Teachers are capable of changing lives, but the role also shapes those who teach.

Associate Professor Jennifer Charteris was recently recognised, with Dr Jonathan Moss, by the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT), earning a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.

Pulse spoke with Assoc. Prof. Charteris about her 31 years in the profession.

 

Associate Professor Jennifer Charteris has taught in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. She has worked with students, teachers, principals, school communities and school in-service advisors across the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.

She took her Doctor of Education at the University of Waikato, where she also worked providing professional learning for principals and teachers that aimed to raise student achievement through “targeted assessment for learning and culturally responsive pedagogies”.

She came across the Tasman in 2010, working first at La Trobe University before moving to UNE.

“My knowledge of learning, engagement, and inclusion has evolved over the last 30 years in Education as I have scrutinised and refined my teaching philosophy,” Assoc. Prof. Charteris says.

“Leading teachers as a secondary school Head of English, and my work over the last 10 years in universities, are experiences that have shaped my practice and forged my identity as a tertiary teacher.”

Pulse: Did you plan to become a teacher, or was it where life took you?

I always wanted to be a teacher, although I have worked across different fields in education so it has been varied.

Have you been influenced by great teachers?

I was very lucky to be supervised by Professor Cowie and Professor Margaret Carr from the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research when I did my doctorate through the University of Waikato. To this day I am in awe of them – their enormous contributions to the field of Education and their capacity to ‘think out of the box’.

I am grateful for their rigor and the high standard of work they expected of me.

What do you regard as the elements of good teaching?

High expectations – I believe that it is my role to provide support but also to ensure that students are really clear about what is expected of them. Support needs to be in place to make what is tacit in the teacher’s head explicit.

Engagement in critical reflection – If we want to avoid Trumpism, we need our students to understand the need for substantive and critical engagement with evidence.

Promotion of professionalism – This involves enculturating our teacher education students into professional practice communities. I encourage them to see themselves as critical evaluators of policy, and agentic evidence-informed (not data-driven) decision makers.

What strategies do you employ in your teaching?

With 15 years personal experience of how lonely and isolating online study can be as a student, I understand the need to deliberately plan for and nurture student collaboration and the co-construction of knowledge in online learning environments.

Where possible I try to promote dissonance so students challenge their own assumptions. I see this is very important element in teacher education. Teachers need to critically reflect in their field.

Moreover, we do not want our students to just teach the way they were taught or translate unchallenged prejudices into their classrooms.

I believe that working with student teachers’ existing beliefs, surfacing and examining their tacit assumptions, is a vital aspect of deep learning. When students encounter values, beliefs and practices that do not sit comfortably within their frame of reference, discordance arises, and a transformation of knowledge and understanding can take place.

Through the provision of extensive teaching scaffolds and the modelling of teaching practice, I help my students to understand the quality of the standard expected. They are challenged to co-construct their knowledge and learn how to ask higher order thinking questions of each other.

By establishing protocols for effective collegial online collaboration, students can serve as instructional resources for their peers.

What have been the rewards of teaching?

There are many, otherwise I would not have stuck to it for 31 years.

It is deeply rewarding when a student who is struggling gets over the line.

There is also reward in acknowledging high achievers. I undertook a research interview recently with a high achieving student who said they had no personal contact with lecturers because they sailed through. This reminds me of the value in connecting with all students through online presence, and the importance of those out-of-the-blue emails to celebrate achievement.

I also think the collegiality in our profession is an incredibly important factor in why I get out of bed in the morning.

I have fantastic colleagues in the School of Education. It is an intellectually rich environment; each day I pinch myself that I can bounce ideas around with such clever colleagues.