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Engagement is involvement of ‘you’ by ‘you’ in teaching (Debbie).You’re [there] for want of a... your human-ness. Not your lecture-ship (Margaret). Yeah [connection is] dialogue, discussion, analysis of situations, practices, feelings, thoughts, all of those emotional aspects of a person I think. Tuning into those (Helen). I think you can’t teach without giving of yourself (Lana).
All of the teachers interviewed were able to articulate what this connection meant and although there were differences of emphasis, all were united in feeling it was about the ‘giving of self.’ This ‘giving of self’ is self-awareness, the addition element to the spirit of MI to form the acronym SPACE (self-awareness, partnership, acceptance compassion and evocation). According to Helen, if this did not occur the lecture would be mechanical and students would switch off:
If I was to go in and deliver a straightforward lecture I would hazard a guess that after so many minutes people would maybe, if it was purely theoretical they would switch off.
This ‘straightforward’ lecture is understood by Helen as meaning the delivery of information without ‘giving.’
This is a PowerPoint, this is the objectives of the session, we’re going to go da, da, da, da, I’m going to give you this information, I’m going to hint that you need to go away and read a bit more around it. But that’s the sum total of what I’m going to give.
She goes on to explain what this ‘giving’ means:
So in essence by trying to engage with people you’re actually expanding that interaction, you’re expanding that repertoire of
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things that you can deliver. So by interjecting a bit of humour, interjecting previous experiences, asking the audience for some interaction back, entering into dialogue, even things like movement around an arena, speaking to people on a personal level, all of that draws out different experiences from people.
Helen stresses the importance of engagement when she goes on to say: …I always feel that if you engage with something and whether that’s emotionally or intellectually, if you engage with something then your brain is more open to what’s going on. Also try to engage them by using bits of video and bits of telly that they might have watched or whatever, so I watch telly a lot and I try to record bits of things that I think might act as some kind of trigger or whatever. Soap operas are great for that and what have you. I draw on things that may have been on the telly or whatever in discussions, I say did you see this, did you see that. Some of them have seen, so I am trying to engage individuals in conversation at different times. Most felt that the responsibility for establishing a rapport with students was the teachers but some felt that the learner had to ‘play ball’ as well. Joyce, an adult nurse teacher with over 25 years’ experience was no different to the rest of the staff in that the establishment of this connection was important but differed in that she had a clear idea of the responsibilities for both teacher and student. She felt that as a teacher you had a responsibility to prepare yourself before the lecture or seminar began. This meant making sure you were up–to-date with the knowledge that you wanted to share. It also meant being aware of your need to be confident. In order to increase their capacity to learn, lecturers must
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ensure their delivery is enthusiastic and passionate, otherwise you risk losing the interest of students. This fits in well with Colin’s view that performance is an important element of teaching.
A third aspect of connecting to students is understood by Joyce to mean that she wants the students to enjoy the experience. This is important for her because ‘students will learn if they are not frightened.’
Debbie thought that connecting to students had five aspects:-
I think with students, you’ve got to be professional, but you’ve got to be approachable, you’ve got to be friendly, you’ve got to demonstrate that you’ve got knowledge and understanding and empathy, and all of those skills that are required in nursing. I often say that when I came into teaching I swapped my patients for students, and it does feel a little bit like that.
Debbie is promoting the use of role modelling to demonstrate values here. She also felt that ‘If students like you, if they think you’re credible then they will more likely learn’. In my experience this process is accelerated if the teacher allows the student to ‘see’ aspects of the person who is doing the lecture. This ‘seeing’ is another way of ‘being yourself’ (being self-aware), the added aspect to the SMI to form SPACE. Margaret makes the point that personal students (ones that were allocated to a lecturer and who would tend to see on a regular basis albeit for ‘pastoral’ care rather than academic guidance), will always listen and engage more than others in a large lecture theatre, because they ‘know’ you more. This knowing comes in different forms but it involves sharing your experiences not only as a teacher but as person. Taking this risk of ‘allowing’ students to glimpse aspects of yourself aids the building of person-centred
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relationships which this research seems to show leads to an increase in the appetite of students to learn. Teaching in a style that incorporates SPACE is a way to build these relationships.