Designing Teaching Practice in Post-Graduate Education

Abstract

This paper explores how teachers can design post-graduate teaching practice in ways that allow participants to construct new knowledge that supports their daily work practice. To explore the design of teaching practice in post-graduate education, the authors have studied a post-graduate course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU. Qualitative data about the teaching practice were collected through observations and interviews. The data were analysed using an inductive collaborating coding procedure involving descriptive and interpretive phases. Two overarching categories were evident in the data material. The category Joint Workplace Experience describes the participants’ joint experiences of their work practice. The category Inclusion of Workplace Experience in Teaching Practice describes recurring regularities of how the participants’ workplace experience was included in the teaching practice. Based on the findings we present a teaching design that may assist teachers in designing a teaching practice to satisfy the competence development needs that workers have. Bearing this design in mind, we first argue that teachers need to acknowledge the role of experience for learning. Second, they need knowledge about what constitutes joint workplace experience for the specific group of participants in the course they are teaching. Third, teachers need to include this knowledge when they design the teaching practice.