The Teacher Training Program for Doctoral Candidates in History at the University of Wisconsin

Abstract

One question of interdisciplinary education is how to encourage students to draw connections between disciplines and to engage in critical thinking. The authors developed a team-taught interdisciplinary course examining the history and literature of modern revolutions. The first time the course was given, students had difficulty making interdisciplinary connections and did not critically re-examine their assumptions. The authors restructured the course, re-thinking its emphasis, procedures, texts, and assignments, with substantial positive results. They also learned that teachers need to reassess their own ideology and teaching strategies to make interdisciplinary education effective.     

Personal Backgrounds of Effective Teaching

Planning time for giving students effective feedback is an important and challenging aspect of the teaching and learning process. In our article we describe and analyze how we engage students as partners in providing formative feedback in time for students to modify their own thinking or behavior to improve learning. We have found ways to provide formative feedback more frequently and to involve students in providing effective formative feedback to each other. The four techniques we describe are the following: a) three-color group quiz with feedback on product, process, and progress; b) midterm student conferencing; c) shared revision of student generated questions and statements; and d) timely feedback using collaborative assignment blogs. These techniques give feedback in time for revisions to occur, provide scaffolding for learners, inform instruction, and most importantly, involve students as partners in assessment. These pedagogical strategies show that the resulting benefits of improved instruction, enhanced student learning, and better student products are worth the time and effort and contribute to a productive classroom climate where the focus is on learning more than on grading. Formative feedback involving students as partners is a key strategy to enhance the teaching and learning process.     

Testing Programs and Liberal Studies

Abstract. Do sustained induction programs increase participants' teaching efficacy? Data from a qualitative case study of new college faculty involved in a learning community at a small liberal arts college were compared with data from a college-sponsored mentoring project involving first-year teachers from five suburban school districts. Regardless of whether participants taught K-12 or in collegiate classrooms, two dominant themes emerged from first-year narratives: students were likely to overtly challenge the authority of new teachers, and there was a profound difference between novices' own experiences as students and those of the students now in their classrooms.     

Students' Views of Teaching

Abstract

Much To Do About Writing: Teaching and Assessing Writing By Edward M. White San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985, 304 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by David Taylor

A Poignant, Colorful Portrait: Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences By Lewis A. Coser New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984, xviii + 351 pages, $25.00. Reviewed by R. W. Franklin     

Effects of test format on listener response

A report of the evaluation of various test forms commonly employed in speech reception measurement with a view toward determination of non‐chance response set.     

General Media and Media-Related

Henry Currall (ed.) Phonograph Record Libraries: Their Organization and Practice (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1971 —price not known)

Jonathon Miller's Marshall McLuhan (New York: Viking Press “Modern Masters” series, 1971—$1.75, paper)     

Mass Media

Robert C. Toll's On with the Show: The First Century of Show Business in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976---$19.95)

Edwin Fisher, et al., eds. The Art in Cartooning: Seventy-five Years of American Magazine Cartoons (New York : Scribner's, 1975---$14.95)

Vaughncille Molden's Telecommunications and Black Americans: A Survey of Ownership, Participation and Control (Center for Development Technology and Program in Technology and Human Affairs, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. 63130-48.50, paper)

Working Papers in Culture and Communication (Department of Anthropology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. 19122-- $2.00, paper)