Co-Teaching EDSE 682: Foundations in Gifted Education

A Doctoral Comprehensive Performance Assessment Matrix Reflection on Pedagogy

By Amra Mohammed
I am a faculty member at the University of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, and one of my top

goals is to get teaching experiences and learn about variety of teaching styles to be able to apply

these experiences with teaching processes in different cultures. For the pedagogy project, I chose

to participate as a co-teacher for the course EDSE 682, Foundations in Gifted Education. I chose

this course because it is a keystone class for gifted education majors. Students start with this

foundation in gifted education as a baseline where they are introduced to essential knowledge

such as history, theories, identification, and programming about students with gifts and talents. I

would like to build positive experiences and perspectives toward gifted education among future

teachers.

I co-taught this class with Dr. Stuart Omdal in Fall 2016, where I supervised group

discussions, communicated with students and reflected on their discussion board posts, as well as

graded their assignments, providing them with appropriate feedback. I wanted to expand my

teaching experience, so in Fall 2017, I served as co-teacher for this course again with Dr. Amy

Graefe. During this experience, I was given countless opportunities to develop my own teaching

style, share my ideas, design activities, and help building rubrics for some assignments. I also,

had the opportunity to teach part of the units. Some of my additional responsibilities included

developing presentations for two units (Wisdom Intelligence and Law in Gifted Education),

facilitating discussions on discussion boards, communicating with students, and grading

assignments. This co-teaching experience was rich in that I felt that I had responsibilities both as

a teacher and as a learner. I learned new topics in the field of gifted education, such as Wisdom
intelligence and the law in gifted education. Dr. Amy mentored me as I designed units,

developed presentations, and considered teaching strategies.

The experience with teaching the unit about wisdom intelligence and Sternberg’s WICS

model provided me with interesting knowledge about a new topic. Through my search about this

topic, I contacted Dr. Sternberg while searching for a measurement tool for his model, and he

referral me to helpful resources (College Admissions for the 20th Century), which contained

some of the wisdom questions from the model. Also, to get more understanding of the concept of

wisdom, I read different articles about this topic, and I contacted Dr. Monika Ardelt, a professor

of Sociology and Graduate Coordinator at the University of Florida and asked her about the

wisdom test that she designed. I then used the test as an introduction to the topic with the class.

This theory is both interesting and applicable to my future career.

The other unit that I co-taught was Law of Gifted Education. This responsibility led me to

dig deep into this topic, and I learned a great deal about how laws and policies are developed

from searching and reading about developments in law and cases that were associated with

enacted policies. This co-teaching experience contributed valuable knowledge about law in

gifted education that supported me in writing my policy paper. Also, together with Dr. Graefe, I

designed a case law activity for the students to complete and facilitated discussions. Student

feedback indicated that students found that the case study activity was interesting and relevant to

them as future practitioners.

Co-teaching the foundations course linked me to most of the concepts and information

that I had studied in the previous class, EDSE 733 “Preparing Teacher for Students with

Exceptionalities,” with Dr. Sandra Bowen, so I was able to apply this information in preparing

materials, teaching strategies, grading students’ work, and providing feedback for them. I
enjoyed practicing a variety of teaching styles such as leading a group discussions, discussing

questions, and presenting lectures. Also, I gained practice and experience in grading students’

work and providing feedback for each student, indicating strengths and weaknesses in their

work.

Through discussing students’ ideas and points of view, I learned from their experiences in

teaching students with advanced abilities at different school levels. This allowed me to see the

differences between the education system in the USA and the system in the KSA. Comparing

these two systems prompted me to think about how I can adapt what I learn here to apply to the

KSA education system.

I believe that co-teaching helped me to improve my teaching methods and increased my

knowledge and understanding of serving students. It was also a tremendous opportunity to

improve my skills as a researcher and as a practitioner. I believe that teaching experience

naturally builds skills, which I have gained regardless of the cultural differences between

education systems here and in the KSA. These experiences with Dr. Omdal and Dr. Graefe also

helped to build my confidence in teaching and in earning the respect of my students.

One of the most valuable aspects of studying is benefitting from the mentoring that

professors provide to students. Co-teaching seems an excellent and natural setting for mentoring,

and I appreciated all the modeling, encouragement, and guided practice that Dr. Omdal and Dr.

Graefe gave to me. I see how building my confidence was Dr. Graefe’s goal. Thanks to her.

At the conclusion each unit, I distributed a presentation evaluation form to all the

students. I used student feedback from the first unit to improve my presentation for the next unit.

Time constraints were a notable part of the students’ feedback for both units. Students felt that

there was not enough time to cover the topics in depth. Students were especially interested in
Wisdom Intelligence, and feedback indicated that my slides were clear and well-designed. I

received positive feedback regarding my knowledgeability and my responsiveness to students’

questions. Based on some of the feedback, I will continue to work on improving the pace of my

presentations. I will also work on speaking clearly and loud enough for people to hear easily.

Although my planning and preparing for teaching each unit went well, I found one of the

greatest challenges of this experience was to teach graduate students who are all currently

professional teachers, so I felt that I was learning from them while I was teaching. Also, I was

challenged by teaching topics that were new to me in English to American students. It surprised

me that the students, who were all current teachers, knew less about law in education than I

expected. In this way, I felt that I made a solid contribution to their knowledge base. This was a

successful experience that helped to develop my confidence.

Finally, co-teaching this course with a hybrid format (online with two face-to-face

sessions) was a helpful experience with using education technology. I taught this class with an

online format twice, which allowed me to work with two different systems: Blackboard and

Canvas. I learned how to use these two learning platform programs to post announcements,

provide feedback and post grades through speed grade, and communicate individually and with

groups on discussion boards. This enhanced my ability to use technology and provided the

benefit of online teaching experience so that I can apply this as a new method in Saudi Arabia.

My previous experience as a faculty member at the university level in the KSA was

limited to two classes. These co-teaching experiences have added depth and breadth to my

previous skill level by providing opportunities to expand my teaching abilities and experience. I

have many skills, both personally and professionally, to develop further before I master the art of

teaching in higher education.