- Think of teaching not just as a means of dispensing knowledge of the subject, but as a kind of
research: research into the ways in which your students actually learn (and fail to learn) this material.
How and what are they actually learning? What are they missing? Where does their grasp of the material break
down? How can you get answers to these questions?
- Imagine a course that does not just supply answers to questions that scholars have already asked, but
one that is about asking questions. What is a good question in your field? How do these questions come about? How
do our efforts to answer one of these questions lead us to identify others? What forms do these efforts take?
- In other words, imagine a course that creates a frame of reference in which students learn to ask interesting questions
and develop appropriate methods/strategies for answering them.
- Rather than asking students directly to do what you hope they will eventually be able to do, and then telling them
how they got it wrong, think of what students need to know or practice before they can meet your expectations for a really
good piece of writing or research. Assign that work first. In order to write a particular kind of paper, for example, do
they need to learn how to read the background material, to synthesize perspectives, to analyze finished writing of that type,
to learn peculiar conventions in your discipline?
- Collectively your students know more, notice more, and can figure out more (are, in some respects, potentially smarter)
than any individual in the class. How can you utilize that collective intelligence, in collaborative work and interaction?
- Construct a "map" of language use in one of your courses. In the course as a whole and in particular dimensions
(such as discussion sessions, assignments, or labs) who is speaking, listening, writing, and reading? What forms do these uses
of language take? To what extent are students actively engaged in them (rather than, for example, writing simply to record
lecture material--practicing stenography)? Are there ways of including student writing, reading, speaking, and listening more
actively and interactively, or of connecting these uses of language more productively (by asking students to write down discussion
questions before class, for example, to enrich their participation)?
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