Last month I wrote about how students fool themselves into thinking they have learned concepts when they really haven’t. This month I focus on how faculty can fool themselves into thinking that they are teaching effectively when their students aren’t really learning.
I think most faculty have a love-hate relationship with mistakes. On the one hand, we understand that learning is messy and involves missteps and do-overs. We know that a growth mindset is important to development. We want to see mistakes as opportunities. But on the
Four problems account for the lion’s share of serious teaching problems:
An overstatement? Perhaps, but over the many years we’ve worked with faculty in a wide range of disciplines, we’ve seen these
Mistake # 1 – Let content dictate instructional decision making.
Marshall Gregory, an English professor at Butler University, has written a fine essay that explores the role of content in learning. In the excerpt below, he discusses why we have students learn certain content. Some
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