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March, 2008

The Audio Teaching Professor - March, 2008 - Full Issue MP3
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Critical Pedagogy: Challenges and Concerns
It’s not always easy to differentiate between critical pedagogy, active learning, and the learner- or learning-centered approaches. Each is predicated on the notion of student engagement and proposes involvement via such strategies as collaborative and cooperative learning and problem-based learning. All recommend a move away from lecturing. Critical pedagogy is the most extreme of the three and has some unique characteristics.

Senior Faculty and Teaching Effectiveness
Now that I’m one of those “senior” faculty, I hear a lot of digs about faculty who need to retire … deadwood, still standing but hopefully about to topple. The belief that the teaching effectiveness of most “seniors” declines is strong and persistent. Is it true or yet another one of those academic myths?

Empowering Students through Choice
By Denise D. Knight, SUNY Cortland, NY
College teachers who support writing across the curriculum sometimes wonder how to craft assignments that intellectually challenge students while at the same time investing students in the writing process. So often, students view writing as a chore rather than an opportunity. That perception can be changed by giving students some choice about how to fulfill their writing requirements. Rather than simply imposing our preferences on students, this approach enables them to assess their own strengths and interests, to make decisions accordingly, and to be accountable for the choices they make. Faculty benefit because they are no longer required to devise specific writing topics each semester. That responsibility now belongs to the students.

Teaching vs. Research: Finally, a New Chapter
The argument persists: teaching and research are complementary—each in some synergistic way builds on and supports the other. Standing against the argument is an impressive, ever-growing array of studies that consistently fail to show any linkage between teaching effectiveness and research productivity. Because administrators have a vested interest in faculty being able to do both well, the two sides continue to exchange arguments and accusations in a debate that has grown old, tired, and terribly nonproductive.

How Much Control for How Much Learning?
For quite some time now I’ve been interested in a widely held set of assumptions faculty make about the need to assert control at the beginning of a course. The argument goes something like this: When a course starts, the teacher needs to set the rules and clearly establish who’s in charge. If the course goes well, meaning students abide by the rules and do not challenge the teacher’s authority, then the teacher can gradually ease up and be a bit looser about the rules.

On CDs That Skip and Papers with Editing Mistakes
By Noralyn Masselink, SUNY Cortland - MASSELINKN@cortland.edu
“How many of you would keep listening to a CD—even of your favorite band—if the CD regularly skipped?” That’s the question I ask my students. Although the question keeps evolving (and now that students have abandoned CDs for iPods, I may have to come up with another analogy), my point doesn’t change.

Talk about Teaching That Benefits Beginners and Those Who Mentor Them
Beginning college teachers benefit when they have an instructional mentor. That fact is well established; as is the fact that mentoring benefits those who mentor. The influx of new faculty over the past few years has caused mentoring programs to flourish. All kinds of activities have been proposed so that mentors and mentees can spend their time together profitably. Addressed less often are those instructional topics particularly beneficial for the experienced and less-experienced teachers to address. Here’s a list of possibilities.

The Teaching Professor Blog
Maybe you saw the note in the last couple of issues—we’ve started a Teaching Professor Blog. Find it at http://teachingprofessor.blogspot.com

Undergraduate Research Opportunities
Any number of national reports and prominent higher education organizations have called for more research opportunities for undergraduates. The authors of the study referenced below wondered if those calls were being heeded. More specifically, they wondered how the opportunities compared across the different types of institutions.

Guiding Student Reflection
When learners reflect, they thoughtfully consider (or reconsider) an experience. If the reflection is critical, it challenges the customary ways of understanding or explaining an experience. Critical reflection questions meanings and looks at assumptions. The opportunity to reflect on experiences develops critical thinking skills and helps students to learn things for themselves.

Stress Relief for Teachers: A Little Black Book
By Bob Eierman, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
It’s mid-November and the weather is turning cold. The same can be said about the attitudes of my students as well as some colleagues. We have all been riding the academic roller coaster for more than 11 weeks, and in most semesters I am stressed and straining to stay civil by this point.