I’m always on the lookout for new teaching metaphors and I found a good one this weekend.
“What magic is it that removes the barrier—that allows teachers to converse with, rather than to talk at, our students? It’s my private theory that the solution is analogous to writing itself: that good classes, like good papers need a thesis, a plan, a problem, and, finally, a sense of larger significance.” (p. 38)
I remember the first time something in the newsletter generated all kinds of reader response … well, the very first time was when I used “criteria” when I should have written “criterion”, but the first response to substance involved an article suggesting that higher education ought to be run more like a business. The response was overwhelmingly negative—some of it thoughtful, a lot of it visceral. It is a metaphor that still rankles and does not do justice, given the aims and purposes of higher education. But as Robert H. Knapp, Jr. points out, the metaphor does highlight some comparisons to which educators should attend.
How many major concepts are you covering in the courses you teach? Do you know? Have you ever tried to list them? I have to be honest and say I never did. But I do see how beneficial it might have been. First off, generating the list seems like a very effective way to clarify what the course is really about—to get a handle on the content domain of the course. Then, with the list in hand, you can prioritize the concepts, maybe see a different way of ordering them or a way of better using content to support them.
Here’s a list of some practical suggestions taken from a, “miniature guide for those who teach on how to improve student learning.” (Web address below) The guide was prepared by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, both well-known experts on critical thinking.
Occasionally we need a reminder like this: based on a thorough literature review, Paul Ramsden, a noted researcher on teaching and learning, along with several co-authors offered this description of good teachers.
· Good teachers are also good learners; for example, they learn through their own reading, by participating in a variety of professional-development activities, by [...]
Noel Entwistle writes in the conclusion of an impressive chapter that provides an overview of key research findings about learning that the evidence leads to “seeing the purpose of higher education as going beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills; to recognize that for the demands of current society and employment, graduates need to have acquired a personal conceptual understanding of the main ideas and ways of thinking in their area of study so as to experience ‘learning that lasts.’ Only this will provide flexibility in applying knowledge, skills, and understanding that will suffice at a time of rapid change and ‘super-complexity’ in dealing with emerging issues and new problems.” (p. 43)
I was looking something up and happened on this brief identification of the defining characteristics for problem-based learning (PBL). Not only does it offer a great review, but it reminds us why PBL is such a powerful pedagogical strategy.
When I took an ungraduate chemistry course a few years back, I loved lab, but I have to admit writing up the lab reports seemed like so much busy work. Each report had specified sections, and the lab manual offered advice on what to put in the sections, depending on the experiment. I remember trying [...]
Much of what we do in the classroom is habitual. We do it so often that we can look at it and still fail to see the underlying assumptions. The question then, raised by the authors of the article referenced below, is this: “How do individuals discover and challenge tacit taken-for-granted assumptions in their teaching practice?” The authors suggest that teachers use “metaphorical mirrors.” They do a workshop during which they challenge faculty to probe a personal pursuit (hobby, activity, interest, or sport) and extract from it metaphors that might point to assumptions they make about teaching and learning.
Here’s an interesting new word: “courseocentricism,” obviously related to words like ethnocentricism and egocontricism, it’s defined as “a kind of tunnel vision in which we become so used to the confines of our own course that we are oblivious to the fact that our students are taking other courses whose instructors at any moment may be undercutting our most cherished beliefs.” (p. 157)
