A supportive departmental culture of teaching and learning creates opportunities for instructors to share experiences, learn from colleagues, reflect on their teaching practices, and contribute to teaching development. Such a culture can be fostered through formal mentoring, collegial conversations, reciprocal teaching observations, professional learning opportunities, and recognition of contributions to teaching.
Department chairs, academic leaders, and instructors all have roles to play in fostering this culture, although their responsibilities and opportunities differ. Academic leaders can establish structures and provide support for teaching development, while instructors can also initiate and participate in collegial activities, share teaching practices, and contribute to mentoring and professional learning.
Drawing on faculty experiences documented in CTSI’s Faculty Mentoring for Teaching Report (2016), this resource offers practical strategies for strengthening departmental teaching cultures through communication, mentoring, professional learning, and recognition of teaching contributions.
Creating Opportunities for Dialogue and Connection
Regular opportunities to discuss teaching can help build connections among colleagues, encourage the exchange of ideas, and make teaching a more visible part of departmental life. These conversations may occur through formal meetings and organized activities or emerge through informal interactions among instructors.
Consider the following strategies:
- Make teaching a regular topic of departmental communication. Include teaching-related updates, opportunities, and accomplishments in departmental meetings, newsletters, mailing lists, or other communication channels. For example, consider dedicating a short portion of a departmental meeting to a teaching-related topic, such as a classroom strategy, an assessment approach, or a challenge instructors are encountering. Academic leaders can help create space for these discussions, while instructors can contribute ideas, questions, and examples from their teaching.
- Create opportunities for informal conversations. Encourage colleagues to connect over coffee, lunch, or other informal gatherings to discuss teaching experiences, challenges, and ideas. These conversations need not be structured or extensive to provide opportunities for collegial learning.
- Organize teaching-focused discussions and reading groups. Invite colleagues to explore a teaching-related article, question, or practice together. Consider rotating facilitation responsibilities and welcoming participation through both personal invitations and departmental announcements. Even small groups can provide meaningful opportunities for exchange.
- Share learning from professional development activities. Encourage instructors to participate in workshops, institutes, conferences, and other teaching-related events, and create opportunities to share what they have learned with departmental colleagues. For example, an instructor might offer a brief summary of a workshop during a faculty meeting or invite colleagues to discuss how an approach might apply in their teaching contexts.
- Make teaching-related opportunities visible. Use departmental communication channels or shared physical and digital spaces to highlight upcoming workshops, conferences, teaching-related publications, and other professional learning opportunities. Regular communication can help colleagues identify opportunities to connect and participate.
Supporting Mentoring and Peer Learning
Mentoring and peer learning can provide opportunities for instructors to exchange experiences, explore teaching approaches, and receive feedback on their practices. These relationships may develop informally among colleagues or through structured departmental initiatives. Supporting a range of opportunities can help instructors connect with colleagues at different stages of their teaching careers.
Consider the following strategies:
- Identify existing mentoring opportunities. Review the formal and informal mentoring activities available within your department. Consider whether instructors have opportunities to seek teaching-related advice, exchange experiences, and receive support from colleagues. Identifying existing practices and potential gaps can help inform future mentoring initiatives.
- Connect colleagues with teaching expertise. Identify instructors who have experience or expertise in particular teaching approaches, such as active learning, formative assessment, or course design. With their permission, share this information with colleagues who may benefit from connecting with them. Academic leaders can help facilitate these connections, while instructors can seek advice or offer to share their experiences.
- Encourage reciprocal peer observation. Create opportunities for instructors to observe one another’s teaching and discuss their observations. For example, colleagues might visit each other’s lectures, tutorials, or other learning activities, followed by a conversation about teaching approaches, student engagement, and possible adaptations to their own practice. For guidance on planning and conducting observations, consult CTSI’s Teaching Observations Guide.
- Provide opportunities for formative feedback. Encourage instructors to seek feedback on their teaching through collegial conversations, peer observations, or other developmental activities. Where appropriate, provide opportunities for formative feedback before higher-stakes teaching evaluations. Clarify the purpose and expectations of these activities so that participants understand how feedback will be used. Instructors interested in formative teaching feedback may also explore CTSI’s Peer-to-Peer Faculty Mentoring Program.
- Support ongoing mentoring relationships. Encourage mentoring conversations to continue beyond an initial meeting or observation. Departments can help sustain these relationships by creating opportunities for regular check-ins, sharing experiences, and discussing emerging teaching questions or challenges.
Demonstrating Leadership and Sharing Teaching Practices
Leadership in teaching can take many forms, from supporting professional learning and creating opportunities for collegial exchange to sharing teaching experiences and initiating collaborative activities. Academic leaders play an important role in creating conditions that support teaching development, while instructors can contribute their expertise, experiences, and ideas through formal and informal leadership.
Consider the following strategies:
- Demonstrate a commitment to teaching development. Academic leaders can help make teaching more visible within departmental activities by supporting professional learning, encouraging collegial exchange, and recognizing contributions to teaching. Regular attention to teaching in departmental activities and communications can reinforce its importance alongside other academic responsibilities.
- Encourage instructors to share teaching practices and experiences. Create opportunities for colleagues to present teaching approaches, activities, or innovations they have tried. For example, instructors might share a particular instructional strategy, an approach to assessing student participation, or insights from changes they have made to their courses. Encourage discussion of both successes and challenges.
- Support faculty-led teaching initiatives. Encourage colleagues who share an interest in a teaching-related topic to organize discussions, workshops, or informal learning opportunities. For example, instructors might establish a lunchtime series exploring educational technologies, assessment practices, or approaches to student engagement. Shared facilitation can help distribute responsibilities and draw on different areas of expertise.
- Create opportunities to share inquiry into teaching. Invite instructors to discuss questions they have explored through reflection, student feedback, or more systematic inquiry into their teaching practices. Sharing observations and evidence can encourage colleagues to consider different approaches and may lead to collaborative scholarship of teaching and learning.
- Develop and support teaching leadership. Identify instructors interested in mentoring colleagues, facilitating teaching discussions, or contributing to departmental teaching initiatives. Academic leaders can support these contributions by providing opportunities, recognizing the time and effort involved, and encouraging colleagues to document relevant activities as part of their teaching development and educational leadership.
- Learn from other departments. Invite colleagues from departments with established teaching-related initiatives to share their experiences, approaches, and lessons learned. These exchanges can offer practical ideas for developing or sustaining activities that support teaching and professional learning.
Creating Supportive Environments for Teaching Development
A supportive departmental environment provides opportunities for instructors to discuss teaching challenges, explore different approaches, and reflect on their experiences without feeling that every conversation is an evaluation of their performance. Academic leaders can help establish conditions that encourage openness, collegiality, and ongoing teaching development.
Consider the following strategies:
- Create space to discuss teaching challenges and experimentation. Encourage conversations in which instructors can share questions, challenges, and experiences with different teaching approaches. Recognize that not every new strategy will work as intended and that reflecting on these experiences can contribute to professional learning.
- Support the constructive use of teaching feedback. Create opportunities for instructors to reflect on different sources of feedback, including student course evaluations, mid-course feedback, peer observations, and personal reflection. These sources can offer different perspectives on teaching and learning. Where appropriate, encourage collegial conversations about how feedback can inform ongoing teaching development.
- Encourage collegial support for teaching development. Create opportunities for instructors to seek advice, discuss possible changes to their teaching, and learn from colleagues’ experiences. Academic leaders can help foster an environment where asking questions and seeking support are recognized as part of ongoing professional learning.
- Recognize different needs and opportunities for participation. Instructors may have different teaching responsibilities, career stages, workloads, and access to professional learning opportunities. Consider offering different ways to participate in departmental activities and whether expectations are realistic and appropriately supported.
- Sustain opportunities for teaching development. Rather than relying solely on occasional events or individual initiatives, consider how teaching-related conversations, feedback, and professional learning can become part of regular departmental practices. Academic leaders can help sustain these opportunities through communication, coordination, and appropriate recognition of colleagues’ contributions.
Recognizing and Valuing Contributions to Teaching
Recognizing contributions to teaching can help reinforce its importance within departmental culture and acknowledge the many ways instructors support student learning and colleagues’ professional development. Recognition may take formal or informal forms and can highlight contributions that are not always visible through traditional measures of teaching effectiveness.
Consider the following strategies:
- Recognize a range of teaching contributions. Acknowledge instructors’ contributions to teaching, mentoring, graduate supervision, curriculum development, educational technology, and other teaching-related initiatives. Consider how departmental recognition practices reflect the different ways colleagues contribute to teaching and learning.
- Encourage nominations for teaching and mentoring awards. Promote opportunities to recognize teaching excellence through departmental, divisional, and University awards. Consider whether existing recognition practices adequately acknowledge mentoring, graduate supervision, and contributions to teaching development.
- Highlight teaching accomplishments and innovations. Share examples of colleagues’ teaching initiatives, accomplishments, and contributions through departmental meetings, newsletters, or other communication channels. Recognition can make teaching-related work more visible and provide opportunities for colleagues to learn from one another.
- Recognize and support teaching champions. Identify colleagues who contribute to departmental teaching development through mentoring, facilitating discussions, sharing expertise, or supporting teaching initiatives. Academic leaders can help create opportunities for these colleagues to connect with others and ensure that their contributions are appropriately acknowledged and supported.
- Support documentation of teaching leadership and mentoring. Encourage instructors to document their contributions to mentoring, professional learning, curriculum development, and other teaching-related activities. These experiences may form part of a teaching dossier or other records of educational leadership and professional development, as appropriate to their roles and institutional expectations.
References
- Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation. (2016). Faculty Mentoring for Teaching Report. University of Toronto.
- Roxå, T., & Mårtensson, K. (2009). Teaching and learning regimes from within. In C. Kreber (Ed.), The university and its disciplines: Teaching and learning within and beyond disciplinary boundaries (pp. 209–218). Routledge.
- Weimer, M. (2016, June 1). Six ways to improve your department’s teaching climate. Faculty Focus.