Skip to main content

Talking about teaching

In a recent post, Derek Bruff raises an issue that has often nagged at me when reading articles or watching presentations about teaching and pedagogy:
...one of the principles I attempted to uphold when writing my book was that everyone’s teaching context is different–different students, different disciplines, different institutions, different teaching styles and experiences.  I’m interested in helping instructors think more intentionally about their teaching choices, exploring the pros and cons of choices both traditional and innovative.  So while I may be more excited myself about smart phone systems, I always encourage instructors to select technologies and teaching practices that make the most sense in their particular teaching contexts.
As Bruff points out, every teaching context is different. Even when the contexts seem quite similar, different teachers may have different ideas about what will work 'best' for their students. Unfortunately, I often encounter people who forget this and instead seem to believe that everyone should do things the same way that they do them. Although I know these people are well-intentioned, I am generally a bit put off when I encounter someone telling me the 'right' way to implement a particular teaching innovation. It's one thing to point out that doing things a certain way has specific pedagogical benefits; it's another to judge teachers who choose to do things a different way. A good example is using clickers for peer instruction - I certainly believe that it's better for my students to have them grapple with well-designed peer instruction exercises. But I would never suggest that someone who 'only' uses clickers to check basic understanding of concepts is doing something wrong (and Bruff isn't just being modest in the quote above - I think he does an excellent job in his book of providing options without any judgment).

When teachers find something that works for their students, especially if that something is relatively innovative, it's easy to feel like everyone else should do the same thing. But part of good teaching is also figuring out what works for your students, what is comfortable for you, and recognizing that whatever that is, it may not be the same as what works for someone else.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Dr. Sanford AranoffMarch 11, 2010 at 5:15 AM

    Here is what works for my students. We teachers must understand how students think and build from there stressing the basic principles and logic. See "Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better" on amazon.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

This is about getting through, not re-inventing your course

As someone who has worked hard to build a lot of interactivity into my courses, I have never been interested in teaching fully online courses, in part because I have felt that the level of engaged interaction could never match that of a face-to-face class (not that there aren't some exceptional online courses out there; I just have a strong preference for the in-person connection). But the current situation is not really about building online courses that are 'just as good' as our face-to-face courses; it is about getting through this particular moment without compromising our students' learning too much. So if you are used to a lot of interaction in your F2F class, here are some options for adapting that interaction for a virtual environment: [NOTE: SDSU is a Zoom/mostly Blackboard campus so that's how I've written this but I am pretty sure that other systems have similar functionality] If you use clickers in class to break up what is otherwise mostly lect...
2 comments
Read more

Designing effective courses means thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order)

I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare  for the possibility of still teaching remotely. Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed ...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...
Post a Comment
Read more