Close Reading and Observation Exercises [PDF]

These exercises excerpt individual and small sets of photographs, together with in-depth questions aimed at close reading and observation, from the book, What Teaching Looks Like: Higher Education through Photographs by Cassandra Volpe Horii and Martin Springborg.

The prompts and photographs are intended to be used in faculty and educational development settings, to draw instructors, teaching assistants, and/or future faculty into reflective discussions about the practice of teaching in postsecondary education. They could also be used in settings where faculty, staff, and administrators are engaging in planning or change efforts and seek to ground their work in careful observation, as well as to surface implicit beliefs and values that may be important to their work together. Finally, these prompts and photographs may be helpful to instructors teaching courses about higher education and facets thereof, including pedagogy and classroom practice, instructional technology, academic space planning, student affairs administration, community-based learning, and organization change theory and practice.

We hope that the structure and format of these examples will also inspire you to create close reading and observation experiences of your own, perhaps drawing upon photographs and media representing and relevant to your postsecondary educational contexts, institutions, goals, and projects.