That Awkward Moment I Became Irrelevant

If you have ever found yourself asking, “Why don't students see the relevance in what I am teaching them?”, you are not alone. I recently discovered that I had become out-of-touch with what college students find relevant. My purpose in writing this commentary is twofold: (1) to reflect on and improve my own practice, and (2) to encourage my fellow instructors to reflect on their own practice to ensure what they teach is perceived as relevant by college students today.     

Problems and Alternatives

In one of his speeches, Professor Fang Lizhi, member of the Board of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the following. We should attach importance to the graduate students we have trained ourselves. Now that our degrees are equal to those in other countries, we of course should treat them equally without discrimination. Recently, the newspapers have given a scholar who got his doctorate in West Germany wide coverage. We have our own doctors, so why don't we publicize them? Since it will have a very bad influence on students, I hope this kind of publicity will be stopped immediately. I happened to be in Japan at the time. When some Japanese asked me why we made such a fanfare about one who had merely received a doctoral degree [we used more space in this newspaper to cover this doctor than Japan did to report the Japanese chemist's winning of the Nobel prize], I was rendered speechless. Foreign degrees are not acknowledged in Japan; even a degree from Cambridge or Harvard isn't very useful in helping you land a job. Rather, you have to get your degree in a Japanese university—Tokyo University or Kyoto University, for example. This is a question of national pride. However, things in China are the opposite. Foreign doctorates are more welcome. One of my graduate students is now studying in England. I planned to have him study there for two years and then have him return to get his degree in China. But I was thwarted in my plan; the department in charge held that the student would show himself to be a failure should he return without obtaining a degree. Under the circumstances, he has no choice but to stay there and get his degree. Foreign degrees bring high pay and enjoy good repute. When such an atmosphere prevails, how can we expect graduate students to have a correct and healthy view on this matter?     

“Latino night”: Performances of latino/a culture in northwest Ohio

It's something they can relate to. You know, assimilate. They go there, talk in Spanish, not worry about it, drink, have fun, do it all in a language they're accustomed to, or at least with people they feel more comfortable with. I guess that's why a lot of them come Monday nights from these distances. That's what I was trying to explain to Chris. If you have a Latino night it's going to be successful because us as Latinos don't have a lot of options for us to go or places for us to go.     

Jo Handelsman

Note from the Editor

Educator Highlights for CBE-LSE show how professors at different kinds of institutions educate students in life sciences with inspiration and panache. If you have a particularly creative teaching portfolio yourself, or if you wish to nominate an inspiring colleague to be profiled, please e-mail Laura Hoopes at lhoopes@pomona.edu.LH: You are deeply involved with the HHMI Teaching Fellows Program at Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching (Pfund et al., 2009 ), and you''ve coauthored a book about scientific teaching (Handelsman et al., 2006 ). How do you teach people to teach in your summer institutes?Handelsman: The HHMI Graduate Teaching Fellows Program teaches graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to apply theories of learning to classroom practice. The fellows set learning goals and assess whether they''re achieved. It''s theory, then practice.LH: Can you explain a little more about how it works?Handelsman: The program starts with eight weeks of a course, “Teaching Biology” in which the fellows learn about education principles and then practice on each other applying those principles. Then they go on to design their own materials, and finally, in the second semester, use that material in teaching students. In our qualitative and quantitative analysis of their teaching philosophy, we see little change after the first semester. But there is radical improvement after they put their ideas into practice in the second part. People learn by doing.LH: How about a specific example of how the fellows develop materials.Handelsman: There''s a choice of venues, but let''s say one picks the honors biology course. They identify a technical problem, such as explaining Southern, Northern, and Western blotting. Our fellows then develop active-learning materials to address a challenging concept and test them in the classroom, often in multiple sections of a class. They refine and retest them. Another fellow might choose “Microbes Rule,” a course developed by fellows, which teaches about bacteria, viruses, and fungi. That fellow develops learning goals about antibiotic resistance, flu, or contaminated peanut butter, and designs classroom materials to achieve these goals.Open in a separate windowJo Handelsman, HHMI Professor, Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI.LH: Do the teaching fellows find the work difficult?Handelsman: It''s a challenge for them to narrow down to a workable subtopic. We work with them to focus on the learning goals, asking “The students will know and be able to do what at the end of this unit?”LH: Did you learn this method of focusing on goals when you were being trained?Handelsman: No, most of us were never taught to consider goals for learning. So in training our fellows, we direct them to focus on that over and over, and ask how their plans relate to the goals. It''s backward design—think about what you want to achieve, then think about how to get there.LH: Assessment is becoming more important at universities and colleges all over the country. How do you teach the fellows to use it?Handelsman: Students design their own instruments. They develop skills to determine whether their goals are being met. We go over the tools with them repeatedly, identify potential downfalls, let them implement, and then review the results to see if they obtained the information needed to determine whether their teaching worked.LH: What kind of questions do they tend to use for assessment?Handelsman: Exam-type questions are important, whether taken as an examination or in a questionnaire. Videos of student presentations with reviewers who score on effectiveness are also useful. We ask how the fellows know if the students understood the material, and how the evidence relates to each of their learning goals.LH: How do they evaluate and incorporate input from past assessment?Handelsman: Before using an instrument for assessment, the fellows develop a rubric to score the quality of the answers. Often they decide to share this rubric with the students. They want to show the students what goal the assessment is addressing, what is an adequate answer, what is an outstanding answer. Then they discuss with their peers how to use this feedback to improve their teaching.LH: I''ve heard faculty members at other places saying that they do lots of assessment but don''t know what to do with it after they are forced to collect the information.Handelsman: I''d suggest that they do less and use it more! Not using assessment results is like designing a new experiment but ignoring your earlier results. If we have the information to improve our teaching, we should use it.LH: A lot of interviews for faculty positions ask for a teaching philosophy. It sounds like your fellows are well-positioned to answer these questions.Handelsman: Yes, they have to write their teaching philosophy several times, discuss it with the other fellows, and rewrite. The fellows have been very successful in obtaining positions.LH: Have you had undergraduate research students?Handelsman: Yes, it''s one of the most important academic activities in which students take part—anything hands-on is good, but undergraduate research is the best because it incorporates inquiry, discovery, real scientific processes. It plays into curiosity. It''s such a rewarding process to watch a student in the research lab! It''s a powerful thing to see them learn and grow into scientists over the course of a semester or two.LH: What motivated you to take on undergraduate research students at the start?Handelsman: I started undergraduate research myself in my first year of college—I walked into a lab and asked to do experiments. The difference between doing research and reading about it is so dramatic. I''ve always assumed that part of the structure of an academic lab is undergraduate involvement. Interestingly, I sometimes give the undergraduates riskier projects than the graduate students, who have more to lose if their projects fail.LH: Thanks for sharing your insights into teaching with CBE-LSE.     

Abstract at the Least: (Reviews of Databased Studies of a Whimsical Nature)

I don't know anyone for whom time isn't a problem—either there is not enough of it or there is too much. We're never satisfied with our punctuality, rate of performance, meeting of deadlines, et cetera. And so it makes sense that time is also a part of performance problems. In the recent article, “Development of Time Concepts: Differentiating Clock and Calendar from Apparent Durations,” Alida Spaans Westman looks at how we acquire time concepts, theorizes about how they are related to perception, and tests how resistant they are to influence from stress. If you have time it might be worthwhile reading.     

Common Arguments about the Strengths and Limitations of Home Schooling

I've always wanted to use drama methods in my sophomore lit class, but I don't know where to start

History is full of dramatic events, but how can I get teenagers to willingly take on roles and act things out?

Everything I read tells me that involving students in learning through drama is effective and enjoyable, but nothing tells me how to do it     

A Sticky Business? Exploring the “and” in Teaching and Learning

This article takes as its focus the “and” in discourses of teaching and learning. Drawing upon the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I argue that the “and” signifies a complex, sticky relationship between teaching and learning, and that we can radicalise our conception of “and” to bring forward a range of different discourses. The argument suggests that those critiques of discourses of teaching and learning which argue for an alternative discourse of pedagogy can be supplemented by the radicalising of the “and”. I am therefore proposing the possibility for different forms of immanent and transcendental critique in relation to contemporary debates about teaching and learning. And that there is significance in the apparently insignificant?…

In real life people fumble their words and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what people say. I find that kind of speech fascinating but it seems writers never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page. (Christopher Guest, Theatre Director)     

Keeping excitement in teaching

It is imperative for those of us who teach to find ways to stay renewed and refreshed over the long term. There are at least five ways through which most of us can find new energy and excitement in our teaching. One is to focus more genuinely on our students and learn more about them as persons and as colleagues- and to listen more carefully to what they say. Another is to inform them of the important objectives of a course and allow students to assume more of the responsibility for learning. A third tip is to use a greater variety of teaching methods, particularly ones that get students more actively involved in learning. Two additional ways to add excitement to teaching are to teach new courses and to plan periodic activities away from teaching. As John Gardner has recently stated so eloquently, it is our faith in human possibilities that is the generative element in such activities as leading, teaching, and guiding students.His office offers a wide range of instructional and professional services for faculty and academic administrators in the University's thirteen schools and colleges.     

ORDER AND CONTENT OF THE BIBLICAL COURSES IN A COLLEGE CURRICULUM∗

The man is a blue collar worker. He tells the story of his nine year old daughter. She said that the only thing she really wanted for Christmas was a pair of Vidal Sassoon Jeans. He explained to her that they really weren't wealthy enough to afford $40 jeans. Maybe Levis would do. “Forget it,” she said. “If I can't have what I want, I don't want anything.”

The man said that they saved up and got her the Sassoon jeans for Christmas. “But you know,” he mused, “she judges the others in her class on what kind of designer jeans they have. They form cliques based on their clothes. It's their way of being somebody, being acceptable, being ‘in’.”     

Be Ready To Change——A New Interpretation of “Who Moved My Cheese”

to state the theme that"sometimes,things change and they are never the same again,this looks like one of those times.That's life,Life move on,and so should we"Dr Spencer Johnson depict a story about change in a maze where four amusing characters look for"cheese"—cheese being a metaphor for what we want to have in life,whether it is a job,a relationship,money,a big house,freedom,health,recognition spiritual peace,or even an activity like jogging or golf.Each of us has our own idea of what cheese is,and we pursue it because we believe it makes us happy.If we get it,we often become attached to it.And if we lose it,or it’s taken away,it can be traumatic The maze in the story represents where you spend time looking for what you want.It can be the organization you work in,the community you live in,or the relationship you have in your life.     

From Verona to Ramallah: Living in a State of Emergency

I have spent much of the last two years working in a school in Ramallah, Palestine, supporting new teachers of English. I worked in the classroom, in partnership, sharing the planning and teaching of lessons. This essay is about exploring what happens to texts in a specific classroom context, about how a particularly English text, Romeo and Juliet, was interrogated and remade by young people in a class I taught with Victoria, a young American in her first year of teaching, and about how the study of this fictive text enabled them to explore fundamental questions of identity and difference. Victoria and I, foreigners in Palestine, taught English and shared a common language with the students. This, and the technology available to us, might seem to promise easy communication but this is an illusion, for these things cannot transcend the differences between us – differences that are part of the human condition and have to be acknowledged and embraced if there is to be any meaningful dialogue between us. The essay is therefore also an exploration of the possibilities for communication between us, largely through the literature we read and about the insights we provide for each other in the course of our talk and activities about the text.     

Education,Despair and Morality: A Reply to Roberts

In a recent thought‐provoking piece, Peter Roberts argues against the central role of happiness as a guiding concept in education, and argues for more attention to be paid to despair. This does not mean cultivating despair in young people, but allowing them to make sense of their own natural occasional despair, as well as the despair of others. I agree with Roberts about happiness, and about the need for more attention to despair, but I argue that focusing too much on despair is dangerous without paying simultaneous attention to goodness. Roberts argues that students must be helped to face the despair born of the realisation that (i) we can never be sure of the moral grounds on which our actions are based, (ii) we can never fully know ourselves, and that (iii) education should make us more appreciative of what we don't know. I argue against all three claims: (i) there are some moral truths that we can know; (ii) we can know enough of ourselves in certain contexts; (iii) education should not only teach intellectual humility, it should also give us confidence in appreciating the sources of meaning that are ordinarily available, e.g. personal relationships. The paper concludes with a response to the objection (perhaps by Roberts, as well as by liberals) that my position is little more than old‐fashioned moralism and conservatism.     

以学生为中心推进地方高校一流课程教学的若干思考

以学生为中心推进地方高校一流课程教学,在教育教学思想上,要着力解决相互关联的三个问题:首先是“为谁教”与“为谁学”的问题,协同育人,是课程教学的定位原则;育人渗透,是课程教学的难点之处;师范示范,是课程教学的主体特征。其次在“教什么”与“学什么”的问题上,注重内外兼修,解决学习的广度问题;注重学以致用,解决学习精度问题;注重因材施教,解决学习难度问题。最后需处理“怎么教”与“怎么学”的问题,以培育学生学习主动性、学习个性化、学习的创造性为目的,构建师生学习共同体,有效运用现代教育技术,切实改进教学评价方式。     

Designing a Pedagogy of Inquiry in Teacher Education: Moving from resistance to listening

This paper reports a study of preservice teachers who investigated their own teaching during a field-based component of a mathematics education methods course. The course was designed to engage the preservice teachers in both mathematical and pedagogical inquiry. Analysis of video recordings of course discussions, audiotaped interviews with preservice teachers, audiotaped discussions of instructor's planning meetings, and copies of the instructor's and preservice teachers' journals identified two critical incidents that depict students' resistance to the course directions. Analysis of these critical incidents suggests that prospective teachers' interactions with their students can become the mirror through which we can investigate their interactions with us, as teacher educators, and with our course activities. In this way we might reframe the problem of resistance to one of listening—listening to the students, to each other, and to ourselves.     

《历史与社会》学科生活化教学探讨

作为一门实用性很强的综合学科,《历史与社会》与我们的社会生活联系密切。要学习好《历史与社会》,也只有在学习中融入社会生活,才能在实践中有效利用所学的知识,学以致用。本文以《历史与社会》学科的生活化教学为探讨主题,提出在民主平等的师生关系的基础上,从课前深入生活、课堂提炼素材、课外实践探究等方面进行教学探索,力求理论联系实际,最终达到深入生活、融入社会、学以致用的最佳教学目标。     

例行事务如火烧眉睫（对话篇）

在冲击波英语教育培训集团,前来咨询的客人多如牛毛．Simmy算了一次,大大小小每天平均下来有10～20个面对面的询问过程,经由电话沟通的可多达每天40通。于是,他做出了一个非常艰难的决定：必须的!把沟通语言给练利索了!下面．我们来看看Simmy是如何分类记录这些沟通档案的。询问课程A：你好,听说你们提供办公室英语课程？B：是的．没错。你准备报名参加其中一种办公室英语课程吗？A：哦,但我要知道我能够从此课程中真正学到些什么。B：好的,让我给你看看我们的介绍手册……通过学习这一课程,你将能够学会很多与办公室业务有关的词汇,能够记录电话信息,并可以训练你读写备忘录、电子邮件和传真的能力。A：太好了!那我现在就报名。     

Rethinking Creative Teaching and Teaching as Research: Mapping the Critical Phases That Mark Times of Change and Choosing as Learners and Teachers of Music

This article describes the use of a visual-based construct elicitation tool developed from the use of critical incident charting for the purpose of reflecting on our creative learning journeys either at significant points as music learners in childhood, in adult life, or as preservice or experienced teachers. In this article, I introduce diverse applications of this reflective tool called “Rivers of Musical Experience” that can help us to represent, construct, and reconstruct significant milestones or significant events in our creative learning journeys. It also considers what we can learn from each other's reflections on and about our learning journeys that enable us to reflect on the assumptions underpinning our own practice. In this article, by creative teaching or teaching for creativity, I mean creating a positive learning environment in which both teachers and students can take risks, engage in imaginative activity, and do things differently.     

Teaching physics to prospective elementary teachers: Bridging gaps or widening chasms

The education of prospective Elementary and Early Childhood (E&EC) teachers to teach science has been an on-going challenge for science teacher educators. Accordingly, a course in physical science was planned and implemented especially for prospective E&EC teachers. The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of the enacted curriculum and about the forces which constrained its evolution. Miller, the teacher of the course, had no prior experience in teaching prospective E&EC teachers and many of his experiences as a university level teacher were based on his teaching of physics majors. These experiences shaped his approach to teaching the course as did his years as a basketball coach. Miller was an expert in physics and constructed his role as teaching students significant scientific truths. Miller saw the purpose of the course as being to educate the students in science, not to prepare them to teach science. He was unwilling to address the goals of students that were oriented strongly toward becoming better teachers. The beliefs of the teacher constrained the enacted curriculum to an extent that gaps between the needs of students and the enacted curriculum were wider at the end of the course than they were at the beginning. Armstrong College In my opinion I think I failed completely, but I am quite happy with what I am trying to do. I just don't think I executed it well. So I was pretty unhappy with the whole experience in terms of the results, but I was not unhappy with the experience in terms of whether it was worth doing. I think it is important in science to develop free-thinking and being able to come to conclusions. Science is being able to reflect on the human condition, and being able to think about things you don't know about. (Miller)     

The Teaching Artist in New Jersey: Full Metaphor Jacket

A poetry TA articulates the heart of his work for friends who don't quite get it, and for us, who do.