HR: 13:40h
AN: ED13F-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Integrating Science and Pedagogy Breaks our Unreflective Habit of Teaching
AU: * McManus, D A
EM: mcmanus@ocean.washington.edu
AB: Almost no faculty, particularly at research universities, were taught to teach. We merely continued the habit of teaching that we experienced as student learners, with little thought to assumptions and goals underlying the habit. Until the integration of science and pedagogy, this habit had rarely undergone broad critical examination. Rather, it had been tacitly accepted as "common sense," and reasonably so, when we neglected to examine it. It was treated as a "force of nature." Now we use the results of research in pedagogy and the science of learning to erect new educational assumptions and goals. The following are some contrasts of new and old assumptions and goals: Assumptions about education: The process of student learning is as important as the content taught; rather than only the content taught being important. Learning is a dynamic process of restructuring, rather than merely a process of accumulation. Students enter class with a perceptual framework intact, rather than with "empty" minds. Most students are different from the professor, rather than being like the professor. Educational goals: The professor creates a learning environment for the students, rather than transfers information to the students. Students develop skills in constructing and using knowledge, rather than accumulate knowledge. To apply these new assumptions and goals in the classroom is to break an old habit. To break a habit this hoary is difficult and risky. It requires of us more than learning other teaching methods, new methods of assessing results, and new responsibilities as a teacher. It means internalizing these new assumptions and goals. It means entering a different world of education that places the greatest importance on what the students learn, what they take away from the class, rather than on what the professor teaches, what he or she puts into the class. We learn to apply to our teaching the risk acceptance, feedback, reflection, adaptation, creativity, and partnership that make our research a joyful success, and by so doing we attain a similar joy of achievement in our teaching.
DE: 0800 EDUCATION
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 6600 PUBLIC ISSUES
DE: 6699 General or miscellaneous
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005