Posts Tagged ‘pedagogical reflection’
May 1 - It’s Time to Face What Isn’t Working in Our Courses and Find Out Why
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Not everything we do in our courses works as well as we’d like. Sometimes it’s a new assignment that falls flat, other times it’s something that consistently disappoints. For example, let’s take a written assignment that routinely delivers work that is well below our expectations. It might be a paper that reports facts but never ties them together, an essay that repeats arguments but never takes a stand, or journal entries that barely scratch the surface of deep ideas.
March 21 - Reflections on Teaching: Mistakes I’ve Made
By: Chris Palmer in Faculty Development
I started teaching at American University at the age of 56 after a rewarding career as an environmental and wildlife film producer. That was almost ten years ago, and I’ll be the first to admit that I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I had never taught before and I wasn’t even sure where to begin. I had no teaching philosophy beyond some vague, unarticulated feeling that I wanted my students to do well. And so, I started asking lots of questions.
December 11 - Considering the Courage and Practice of Teaching
By: Mary Bart in Conversations in Teaching
Gain teaching inspirations from this conversation between Parker Palmer and Maryellen Weimer as they come together for the first time to talk about the underpinnings of their approaches to their work as teachers. The 60-minute video is available on-demand or on CD.
November 30 - Three Principles for Cultivating Excellence in Academic Life
By: Shonu Nangia, PhD in Teaching and Learning
In the October 3rd issue of Faculty Focus, Maryellen Weimer underscores the idea that faculty need to take care of their instructional health and recognize the importance of emotional rejuvenation. She ends the post by asking readers: What are some things you do when you feel your teaching may be growing “tired?”
September 13 - Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal
By: Mary Bart in Free Reports, Teaching & Learning
Part memoir and part advice for others, Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal will encourage and inspire faculty who may have fallen out of love with teaching. It’s loaded with strategies to keep your teaching fresh and invigorated.
November 4 - Making Time for Reflection
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
We are all so busy. We race from task to task. We attempt to multi-task; dividing and depleting our energies. How many times do we arrive in class breathless with hardly a moment to think about what we have planned for the day? I harbor no illusions that a blog entry is going to change our lives, but I would like to use this one to reiterate the need to make time for reflection, for contemplation about what we do, how and why we do it. The value of doing so is laid out clearly in a new book, A Teacher’s Reflection Book: Exercises, Stories, Invitations by Jean Koh Peters and Mark Weisberg.
September 15 - Lessons Learned from Reflecting on Our Teaching Experiences
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
I love the fact that some pedagogical journals still publish first-person reflections on teaching experiences. Many of the disciplined-based pedagogical periodicals have moved away from these accounts in favor of more empirical investigations. I regularly highlight research both here in the blog and in The Teaching Professor newsletter because I strongly believe teaching and learning
June 16 - The Softer Side of Teaching
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
It has not been a good week. While I was flying home from The Teaching Professor Conference, I got a call that my brother had an accident and broke his leg in three places. So I’ve been spending lots of time at the hospital and now lots of time taking care of this poor fellow who not only broke his leg but managed to have the accident in a patch of poison oak.
September 2 - Keeping Teaching Philosophy and Instructional Practice on the Same Page
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Philosophy of Teaching, Teaching Professor Blog
“Conscientious pedagogical reflection is necessary to produce a complete, well-developed teaching philosophy. The absence of pedagogical reflection can result in daily instruction that fails to reflect an instructor’s teaching philosophy or instructional belief system accurately. In particular, an underdeveloped teaching philosophy may translate into a teaching style full of inconsistencies, characterized by poorly coordinated and designed instruction.” (p. 182)
