Developing self-understanding in pedagogical stances: making explicit the implicit among new lecturers

Abstract

In their early teaching practice, university lecturers usually experience difficulties related to how to promote learning among students (e.g., how to plan a lesson, how to use pedagogical resources, and how to assess learning). The way in which new lecturers confront and address these difficulties impacts the evolution of their academic careers and how they use diverse frameworks to reflect on their teaching practices. Taking into account that some of these difficulties are not sufficiently understood yet, this paper aims to analyze them using a qualitative approach. This study adopted several data collection techniques and sources (teachers, students, and researcher) during a single academic year. The results underscored explicit difficulties recognized by the lecturers in relation to their teaching. However, this study's data pointed also to difficulties that remained implicit, and the results suggested that these implicit difficulties may be particularly resistant to self-understanding because they are related to lecturers' inner desire for order and predictability in their teaching. The paper concludes by suggesting possible ways of ameliorating such implicit presuppositions.