Constant evolution is critical
to excellent teaching
Teaching is perhaps the broadest and deepest form of scholarship. Excellent
teachers make a difference in the lives of their students by making content
come alive and by assisting students to take responsibility for their own
learning, to connect the content of one discipline to other disciplines
and to the "real world," in essence to become lifelong learners
and problem-solvers.
Excellent teaching comes in many guises. From the distillation of a concept
and its linkages to other ideas in the scintillating lecture that leaves
each student hungering to explore, to the Socratic questioning that empowers
deeper thought and analysis to the devil's advocacy that forces reconception
of received wisdom, to the philosophical discussions over coffee that humanize
and extend the teacher/scholar relationship, to advising and participating
actively in student organizations, to modeling the life of the mind, to
convincing colleagues to evaluate curricular goals and objectives, the true
teacher/ scholar wears many hats. An excellent teacher mentors students,
helping them find their own best vocation that uses their special talents
to make a difference in the world. An excellent teacher believes and affirms
in her teaching that all students can learn and is disappointed when all
do not. An excellent teacher attempts many different styles of teaching,
adapting to the class, knowing and assessing their backgrounds and interests,
challenging each of them to develop to their full potential, encouraging
their involvement with the material. An excellent teacher creates an atmosphere
simultaneously welcoming and challenging to all her students by inviting
all her students to reach beyond the text, to extend their learning, to
apply it in new contexts, to envision the future.
An excellent teacher is an involved learner and scholar, not just in the
narrow sense of the teacher's own discovery scholarship (read research),
but also in the broader sense of constant renewal of the joy of discovery,
of relating the subject at hand to other contexts, of awareness of the scholarly
work on how people learn. An excellent teacher integrates research into
her teaching by incorporating new data and theories, by contrasting current
controversies within a discipline, by involving students in reading and
critiquing current research findings, by helping students develop the critical
analytical skills to evaluate ongoing research agendas. Integration of research
in teaching requires knowledge of unanswered questions at the boundaries
of the discipline's paradigm. It necessitates questioning the current paradigm,
seeing with the new eyes of a novice. Excellent teachers find ways to help
students appreciate the historical development of a field and the social
and political context of the questions asked within a discipline, the boundaries
and types of evidence that are acceptable in support of theory. An excellent
teacher helps students develop the discernment to draw conclusions from
evidence, to trust their own conclusions and judgment and to persuade others
of the justification of their analysis. Even more important, an excellent
teacher assists students to understand how research is applied to other
contexts.
An excellent science teacher/scholar instills in students the values of
the science enterprise, introducing them to the process of investigation,
the ends for which we as scientists work and the rules that guide our translation
of means to ends. Excellent teachers encourage active, inquiry-based learning,
not mere passive acquisition of facts and databases of disciplines. The
three Ps approach to teaching, (problem posing, problem probing and persuasion)
captures the essence of what I mean by active learning. An active learner
questions authority, i.e. questions the textbook as well as the teacher,
never accepting on faith, but convincing and persuading herself through
reasoned analysis. An excellent teacher is ever becoming, evolving; she
never stands still, satisfied with last year's notes and last year's strategies.
Through reflective judgment, by evaluating successes and failures in past
classes and pedagogies, assessing the impact of each adaptation in the crucible
of her environments, she selects for improvement continuously.
An excellent teacher does not have to reinvent the wheel, because she is
aware of alternative ways of teaching a discipline; she studies how others
teach, she is aware of new materials, simulations and technologies that
enhance teaching. An excellent teacher models learning by sharing approaches
to tackling new problems and questions, by analyzing evidence aloud, by
showing why she thinks a theory or piece of evidence is valid, by speculating
on alternative approaches to answering a question. An excellent teacher
helps her students develop tools for continued learning; she teaches them
to write clearly and persuasively, to know their audience and adapt their
language and syntax to the situation, for as someone once declared, writing
is thinking how do I know what I think until I write it down. She teaches
them to evaluate and assess their own learning, for ultimately it is not
the judgment of external agencies that is of the most value, but one's own.
An excellent teacher understands students: their needs, their rhythms, their
goals. She urges them to ever greater striving without setting them against
one another in destructive competition. She engenders collaboration, modeling
and encouraging them to teach one another, to develop a mastery of expertise
and share it. She is sensitive to the feelings and emotions of individual
students and to the class as a whole organism. She's an engineer who can
raise and lower the class thermostat with a question, an exercise or the
lift of an eyebrow. She motivates and inspires.
Every day I hope to be a little more like her.
Pat Marsteller is a senior lecturer in the biology department and director
of the Hughes Programs in Biology.
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