Teaching students is part of academic life. Whether it’s a workshop or a seminar, quality teaching is what matters most in students’ experiences and outcomes. Improve your (online) teaching with just a few tips and tricks. Profit from the opportunity to set and achieve your teaching goal, present your work, and get personal feedback. In this development circle, you will also learn about the principles of efficient and effective communication with students, essential traits of great teachers, resilience and well-being in the workplace, evidence-based teaching practices that work, and a fundamental basis of effective online pedagogy. You can apply the inputs in your own course, developing course content at your own pace. Even if you have a rich teaching experience, you can use this time to reflect on your teaching with close and careful attention and embrace feedback as a learning opportunity (pipes still can become clogged over time and need to be cleaned!). Each of the twelve sessions outlined below will include instructor inputs, reflection on the individual weekly goal, creating and sharing the goal for the next week, and getting feedback from the instructor and other participants of the circle. Participants may volunteer to provide more detailed information about a current challenge; the others contribute their ideas towards a solution. By making contributions that might be helpful to other people (e.g., sharing your work and experiences, offering your attention or feedback), you are making a positive difference and strengthening the meaning of a relationship. With time your contributions build trust and cultivate a greater sense of competence and connection with other people, increasing the chances for information exchange and collaboration. You become more effective at work and feel in control too, because you have access to more people, knowledge, and opportunities. Positive relationships—more opportunities. The Development Circle Workbook will walk you through what to do each week. You will meet your peer support group for 1 hour per week for 12 weeks. The course aims to provide you with the tools to improve your teaching skills as well as offer you the opportunity to develop a meaningful network.

1. Week 11: 15.09.2021
https://networkingcoffee.club/

2. Two Word Check In:
Using 1-2 words, how do you
feel right now?
(write your answers in chat & share your two
words aloud)

3. (Demerouti et al. 2001)
Job demands = physical, social, or
organisational aspects of the job that
require sustained psychical or mental effort
and are therefore associated with certain
physiological and psychological costs (e.g.,
high work pressure, irregular working
hours).
Job resources = physical, psychological,
social or organisational aspects of a job
that may (a) function to achieve work
goals; (b) reduce job demands and their
associated physiological and psychological
costs; and (c) stimulate personal growth
and development (e.g., job security,
supervisor support, autonomy).
Burnout
Well-being

4. § Job demands: e.g., time pressure, work pressure, recognition inadequacy,
organisational practices, financial inadequacy, home/work balance, new
technologies
§ Job resources (as buffers):
- organisational resources (favourable working conditions, salary, job security,
career opportunities, role clarity, potential for promotion, participation in
decision making)
- social resources (support from supervisor, colleagues, family and peers,
appreciation)
- task-related resources (task identity, task significance, performance
feedback, skill variety, autonomy)
Han et al., 2020

5. § Identification of job demands and its influence on university teachers’
well-being (e.g., questionnaire, interview, group discussion)
§ Identification and promotion of the potential and actual job resources at
schools (workshops, teaching resources, peer support for teaching,
effective faculty development programmes)
§ Individual-level job (re)design: Teachers and school management (or
occupational health professionals, coaches, etc.) discuss the
possibilities for adjusting the work environment to the needs and
abilities of individual teachers and facilitate the fit between person and
organization
(Bakker et al., 2007; Han et al., 2020)

6. § Reconnect to your purpose & keep focused on your goals
§ Adopt a growth mindset (in your teaching)
§ Discourage perfectionism
§ Focus on kindness and gratitude
§ Create clear boundaries between home and work
§ Establish good sleeping habits
§ Think of proactive ways to manage the stress in your life
§ Build new connections and relationships
§ Don’t look «left and right» and don’t compete!
§ Don’t take things personally
§ Don’t make assumptions

8. § Input: Teacher resilience
§ Development Circle Workbook: Individual
reflection (Review Week 10) – Feedback from
participants – Planning Week 11

9. § «… a product of the interaction between personal biographies and events,
vocation and values and professional work-based relational and organisational
factors […] which influence the resilience building processes among teachers.»
§ «… is not primarily associated with the capacity to ‘bounce back’ or recover from
highly traumatic experiences and events but, rather, the capacity to maintain
equilibrium and a sense of commitment and agency in the everyday worlds in which
teachers teach.»
§ «… the capacity to manage the unavoidable uncertainties inherent in the realities
of teaching.»
§ «… is driven by teachers’ educational purposes and moral values; influenced by
their biographies and the conditions of their work and lives.»
Gu & Day (2013)

10. What does «resilience» mean to you?
Give some examples of being resilient.

11. § Turn the focus of perception in such a way that the challenges and the
complexities in teaching become sources of interest in the work,
rather than barriers or frustrating obstacles to be overcome
§ Relationships lie at the ‘roots’ of resilience: We are wired to connect!
Supportive relationships/Social capital partly foster people’s innate
strengths (e.g., self-efficacy, positive emotions and emotion regulation)
Gu & Day (2013)

12. What are the main challenges in teaching in
higher education? How to sustain resilience
in this context? What are the internal and
external factors which influence resilience
in teachers?

13. § Reconnect to your purpose & keep focused on your goals
§ Adopt a growth mindset (in your teaching)
§ Discourage perfectionism
§ Focus on kindness and gratitude
§ Create clear boundaries between home and work
§ Establish good sleeping habits
§ Think of proactive ways to manage the stress in your life
§ Build new connections and relationships
§ Don’t look «left and right» and don’t compete!
§ Don’t take things personally
§ Don’t make assumptions

15. §Review Week 10 & Circle Feedback:
- What were your wins these weeks?
- What are your current challeges?
- What are one or two improvements you could
make?

16. §Planning Week 11:
- What is your main goal for this week?
- Why is it important to you?
- Major activities?
- Can you help others in any way?

17. § Development Circle Workbook: Fill out the pages Review Week 11,
Planning Week 12 (2 pages).

18. § Bakker, A. B., Hakanen, J. J., Demerouti, E., & Xanthopoulou, D. (2007). Job
resources boost work engagement, particularly when job demands are high. Journal
of educational psychology, 99(2), 274–284.
§ Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). “The Job
Demands-Resources Model of Burnout.”. Journal of Applied Psychology 86(3), 499–
512.
§ Gu, Q., & Day, C. (2013). Challenges to Teacher Resilience Conditions Count. British
Educational Research Journal, 39, 22–44.
§ Han, J., Yin, H., Wang, J., & Bai, Y. (2020). Challenge job demands and job resources
to university teacher well-being: The mediation of teacher efficacy. Studies in Higher
Education, 45(8), 1771–1785.
§ Woodley, X., Hernandez, C., Parra, J., & Negash, B. (2017). Celebrating difference:
Best practices in culturally responsive teaching online. TechTrends, 61(5), 470–478.

19. What’s your #1 takeaway
from today?
(write your answers in chat & share aloud)

20. On the scale from 1 to 7, how
did you like the session?
(write your answers in chat)