Teaching for Inner Growth
By Paul T. Corrigan, Southeastern University, FL
I aim to influence my students toward academic growth and inner growth. I want them to develop in terms of what they know and can do and in terms of who they are, how they live, and how they relate to others. This raises ethical issues. Perhaps I should just teach content and skills. And then, if I want my students to grow as persons, simply hope that goodness rubs off on them in the learning process.A Learner-Centered Approach Affects Motivation in One Course
Most of the time research evidence grows by bits and pieces—not all at once, and the evidence documenting the effectiveness of learner-centered approaches is no exception. It continues to accumulate, as illustrated by this study time. It occurred in a third-year pharmacotherapy course in a doctor of pharmacy program.Does Writing Questions Improve Question Quality?
Let’s detail the scenario a bit more completely: it was a senior-level cell biology course. Before lab sessions, students completed a prelab assignment for which they were instructed to write “three specific, concrete questions that arose as they read the laboratory exercise and thought about the upcoming experiments.” (p. 132) Students submitted the questions before each of eight lab sessions. Researchers were interested in three questions about the student questions: 1) what types of questions did the student ask? 2) did the type or level of questions change over time? and 3) was the quality of the questions or the degree of improvement related to academic performance in the class? 2010 McGraw-Hill and Magna Publications Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning
The 2010 McGraw-Hill and Magna Publications Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning Award was given at The Teaching Professor Conference, May 21-23. A review committee composed of editors of pedagogical periodicals and faculty developers selected the winning article and two finalists. Here are the highlights from all three.Defining and Implementing Inquiry Instruction
We do have lots of trouble with terminology in higher education. Ideas become popular without ever being clearly defined or without practitioners being aware of or using proposed definitions. There are many examples, but the work highlighted here looked at how faculty members teaching undergraduate science courses defined inquiry-based instruction and how they described “the challenges, constraints, and opportunities” associated with teaching inquiry-based labs. (p. 784)The Truly Heroic
Teaching is not about charismatically charged individuals using the sheer force of their characters and personalities to wreak lifelong transformations in students lives. It’s about finding ways to promote the day-to-day, incremental gains that students make as they try to understand ideas, grasp concepts, assimilate knowledge and develop new skills. Student Groups: How Dysfunctional?
Despite repeated surveys indicating that employers and recruiters place high value on the ability to work productively with others, not all faculty endorse group work or use it regularly in their courses. They worry that the groups don’t take the tasks all that seriously, that the information exchanged within groups isn’t always accurate, that groups handle conflict poorly, and that some group members let others in the group do their work. Three Strategies for Teaching When the Content is Not Well Known
By Leah Calvert and Michelle Sobolak, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
In the wake of budget cuts and other financial constraints, the reality of teaching liberal studies requirements outside of one’s department or major area of expertise is becoming more common. As new faculty, we were assigned to teach two required, liberal studies courses containing content beyond our areas of expertise.
No comments:
Post a Comment