Which teaching method is right for me, my students, and the courses I teach?
There is an erroneous but commonly held belief that beginning students need to know a lot before they can be allowed to practice thinking in the discipline. This belief is partly responsible for... Click for more
There is an erroneous but commonly held belief that beginning students need to know a lot before they can be allowed to practice thinking in the discipline. This belief is partly responsible for the persistence of large intro lecture courses (along with revenue, of course). As beginners to your discipline, students need both relevant information and lots of direct practice analyzing it and using it. As you look for a teaching strategy that complements your discipline, your course material and your personality, keep in mind that design and planning begin with an understanding of where the student is in his/her intellectual development and proceeds from there. We have no choice but to teach the students that are actually in our classrooms, not those that we wish we had, or those that we had at the last place we taught. Beginners in particular benefit from an inductive learning process based in concrete experiences that provide a context for understanding abstract theories and concepts. This is the key principle behind the notions of "active learning" and "student-centered instruction." Student-to-student interactions (cooperative, collaborative, and team-based learning) are highly complementary to a hands-on, problem-solving approach to learning. Top-down, deductive, "theory-first" models are more likely to be successful with advanced and graduate students, who have already made a mature, conscious decision to work in your discipline. Click for less
