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’ve often felt that a teacher’s life is suspended, Janus-like, between past experiences and future hopes; it’s only fitting, then, that I’m preparing for this new year by looking back. Here’s a countdown of last year’s gratitude journal entries that reminded me how kind, clever,
Google “calling the teacher ‘mom,’” and you will find a deluge of pained or embarrassed faces across various memes. This shared humor is a prime example of transference. Transference is a fundamental principle of psychotherapy, which occurs when a person unconsciously projects attitudes and
In a now-classic scene in Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV for those of you keeping track), pilot Luke Skywalker has one shot to destroy the Death Star. He must fly in a narrow channel and hit a small target. To concentrate, he
The strategies students use to engage with and learn material are crucial in any course. The course may be well organized and delivered brilliantly, but instructors can’t control how students interact with the material outside of class. For years, scientists (and a shout-out to
What if a student was having trouble understanding an assignment, and they asked a smart friend to help them? This person had not taken the class but was able to get the student started on the assignment or at least unpack the instructions a
Learning requires effort and is often difficult, but the exact relationship between learning, effort, and difficulty is complex and often misunderstood by both teachers and students. The misunderstanding can lead both groups to behave in ineffective and even counterproductive ways. In this essay, I
One of the strongest predictors of how easily and well a person will learn a topic is their prior knowledge about it. The more one already knows, the easier it is to learn more. Because of this fact, students often struggle more with introductory courses,
When my son was growing up, my wife and I bought memberships at the local science museum so we could take him there any time we wanted. Like many parents, we wanted him to grow up in an intellectually stimulating environment. No vacuous video games
I recently wrote about the need for faculty to up their game on evidence-based teaching practices. Students are coming to us with a wider range of experience and prior knowledge because of COVID disruptions to learning. Our increased use of evidence-based practices is essential to
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