills, like lesson planning, purposeful engagement strategies, question posing, interrupting groupthink and formative assessment.

The program is designed in two parts. The first segment of the program takes place online between January and May, covering five thematic modules. In the second segment, participants will practice focused skills with a virtual simulated classroom experience. This component involves meeting three times over the course of a year.

Harding provides administrative oversight for the institute in her role as associate dean of academic affairs, while Guerrero serves as the institute’s coordinator and primary instructor.

“Alberto and I have both worked in the public school system—I used to work in the Holyoke Public Schools and Alberto taught on the west side of Chicago,” said Harding. “We have a deep respect for both the art and the science of teaching and we both find great joy in it. So Alberto was a natural partner to not only design and develop it, but to take on the role of coordinator.”

Planning for the institute’s launch involved designing the program, seeking and incorporating feedback and selecting the first cohort. The team began by establishing the five modules of the program: SSW’s five principles and power; building and sustaining classroom culture and community; pedagogical preparation; formative assessment and building a culture of feedback; and synthesis and integration. These five modules cover a broad range of topics such as assessing how power shows up in the classroom, addressing groupthink, handling ruptures in the classroom and student disengagement, the use of universal design to counter ableism and enhance accessibility, lesson pacing and providing high quality feedback.

They then identified objectives for each of the 16 instruction sessions and developed lesson plans for each. In the process, they returned again and again to the five Core Principles to ensure they were at the center of each component of the program.

When the initial program development was complete, the team sought feedback from the resident faculty as well as hosting a focus group with participation from Smith College’s Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Floyd Cheung, representatives from the Office of Disability Services, and the Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning, as well as current adjuncts and students in the program. Based on this feedback, the team revised plans and materials.

Finally, they identified criteria to invite experienced instructors who would join the institute’s first cohort. There was significant interest and it was important that participants must be able to attend all sessions, barring unforeseen emergencies. Harding and Guerrero felt strongly that all participants needed to be consistently engaged with the institute during this first trial, so that the evaluations of the program could be as accurate and comprehensive as possible.

“We are eager to figure out genuinely effective ways to pedagogically integrate SSW’s five Core Principles, so we will continually evaluate this institute to see what we learn and how the institute—and our graduate program instruction—can be improved,” said Harding.

In addition to Harding and Guerrero, the institute has benefitted from the guidance of Associate Professor Kenta Asakura, M.S.W. ’04, Ph.D., LICSW. Asakura provides invaluable insight as an expert in the application of simulations—in which professional actors portray realistic and complex client scenarios—in the profession of social work.

“As far as I know, no one else in social work is using simulation-based faculty development to train instructors to become better educators,” said Asakura. “The idea is to have instructors try out new skill sets, make mistakes (without causing real harm) in a simulated situation and further develop their teaching skills as educators.”

Simulations can be especially beneficial as a way to allow educators to reflect on and discuss scenarios that address complex issues like racial justice and accessibility in the classroom.

“The most essential element of simulation-based learning is the post-simulation debrief,” said Asakura. “This is where the educator (who engages the simulation) can reflect back on the experience, while observers (i.e., other educators) of the simulation can share their observation. Together, learners—both those who engage simulations directly and those who observe the simulations—can hopefully develop critical consciousness around power, power dynamics, discourses and their own biases.”

The Teaching and Learning Institute is a natural next step for a School where more than 90% of graduate courses each summer are taught by adjuncts. Adjunct instructors are highly skilled, with expertise in diverse areas of social work and with a wide range of classroom teaching experiences and insights.

“So many of our courses are taught by adjuncts,” said Harding. “For those of us who are resident faculty, these adjuncts are our colleagues. This institute is a way for us to honor and center the wisdom, the skill and the commitment that our adjuncts offer us.”

“I value this collaboration with Alberto Guerrero, Kenta Asakura and other colleagues at SSW and I look forward to learning how to continuously improve not only our classroom practice, but our supportive programming for our valued adjuncts,” said Harding. ◆