Teaching Fellows (TFs) and Teaching Assistants (TAs) leading discussion sessions for Spring 2025 General Education courses participated in “Pedagogy in Practice,” a new required training session to support their work in the classroom. This initiative was conceived and implemented by the Program in General Education and Harvard College’s Intellectual Vitality Initiatives in collaboration with the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. This training session was designed to support TFs and TAs teaching discussion sections in all College Gen Ed courses, which, for the spring 2025 semester equated to 31 courses, with an enrollment of approximately 3,000 students.
In designing the training, Duncan White, Associate Director of the Program in General Education, and Matthew Sohm, Assistant Director of Pedagogy, Intellectual Vitality Initiatives (as of February 2025, Assistant Director of Civil Discourse and Classroom Culture, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning) collaborated with colleagues at the Bok Center, the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, the Office of Undergraduate Education, the Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the faculty teaching General Education courses. As such, “Pedagogy in Practice” offers a new, high-impact model for TF training that reflects the input and expertise of stakeholders across the FAS and the University as a whole.
“Pedagogy in Practice” consisted of a morning and afternoon session (each 90-minutes), with an opportunity for discussion over lunch in between. The morning session introduced TFs to both the ‘nuts and bolts’ of Gen Ed teaching and the common challenges facing today’s College classrooms. Topics included lesson planning, fostering vibrant and open discussions, pedagogical best practices to encourage active learning, grading, and feedback. Additionally, an important component of the session was in providing TFs with skills to understand the relationship between their own pedagogical duties towards students and the many resources on offer at Harvard. After lunch, the group convened for the afternoon session, titled “Planning for Productive Dialogue,” which was designed together with the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics and offered a range of techniques to help TFs encourage and manage respectful and pedagogically productive discussions of challenging and divisive topics.
Assessment and evaluation from “Pedagogy in Practice” participants are planned throughout the spring semester, as a way to offer improvements and/or adjustments for future iterations.
February 2025