Last night in our GRAD-602 class, we explored the question of how important is it to our “teaching” that we understand something about how people “learn”. Jeff Nugent led this class and had students at their tables first develop their beliefs about learning, and then mapped them on our wall:
As Enoch Hale, Jeff and I debriefed the class this morning, we realized that our podcast today might be an opportunity to make explicit some of the underlying aspects of GRAD-602. Our design hopes to help perspective faculty first develop a self identity as a teacher, surface their beliefs and begin to critically question them, and equally important, recognize that our use of discourse is beginning to build a practice of seeing each other as a resource within a community of practice.
Our students are, I think, typical of new faculty – they want McKeachie’s Teaching Tips or the one page handout of best practices. What they have not yet begun to see is that teaching is a lifelong journey, and our fellow colleagues are some of our best resources. Our practice of weekly debriefs of our class gives us an opportunity to think metacognitively about our teaching, which translates into concrete actions to take in future classes.
So … an interesting discussion this morning. Give a listen, and use the comment feature to add to the conversation!
.