Teachers as Learners: Exploring the Role of Course Structure on Learners’ Agency

Abstract

Faculty members at higher education institutions are often recruited based on their subject-matter expertise, whereas less attention is paid to building other skills that are required to tackle teaching-learning challenges that arise as a part of the profession. In this paper, we draw insights from a student-led course at a technical institute in India aimed at enhancing teaching beliefs by prompting deep pedagogical thinking of future faculty members through 14 post-course surveys and four semi-structured interviews. The findings highlight specific course structures that enabled participants to exercise agency: deep pedagogically engaged course topics, autonomy in connecting personal experiences to course topics, informal peer discussions for co-constructing ideas, and post-class journaling for critical reflection.