232: Essence and Variation The word “essential” is interesting. It describes that which we cannot do without. Food, water, and oxygen (in the right concentration) is essential to human life. It also describes the fundamental character. When we remove the unimportant or marginal parts of something we are left with its essence; removing anything more Read More
John Dewey wrote “education is not preparation for life, it is life itself.” While this may be true, many students enroll in higher education to be better prepared for the profession they will enter after they graduate. It seems reasonable, then, that educators should take steps to ensure their students can use what they learn Read More
Education is about changing humans. When our students leave our classrooms, we expect they can do things, see things, and think things they could not before the class. If our students leave with their abilities unchanged, then they (and we) have wasted their time and energy and money while there.
Humans are social creatures. Our brains function differently when we are engaged with others compared to when we are engages alone. We have capacity to solve much more complex problems when working together compared to when we work alone, but we also have greater capacity to deceive ourselves. This summer, I finally read Edwin Hutchin’s Cognition Read More
As we return to “normal,” teachers will be building classrooms in which teaching and learning happens in both physical places and online spaces. Until now, most educators have perceived clear boundaries between online teaching and face-to-face teaching. That separation is no longer tenable. For decades, educators have heard “the jobs your students will have do not exist yet.” Until recently that has not been true; as we Read More
Merrill (2002) placed real-word problems at the center of effective teaching. The problems, however, must be judged “interesting, relevant, and engaging” (p. 46) to the lead to learners so they have a sense of caring that was labeled “ownership.” Such problems are also selected so that students understand the problems, care the problem be solved, Read More
209: On Not Being Taught How to Teach I left high school as a 17-year-old (yes, I am old enough that they let me start school a few weeks before my fifth birthday) who knew that he wanted to become a science teacher. My path to my undergraduate as not as circuitous as many, so Read More
What exactly does it mean that “students learn?” For many generations, student learning in classrooms has been focused on their ability to remember information. If students could accurately recall what they were taught for a long time after they were taught it, then we assumed they had learned it well. That concept of learning seems inadequate today. In recent decades, scholars have detailed the Read More
In classrooms, we observe teaching and learning. We expect these two activities are closely and positively related. The more and the better we teach, we reason, the more and the better students will learn. After more than 30 years in classrooms in a range of roles (some which have allowed me to be to proverbial “fly on the wall” who observed teaching at its Read More
Much of my work supporting online teaching and learning is listening to faculty (and students) “complain” about discussions. Students find them to be “hoops” to jump through, and faculty do not spend much time improving them because students do not engage with them in the manner they hope. Emerging learning science is confirming that interaction Read More