16 Confronting “I just don’t have time”: An argument for seeking and documenting professional learning

Introduction

We confess our teaching is not always exemplary and our students often struggle to learn. We argue that intentionally pursuing professional learning is the only way to improve our teaching, and that documenting this learning is imperative when we make the case for teaching excellence. This chapter will examine the common lament of “I just don’t have time” for professional learning, followed by a discussion of how to exchange this self-sabotaging notion for a self-sustaining alternative, and a description of the benefits of documenting professional growth. The aim of this chapter is three-fold: to argue that “I just don’t have time” stifles instructors’ professional learning and growth, to frame the argument around values and priorities, and to offer practical strategies for making time to pursue and document professional learning.

First, a clarification of terms: in this chapter, we will focus on instructors’ self-initiated, self-directed pursuit of professional growth, which we will call professional learning (PL). We use this term instead of professional development (PD), often understood as mandated meetings or workshops that institutions require instructors to attend. This distinction between PL and PD has been employed by previous authors (e.g., Fairman et al., 2020; Stewart, 2014; Webster-Wright, 2009), who point out that PD tends to fall short in providing instructors what they need when they need it most (Fairman et al, 2020). We use the term PL to emphasize instructors’ autonomy and agency, which are key features of self-actualization. It has been our experience as university instructors that engaging in PL is critical to our growth and that systematically documenting our PL supports our pursuit of effectiveness in teaching and promotion. Our hope for this chapter is that it will demonstrate the value of both pursuits – professional learning and its documentation.

We use the term instructors to refer to all university employees who teach, regardless of position or rank. While tenured or tenure-track instructors typically focus on scholarly research as their primary responsibility, the percentage of US instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track has steadily decreased over the past few decades, going from 53% in 1987 to 32% in 2021 (Colby, 2023). This means that an increasing percentage of instructors is employed primarily to teach, and their continued employment is presumably tied to their teaching effectiveness. Besides, even those who are tenured or on the tenure track tend to teach at least part of the time. Hence, we assume that teaching effectiveness matters to all instructors and the institutions that employ them. To signal their expectation of instructional effectiveness or even excellence, an increasing number of colleges and universities have a designated Center for Teaching and Learning or similar entity (Kuhlenschmidt 2011; Wright, 2023), which tend to offer various formats of PL, from workshops, seminars, and learning circles to individual coaching and mentoring.

Yet when faced with opportunities for PL, many instructors (and this used to include us) immediately dismiss its potential, lamenting “I just don’t have time”. The research literature (e.g., Vostal 2014, 2015; Glorieux & Verbeylen, 2021) supports the subjective impression that almost all instructors feel overwhelmed and short on time. Cultural pressures in academe and society as a whole, combined with aftereffects of the chaos and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, leave many feeling overwhelmed and pressed for time. Using survey data submitted by workers in a wide range of professions, both the American Psychological Association (Abramson, 2022) and the Society for Human Resource Management (2024) report high rates of burnout, especially in health care and education.

One of the drivers of these trends is the perception of overwork as a strength and the disapproval of a desire for work-life balance as self-indulgent (Posen, 2013). A scholar studying British academia in light of the “oppressive acceleration” (Vostal, 2014, p. 245) of modernity writes that “the increasing pace of work appears to be the defining characteristic of academic life” (Vostal, 2015, p. 75). A study conducted at a university in Belgium found that 44% of instructors employed full-time at this institution spent evening hours on work-related tasks, while 68% of full-time instructors spent time during their weekends on work-related tasks (Glorieux & Verbeylen, 2021). In a US-based survey comparing time allocations of CEOs and professors, 78% of professors reported that “no matter how hard they work, they can’t get everything done”, compared to 48% of CEOs lamenting the same (Massachusetts, 2002, p.10). We may wish to ask ourselves how we have become people who have “internalised thoroughly the attitudes and imperatives of a culture of speed” (Kidd, 2023, p.335).

Making time for what matters

Feeling ever pressed for time, instructors may feel like documenting PL is “another damn thing we’ve got to do” (Knight, 2000, p. 1). In study after study, university instructors report they don’t have enough time to do the minimum required, let alone to participate in PL or implement new ideas (Helker et al, 2018; Houghton et al, 2015; McAvinia et al, 2018). Rather than accepting the notion of time precarity at face value, we propose reframing time stress by acknowledging that “academic culture celebrates overwork, but it is imperative that we question the value of busyness” (Berg & Seeber, 2016, p. 21). Busy instructors are not by definition effective or successful instructors. In fact, busyness may result from a misalignment of values and activities (McKeown, 2014; Rettig, 2011). As Clark and Sousa (2018, p.171) claim: “Show me your calendar and I will show you what your priorities are”. We must remember that our calendar is ours and its purpose is to make time for what matters to us. Consequently, the freedom to be largely in charge of our schedule carries with it the burden of choosing wisely. If we make time for PL, it is in our best interest to document our motivation, its purpose, and the outcome, because documentation helps us make the case for teaching excellence.

Whether our motivation to pursue and document PL is extrinsic, intrinsic, or a combination is irrelevant – being motivated is what matters. Documenting our PL and its effects on our teaching can be extrinsically motivated when we want supervisors and reviewers to notice our intentional pursuit of excellence, so that we might be chosen for promotion, tenure, awards, and grants. Bouwma-Gearhart (2012) shows that “an appeal to extrinsic motivation and ego” is an effective driver of professional learning. Regardless of the type of motivation, success at work and in other parts of our lives depends to a large extent on the alignment of our values with our actions (Arieli et al, 2020; Clark & Sousa, 2018; Grant, 2023). However, while all forms of motivation are valid, Tijdink (2023) points out that “if you only do what others want, you’re stopping yourself from becoming the best version of yourself” (p.19), underscoring the importance of intrinsic motivation.

When instructors are intrinsically motivated, drawing satisfaction and fulfillment from helping their students meet learning objectives, instructors are likely to feel dissatisfied when learning outcomes fall below expectations. This may prompt them to seek PL to improve their teaching, which moves them toward their “ideal future selves”, which Shahjahan (2019, p.285) explains as “work[ing] in the present to acquire the way we want to be in the future”. Working toward our ideal future selves aligns our actions with our values of doing meaningful work and feeling fulfilled in it. When we reject the self-sabotaging myth that we don’t have time for PL, we can embrace agency to pursue PL for our own benefit. By definition, PL is focused on self-selected areas of interest and therefore has the potential to invigorate and enliven our teaching practice (Clark & Sousa, 2018), making it worthy of our time. Documenting our PL and its effect on our teaching offers benefits in two ways: an opportunity to reflect, which is itself a driver of learning (Ashwin et al, 2020), and an opportunity to demonstrate to supervisors and reviewers our intentional pursuit of excellence.

Aligning actions with values

Prioritizing PL involves a careful balance of saying yes and saying no (McKeown, 2014; Mountz et al, 2015; Tijdink, 2023). With a myriad of teaching-related concerns clamoring for our attention, it may feel overwhelming to choose what to focus on first. Rather than becoming paralyzed by the many topics worthy of examining, it is more important that we “start now and start somewhere” (Clark & Sousa, 2018, p.200). We can start with small investments and allow the momentum of our growth to propel us forward in learning more each year. In the following paragraphs, we suggest practical ways of saying yes to PL, beginning with low-commitment options that allow for exploration, followed by medium-commitment options that foster engagement, and higher-commitment options for which an instructor creates and contributes something of value for their peers. Soon after a PL experience, instructors should record what opportunity they engaged in (e.g., a conference session or webinar on increasing student engagement), why they engaged in it (e.g., to improve student engagement in a large-enrollment course), specific insights or tips they learned, and one thing they might want to try in a specific class or a specific assignment. This kind of documenting can remain private, for example in a personal teaching journal, until it is needed as part of a narrative or dossier for review. Table 1 shows a simple format for keeping track of PL and its effect on our teaching.

Table 1

Sample log for recording PL and its effects

date	opportunity that I engaged in and why	three tips / insights	one thing I might like to try	what I implemented and how it went

It is helpful to schedule 10-15 minutes in one’s calendar for filling in the first four columns within a day of participating in PL. The fifth column can be filled in later. The notes recorded in such a document can serve as data for a teaching statement and supporting evidence for a teaching dossier. Below, we offer examples of low-commitment, medium-commitment, and higher-commitment options for pursuing and documenting PL.

Low-commitment options: Explore

These options feature a low investment of time, generally one to two hours each, offering instructors a way to just explore topics and skills they are interested in. A simple way to become aware of low-commitment opportunities is to join the email list of the center for teaching and learning at one’s institution, or a listserv catering to teaching in one’s discipline. Low-commitment options include attending a virtual or in-person lecture or seminar on a teaching-related issue, exploring and discussing a teaching resource or pedagogical technique with a small group of colleagues, evaluating a learning app or teaching resource (for example, by using the rubric made available by the International Society for Technology in Education at https://teacher-ready.iste.org/tool/, or watching a video on the lesser-known features of the learning management system used at one’s institution. We have done every one of these things, always and intentionally choosing topics that mattered to us in our teaching, and we learned something useful every time. This kind of “authentic professional learning” (Webster-Wright, 2009) helped us feel empowered to make changes and improve our teaching, even if it was in just small ways.

Medium-commitment options: Engage

If the low-commitment options feel meaningful as an opportunity for PL, instructors can become inspired to pursue medium-commitment options. These require more time and effort, generally three to six hours total, and include such activities as joining a faculty discussion group on teaching-related topics, attending a local conference or workshop on a teaching-related topic, or asking a colleague to observe one’s teaching (with the necessary pre-class and post-class conversations that characterize a meaningful teaching observation) and then observing the colleague in return. Both of us sought feedback on our teaching from classroom observers starting in our early days in the classroom. Observers sometimes chose to write a formal letter, while other times they filled out a rubric. We saved all feedback from observers and kept notes on things we wanted to address in our teaching. These files served as evidence for points we emphasized in our teaching narrative. For meaningful aspects to consider in assessment of teaching in higher education, we recommend focusing on the criteria offered in Simonson et al (2022).

Higher-commitment options: Create and contribute

Experiencing success and fulfillment with low- and medium-commitment PL can motivate instructors to seek even more learning (Fogg, 2020; Grant, 2023). We view higher-commitment options as opportunities to create something of value to share with peers. Examples of higher-commitment options include developing a co-taught course with a colleague, presenting at a professional conference, designing and facilitating a seminar or webinar, or writing a journal article or book chapter on a teaching-related topic. These kinds of outcomes are easily used as documentation of teaching excellence and can be added to one’s CV. Making contributions to the profession in this way has the potential to validate instructors’ experiences by connecting them with fellow educators around common interests. It is this potential that has motivated the two of us to sustain our efforts in the pursuit of PL.

Benefits

In our experience, PL and its documentation have offered benefits of several kinds. Fortunately for us, our university had a digital micro-credentialing system in place that encouraged us to document our PL. Through our pursuit of digital badges, we found ourselves consistently reflecting on and documenting what we learned each time we engaged in PL. For example, we participated in faculty learning circles, which fostered human connection around shared pedagogical interests (Himelein & Anderson, 2020; Darwin & Palmer, 2009). In addition, we have attended seminars, webinars, and workshops and joined teaching-focused events organized by our university’s center for teaching and learning and by our discipline-specific professional organizations. We encouraged each other to contribute to our campus community and wider professional circles by submitting teaching-related conference proposals and preparing PL for others. In our experience, the benefits of PL have been concentrated in three areas: instructional improvement, social connection, and professional advancement. We will address these briefly here.

Instructional improvement

By delving more deeply into the art and science of teaching, we have been able to experiment with new approaches, techniques, and tools. We will not soon forget our adventures in ungrading (Blum, 2020), inspired by our participation in a learning circle on this topic. In the courses where we continue to use ungrading, students report in end-of-semester evaluations that it plays a major role in their satisfaction with the course. Our exploration and employment of ungrading have also fundamentally changed the way we give feedback and approach assessment with our students. Having become cognizant of pervasive phenomena such as playing the “game of school” and “grade grubbing” (Blum, 2020, 2024), we aim to shift both our own and our students’ focus back on learning. Recognizing that failure plays a critical role in learning (Eyler, 2018), we have built within our courses a grading system that rewards students for their timely responses to instructor feedback. We curate course content and organize our classes to harness curiosity and creativity, which in turn catalyze learner autonomy and motivation (Blum, 2020; Eyler, 2018; Kohn, 2013; Lang, 2020). We have written about these practices and perspectives in our teaching philosophy and other parts of our teaching dossier.

Another example of improvement of our teaching is when we learned about a tool called Hypothes.is, which allows for social annotation of PDF files and can be integrated with a learning management system. Our students were able to connect more deeply with the assigned readings because they were doing it together. This was especially notable in our online asynchronous courses where we used Hypothes.is to replace the routine weekly discussions on assigned course readings. Online discussions are often intended to get students sharing their perspectives and takeaways in response to a prompt but frequently fall short of students critically engaging with each other because they do not know how to respond to classmates’ opposing viewpoints in a virtual space. Hypothes.is enabled us to provide scaffolding and establish the expectation that students were to engage with classmates’ alternative viewpoints. At the same time, using Hypothes.is as a tool allows our students to collaborate remotely and asynchronously, which fits their busy schedules.

Most recently, we both participated in a massive open online course (MOOC) focused on using AI within our teaching contexts. During our participation in this course, we attended a regional conference where over half of the presentations (including one of ours) discussed and demonstrated ways we might consider integrating AI into our courses. As a direct result of our PL, we are redesigning our course syllabi to include better transparency surrounding AI using the AI Assessment Scale (Furze et al. 2024), as well as incorporating the use of GenAI to help our students improve their speaking and revise their writing. These are but three examples of how our pursuit of PL and documenting it led to instructional improvement. Assignment descriptions and course syllabi serve as documentation of the effect of our PL, especially when compared with an older version of the same assignment or course.

Social connections

In addition to instructional improvement, the pursuit of PL also offers social connections. For a few years, we both worked at the same institution and pursued PL opportunities together. This social aspect of PL played an important role in our enjoyment. As Eyler (2018) argues, sociality is one of the most important drivers of human learning. In fact, sociality is the very antidote to the phenomenon reported by Clark and Sousa, who write about their work with university instructors saying, “we meet all too many people trying to succeed who feel isolated … and disengaged from their workplace and colleagues” (Clark & Sousa, 2018, p.1; see also Vázquez, 2023). Similarly, a study of academics in ten countries (Sibai et al, 2019) summarized its findings in the title “Overworked and isolated: The rising epidemic of loneliness in academia”. It is noteworthy that this study identified loneliness and isolation before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has only exacerbated feelings of loneliness and isolation throughout society. We often find colleagues nodding their heads in recognition when we remark on the closed doors and empty hallways that seem to be the norm on our campuses today. Educators we talk to lament the loss of in-person interaction with colleagues and students, yet human connections are fundamental to a sense of well-being and the workplace is not exempt from this need.

We affirm that “a strong social support is vital to the successful running of a university and [its] education mission” (Berg & Seeber, 2016, p.81). Such social support can be found in professional learning communities (PLCs), which we define as voluntary groups of educators who seek to learn individually and collectively to question, understand, challenge, and improve teaching and learning in their unique context. In their review of the literature on PLCs, Stoll et al. (2006) describe their five core characteristics: shared values and vision, collective responsibility, reflective professional inquiry, collaboration, and promotion of group as well as individual learning (pp. 226-227). Research on PLCs reveals that strong social support is one of the most valued benefits of participating in a PLC (see, for example, Culver, Kezar, & Koren, 2023; Haines, 2022; Tucker & Quintero-Ares, 2021).

It has been our experience that our social bonds encourage us to pursue PL, which in turn strengthens our social connection. Our camaraderie helped us feel better equipped to navigate the stress of professional pursuits and commitments. Himelein and Anderson (2020) show that supportive work relationships can serve as a buffer for occupational stress. We found that our social connection helped us hold one another accountable as we each worked on separate chapters for the same book (Gossard & Babits, 2023). Even though writing is commonly viewed as an individual endeavor and can feel lonely (Weinstein, 2012), we benefited from writing drafts at the same time with the same deadline and regularly checking in with each other on our challenges and our progress.

Professional advancement

According to Wentworth et al. (2024), participation in faculty writing groups led to increased scholarly productivity, while Gardner et al. (2020) report that a writing group resulted in more manuscripts submitted, articles and books published, and conference presentations delivered. Similarly, instructors who are primarily evaluated on their teaching can participate in PLCs to improve their teaching outcomes, documenting and presenting their growth to supervisors and reviewers. For example, one can annotate a comparison of a syllabus from last year with a syllabus for the same course this year, marking each change implemented and what motivated the change. Or one can present an assignment from last year and its current iteration side by side, noting what changes have been made and why. Detailed examples of documenting improvements and innovations in one’s teaching can be found in Spicer-Escalante and Bullock (2019), which contains samples from a wide range of academic disciplines.

Any instructor can start a habit of engaging in and documenting PL, from attending relevant workshops and seminars to trying a new or different technique, assignment, app, or assessment with students. The potential for professional advancement follows when instructors document the outcomes in terms of effects on their teaching. As they describe their engagement, reflection, experimentation, and observed outcomes, they demonstrate an intentional approach to improvement. In our case, this intentionality increased our self-concept as professional educators, giving us the courage to contribute to the profession in the form of workshops, conference presentations, book chapters, and panel discussions. We became more confident in crafting personal statements as we applied for jobs, grants, promotions, and competitive application-based programs. Specifically, one of us landed a new job, the other was promoted, and we were each awarded funding from the U.S. Department of State for opportunities abroad. We believe we owe these achievements at least in part to documenting how our teaching improved because of our engagement with PL.

Conclusion 

In this chapter, we have demonstrated that PL is desirable, attainable, and beneficial. Specifically, we have argued that professional growth helps educators feel more empowered to improve the art and craft of their teaching. Such improvement, in turn, serves as the foundation for making the argument that one’s teaching is excellent. Seeking out opportunities for PL draws on our agency and self-determination, which are important drivers of feeling engaged and fulfilled. We have shown that pursuit and documentation of PL are not only desirable, but also attainable. Our description of low, medium, and high commitment options offers readers a sampling of practical ideas for engaging in PL. Lastly, we have illustrated that, in addition to being desirable and attainable, the pursuit of PL is also beneficial. The chief benefits of PL include instructional improvement, social connections, and professional advancement, all of which have the potential to positively affect educators’ work.

The pursuit of PL thus feels like a life-giving endeavor to us, a strategy that keeps us fresh and engaged. Importantly, it has contributed to, as well as improved, our job satisfaction. Furthermore, documenting our PL has yielded career advancements and new professional opportunities. This is why we believe that, faced with many competing demands for our energy and attention, engaging in PL and documenting its outcomes is a worthy investment of our time.

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