A  Conversation Starter

In What the Best College Students Do — a book with a title that unfortunately raises more hackles than interest — Ken Bain offers an intriguing summary of the big questions he believes faculty should consider when they think about their teaching:

“…the best educators thought of teaching as anything they might do to help and encourage students to learn. Teaching is engaging students, engineering an environment in which they learn. Equally important, they thought of the creation of that successful teaching and learning environment as an important and serious intellectual (or artistic) act, perhaps even as a kind of scholarship, that required the attention of the best minds in academia. For our subjects, that scholarship centered around four fundamental inquires:

1) What should my students be able to do intellectually, physically, or emotionally as a result of their learning?

2) How can I best help and encourage them to develop those abilities and the habits of the heart and mind to use them?

3) How can my students and I best understand the nature, quality, and progress of their learning?

4) How can I evaluate my efforts to foster that learning?” (Bain 43).

As we continue (or begin) planning for the upcoming semester, perhaps thinking and discussing this passage might stir some interesting dialogue.

What works for you in these lines from Bain? What does not work for you here?

What questions has Bain left out that seem important to you or included that seem like distractions?

What is the relationship between these questions and the work of constructing our syllabi, and designing our lessons and assignments that we are exploring as the semester approaches?

What reaction does this text evoke in you that none of my questions point toward? (Don’t let me trap you in an ill-designed box!).

Please Share Some Thoughts

Feel free to share your ideas by privately responding to this email or, if you wish, volunteering to share your thoughts on our Joyful Teaching Blog.

Or if you do not feel like writing, go for a hallway conversation. Or just sit and think quietly to yourself while stuck in yet another traffic jam on the 15 freeway… sorry… projecting some personal bitterness there.

Following Up on Our Last Conversation Starter:

I received two wonderful responses to my last conversation starter (remember, the one about teaching naked! :). Please check out some thoughts shared by Alketa Wojcik and Mark Stramaglia.