Capturing, Curating and Sharing Culture: Teach, Learn, Share

At times of crisis staff development can be seen as something of a luxury. Yet it is at precisely these points when it can be a powerful lever to build resilience, provide hope and indeed shape future culture beyond the immediate challenges.

In 2018 against a backdrop of considerable structural upheaval within the Faculty, the presenters chose to use a deliberately ‘appreciative inquiry’ approach to developing teaching and learning practice (Cooperrider, Witney and Stavros, 2008) introducing a ‘Teach, Learn, Share’ staff development model to challenge the perceived deficit culture. Moreover, an intrinsic intention was to address some of the common concerns of staff training, i.e. overly formalised, time consuming and focused on process issues or with insufficient time for conversations about practice, teaching and learning.

Fastforward to 2020 and once again the Faculty faced considerable upheaval with the shift to remote teaching and then online learning – along with the rest of the sector. The challenge became one of how the Teach, Learn, Share would adapt to the new environment and how colleagues would respond to this when time seemed to be in even shorter supply.

Teach, Learn, Share adopts the concept of Teachmeets or "Guerilla" CPD (Bennett, 2012), where colleagues are invited to present an aspect of their practice within a very informal and supportive setting. There is no remit for the presentations beyond being linked to teaching and the learning of students or colleagues. Presentations are deliberately short, in many formats, and with opportunities for discussion to follow. Moreover, connections are made between staff outside of their formal job roles and siloed departmental domains, the ethos being to poke holes in barriers rather than breaking them down completely. As such this has continues to be a highly practical solution to encourage conversations about teaching, learning, good practice, risky ideas and contested concepts in a safe, collegiate and fun environment.