Departments

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pedagogy

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    5/22/2023

    "Return to Rigor" Isn't the Answer to Restoring Student Engagement

    by Kevin Gannon

    A post-COVID reaction to the improvisations made on grades, schedules and deadlines supposes that students are suffering from too much flexibility, but a singular focus on rigor won't address the causes of disengagment. 

  • 5/21/2023

    Forget "Finding Forrester"—Our Best Teaching Can Be Ordinary

    by Elizabeth Stice

    Hollywood loves to tell the stories of singularly brilliant students pushed to greatness by similarly singular mentors with unconventional methods and unaccommodating personalities. This ideal won't help anyone teach the real students in their classrooms. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    10/26/2022

    Disrupt the March of "Disruptive Innovation"

    by Kevin Gannon

    The economy of innovation and publicity in higher education often rewards people who claim credit for ideas over the people who work to develop, test, and implement them. Academia needs a collaborative model of innovation. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    10/11/2022

    We Need to Rethink the "Weed-Out" Course

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    The presumption that a large percentage of students should flunk an introductory-level science course as a necessary safeguard of "rigor" is outdated gatekeeping. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    9/12/2022

    Should You Cold-Call on Your Students?

    Psychology researchers suggest that the stress of being called on at random can fall more heavily on female students. Are there ways to build participation and accountability into classes without stressing students out? 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/9/2022

    Advanced Placement is Failing Students By Incentivizing Teaching-to-the-Test

    by Annie Abrams

    Initially rooted in an effort to coordinate the curricula of a handful of elite prep schools and Ivy League colleges, the Advanced Placement program has gradually shifted from skepticism of mass testing to resemble a test-prep program disguised as curriculum. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    1/25/2022

    Why *Did* the Chicken Cross the Road?

    by John Warner

    A recent viral Twitter thread sparked a reflection on how to cultivate critical thinking and how to encourage students to transfer it from one context as a durable and portable skill. 

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    11/3/2021

    The Purpose of "Purposeful Ignorance"

    by R. Raoul Meyer

    How can effective teaching proceed from a position of ignorance? By strategically modeling a lack of knowledge as a starting point for inquiry.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education

    Teaching: More Pandemic-Driven Innovations Professors Like

    "The themes running through all of these innovations are flexibility and engagement: The more ways in which people can participate in the classroom, contribute to discussions, and share their ideas, readers found, the more learning improves."

  • SOURCE: Guardian (UK)
    5-6-13

    Lee Donaghy: Writing Like a Historian -- Developing Students' Writing Skills

    Lee Donaghy is an assistant principal at a secondary school in Birmingham in the United Kingdom."Why are we doing English in history, sir?" came the question as I asked my year 9 history class what kind of word disarmament was. Having anticipated this kind of reaction I had an answer prepared: "Do we only use language in English lessons?"The question was anticipated because I have heard it from other classes, and indeed other teachers, since I began to include an explicit focus on language development in my history lessons 18 months ago. And the question goes to the heart of what I believe is a fundamental reason for the attainment gap between children eligible for free school meals and their non-free school meal counterparts in Britain; the misalignment of these pupils' language use with that which is needed for academic success and the need for teachers to explicitly address this misalignment in their teaching.