Given the hit-or-miss quality of graduate student training, it is not surprising there are concerns about the quality of instruction TAs provide. Students have been known to shy away from courses taught by graduate students, especially when English is a second language for those instructors.
Pete Burkholder, a history professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is writing a series of columns for a website on teaching US history. He doesn’t teach US history, having only taken a course on it in high school. So it’s not surprising that his first column
Teacher power has to do with the ability to influence student behaviors and, ultimately, what they learn and how much. My colleagues and I often lament that it is more difficult to influence student behaviors than it used to be. Much of what we know
A recent issue of the journal Issues in Accounting Education published teaching statements written by the 2016 winners of the Cook Prize, a national prize that recognizes superior teaching in accounting. Part of the statement, written by Billie M. Cunningham, who teaches accounting at the
Do your writing assignment focus on the product or the process? How about your students? Where do you think their focus is?
At the end of the day, our students aren’t going to take from our courses the products they developed and use them in the
Even though metaphors for teaching abound, there’s always room for another, and Kim Paffenroth presents a novel one—Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz. He starts by ruling out the other characters in this much-loved tale. Dorothy is the student
Many faculty dread that end-of-semester email informing them that student evaluation feedback is available for viewing. Even instructors who routinely excel on numerical ratings find themselves struggling with students’ responses to open-ended questions, where inevitably one remark stands out in its harsh tone or offensive
Oh, how the tables do turn! Each semester, after quizzing, testing, and otherwise grading our students, they get to return the favor and rate their professors, and some of them can be harsher than we are on our most critical days. Because administrators incorporate these
How did you learn how to teach? By trying to teach like those who taught you? Through trial and error? By looking for feedback on course evaluations? As an experienced educator, what methods do you now rely to continue your growth as a teacher? Do
Interest in those teacher characteristics that make instruction effective is long-standing. Since the 1930s, we’ve been asking students, faculty, alums, and administrators to identify the ingredients or components of effective instruction, and the same or similar characteristics are named with some regularity. The assumption has
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