“If we want to be co-learners and co-teachers with students, if we want to mess their lived experiences with our disciplinary expertise, if we want to construct a classroom environment that legitimizes their voices, and if we want to create avenues for them to explore the possibilities of being agents of change, then we need [...]

“One reason that teachers lecture is that it is ground that they totally control. It may be why the practice has held on for so long in the face of overwhelming evidence … that it does not work very well to promote student learning of either the subject matter or larger general education goals [...]

I’ve always maintained that teachers have a right to bottom lines. If you can’t teach when students are eating or if you think that eating prevents others from learning, prohibit the eating. But now I’m wondering.
I’m reading a book on teaching. It’s written by a distinguished teacher. It describes how he teaches and why. There’s [...]

A recent analysis of the teaching vs. research debate highlighted in the March issue of The Teaching Professor was a welcome find. The argument just seems to go on an on, even though everybody involved recognizes that teaching and research require very different skill sets. As authors Prince, Felder and Brent (all notables [...]

I’m reading such an interesting book about teaching: Michael Newman’s Teaching Defiance: Stories and Strategies for Activist Educators. I already did a piece about it in a recent issue of the newsletter, but I’m interviewing Michael for a Magna Online Seminar in April (for information, see www.magnapubs.com/calendar/194.html), and for that I need to do a [...]

I asked a high school friend why he likes video games so much. “It’s fun because at the level you’re on you can do some things but not others. You really want to learn how to do those things you can’t so you can move on to the next level. And you feel like you’re [...]

Are you one of those faculty members (truly we are legion) who has trouble talking too much in classroom discussions? I know, everything we have to say is so wonderful and so needs to be said. But we all know that the more we talk, the less we hear from students (and that applies both [...]

One of the embarrassing parts of doing The Teaching Professor newsletter is discovering how much good material I miss even though it seems as though I’m always reading. Just yesterday I was reading a book for which I’ve agreed to write a foreword, and there was a reference to an article I should not have [...]

There’s a lot of stress associated with academic positions. At least faculty report that they are stressed. In a 2003 survey of 782 British academics 70 percent reported that they found their jobs stressful, and 75 percent said those levels of stress had increased across the past five years. (These percentages are a bit higher [...]