Developing effective instructional skills: The master educator program at suny buffalo state

Abstract

With higher education facing budget cuts and declining enrollment, instructor effectiveness continues to be crucial, particularly in a state of increasing workloads with restricted resources. However, the dilemma of how to develop effective instructional skills while still maintaining a research agenda stems from a larger contradiction within professional disciplines; teaching is essential to the profession but holds a devalued position compared to research. It is not enough for an educator to recognize that teaching and research are mutually reinforcing, universities must also recognize and support this reality. Understanding that we must learn to be good instructors, even as teaching is devalued, led our School of Professions (SOP) to reflect on how we can develop strategies for becoming effective educators while still fulfilling our research (and service) agenda. With the Master Educator (MEP) program, our school is developing internal talent via instructional coaching between our School of Education (SOE) and our School of Professions. Research indicates that traditional forms of professional development are not effective. In turn, research on instructional coaching in K-12 setting has indicated a much higher implementation rate than traditional approaches to professional development; however, to our knowledge, there have been no attempts at implementing instructional coaching at the university level. The MEP is the first program to implement this practice at the university level.