faculty development

Making the Most of Teacher Professional Development

The intent of professional development is to help professors become better teachers, but it is sometimes unclear what efforts bring the most improvement. Research has consistently identified several best practices in teacher professional development. We’ll address three of those practices here: focus, duration, and collaboration

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Reading That’s Worth Discussing

Most of us teaching at the college level like to read. We read professional materials and sometimes even read for pleasure. Much about teaching can be learned from reading as well. But we work in a profession where there are a lot of demands on

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Conference attendees

Taking Time to Refresh, Recharge, and Recommit

I continue to worry that we devalue the affective dimensions of teaching—the emotional energy it takes to keep delivering high-quality instruction.

Most faculty are on solid ground in terms of expertise. We know and, in most cases, love our content. We don’t get tired of it—oh,

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faculty development

What We Learn from Each Other

When teachers tell me about some new strategy or approach they’ve implemented, I usually ask how they found out about it and almost always get the same response: “Oh, a colleague told me about it.” I continue to be amazed by the amount of pedagogical

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Pedagogical Knowledge: Three Worlds Apart

We know a lot about teaching and learning, but our knowledge is scattered across three separate domains.

Educational research
The first knowledge domain is centered on the world of educational research that’s been advancing what we know about teaching and learning for more than a hundred

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What Can We Learn from Accidental Learning?

“I just stumbled onto this. . .” I heard the phrase a couple of times in presentations during the recent Teaching Professor Technology Conference. Faculty presenters used it to describe their discovery of an aspect of instruction that worked well, such as an

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Making the Most of Professional Development Days

I am on my way to speak at another professional development day at a college. I do these events with misgivings—frequently persuading myself on the way home that I really shouldn’t be doing them.

Some time ago, a colleague and I reviewed the literature on interventions

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The Teaching Professor Conference 2024

June 7-9, 2024 • New Orleans

Connect with Fellow Educators at The Teaching Professor Conference!