I had a nice conversation with a colleague and also a fellow PGCert student, about conversations in tutorials and crits. He agreed with the primacy of this in our teaching. He also remembered Victoria Odenyini, a researcher who was studying conversations with multilingual students who observed his teaching. He commented that it is very interesting how she’d picked up linguistic nuances which are very important within conversation-based learning. For example, pauses within statements, pauses after questions, speed of speech, etc, etc. This all make a big difference in the teaching session.
I know that I have a tendency to speak too quickly and speak my mind too quickly. And also feel the need to fill silences. I need to let silences breathe and live within a teaching session as this will allow time for quieter students or students whose english is not their first language to respond.
It is great that you have critically reflected on your own weaknesses and made plans to enhance your teaching practice. This is very resonant to me, as I also tend to speak too fast during my teaching and pack my lectures too much. I loved the emphasis on the importance to consider multilingual student cohorts (which is very relevant at UAL given the growing number of international students), the need to speak slowly, and leave quiet spaces for student learning. This is something I will take away myself from reading your blog.
Moreover, considering that you have written so many blog posts but you can submit for assessment only 4, I encourage you to merge some that are related. For instance, you could merge this blog post into the previous one, as they are informed by the same publication, and both relate to the concept of dialogical teaching. Finally, I think it would be great if you could add visuals to enhance your blog, e.g. a screenshot of a quote from the publication.