Learning About Teaching

Learning about Teaching

Resources Prepared for Liberty University Faculty

By Maryellen Weimer, Ph.D.

Email: Blogs at:

January, 2016

Instructional Growth: Learning from Personal Narratives

Cohan, M. “Bad Apple: The Social Production and Subsequent Reeducation of a BadTeacher. Change, 2009, (November/December), 32-36.

--an honest exploration of early failures as a teacher and how new approaches were discovered and implemented

Gonzalez, J. J.. “My Journey with Inquiry-Based Learning.” Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 2013, 24 (2), 33-50.

--an exploration of learning how to teach in a new way

Thought-provoking: Learning from Essays that Challenge Assumptions

Spence, L. D. “The Case Against Teaching.” Change, 2001, 33 (6), 11-19.

-- challenges our focus on teaching, arguing the emphasis ought to be on learning

Tanner, K. D. “Reconsidering ‘What Works.’” Cell Biology Education—Life Sciences Education, 2011, 10 (Winter), 329-333.

--maintains the use of the phrase implies the existence of teaching principles, methods and techniques that work for all students, all teachers and in all courses. Her point: this underestimates the complexity of teaching and learning.

Techniques: Learning New Strategies and Improving Old Ones

Cohen, D., Kim, E., Tan, J., and Winkelmes, M. “A Note-Restructuring Intervention Increases Students’ Exam Scores.” College Teaching, 2013,61 (Summer), 95-99.

--a creative assignment in which student rework their notes and evidence of its effectiveness

Corrigan, H. and Craciun, G.. “Asking the Right Questions: Using Student-Written Exams as an Innovative Approach to Learning and Evaluation.” Marketing Education Review, 2013, 23 (1), 31-35.

--students write and answer their own test questions, and are graded on the difficulty of their questions and content of their answers

Van Gelder, T. “Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science.” College Teaching, 2005, 53 (1), 41-46.

--offers six lessons and explores their implications for teachers interested in developing students’ critical thinking skills.

Rank, A., and Pool, H. “Writing Better Writing Assignments.” PS, Political Science and Politics,2014, 47 (3), 675-681.

--gives teachers guidance “about how to actually write a clear and doable writing assignment, pitched at the right level to achieve specific aims.” (p. 676) A very helpful piece.

Research: Learning from What’s Known About Teaching and Learning

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okorafor, N., Jordt, H., and Wenderoth, M. P. “Active Learning Increases Student Performance in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS),2014, 111 (23), 8410-8415.

Allen, D. “Recent research in Science Teaching and Learning. Cell Biology Education—Life Sciences Education, 2014, 13 (Winter), 584-5.

Weiman, C. E. “Large-scale Comparison of Science TeachingMethods Sends Clear Message.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2014, 111 (23), 8319-8320.

--The Freeman, et. al. meta-analysis, the largest statistical analysis of research on active learning clearly explains the findings, however, the statistical analysis is complex. Allen has written a short, very clear summary of the research and its findings, which appears in an open access journal. Weiman’s commentary is also worth reading. It too offers an understandable summary with easier graphics, plus insightful and pointed comments. For those interested in taking a look at the evidence on active learning, here’s the most comprehensive review to date.

Michael, J. “Where’s the Evidence that Active Learning Works?” Advances in Physiology Education, 2006, 30, 159-167.

--an excellent review of the research with special emphasis on evidence supporting active learning in the sciences

Prince, M. “Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research.” Journal of Engineering Education, July 2004, 223-231.

--a comprehensive and compelling analysis of the impact of active learning experiences

Benassi, V. A., Overson, C. E., & Hakala, C. M. (Editors). (2014). Applying Science of earning in Education: Infusing Psychological Science into the Curriculum. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology website:

--an amazing free resource with chapters summarizing much of the current research on learning being done in cognitive psychology and educational psychology. Most of the chapters are authored by those doing the research and include suggestions for implementing the findings. The language is accessible and the book is well organized.

Brame, C. J. and Biel, R. “Test-Enhanced Learning: The Potential for Testing to Promote Greater Learning in Undergraduate Science Courses.” Cell Biology Education—Life Sciences Education, 2015, 14 (Summer), 1-12.

--“testing” that encourages retrieval practice promotes learning, a well-established fact by research in cognitive science. Teachers and students ought to be encourage to use low-stakes testing to achieve formative goals.

Approaches that Foster Instructional Growth and Development

Purcell, D. “Sociology, Teaching, and Reflective Practice: Using Writing to Improve.” Teaching Sociology, 2013, 41 (1), 5-19.

--maintains that regular, informal writing can promote instructional growth and development; shows how it worked in his case.

Shadiow, L. K. What Our Stories Teach Us: A Guide to Critical Reflection for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013.

--recommends using favorite stories about teaching to begin reflection that reveals new insights about teaching and deeper understandings of learning

From The Teaching Professor, May, 2009

On Becoming a Teacher

By Huntly Collins, La Salle University, PA

"Collins, Huntly" <>

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real. It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

--Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

The past three years have been a time of growth for me, some of it painful. I have become more humble and less arrogant. I have become less product-driven and more process-oriented. I have become less judgmental of my students’ learning gaps and more engaged in helping them make up those gaps. I have learned not to teach to the middle just because most of my students are in the middle, but rather to challenge everyone to go beyond where they think they can go. I have taken more risks and been less afraid to make mistakes. I have learned to worry less about the students’ perception of me and more about whether they are understanding what I am teaching. I have learned to let go of my preconceived ideas about students and to open myself to the surprises that each individual student has to offer.

I believe I have made a difference in the lives of my students and I know they have made a difference in mine. Like the Skin Horse, I have learned that teaching isn’t about shiny new technology or well-organized lesson plans impressively arrayed in a binder. Although these things help, teaching is really about being present for students and sharing with them the only thing we ultimately have to share, which is ourselves. Over the past three years, I have brought to my students all of the reporting and writing skills I accumulated over nearly a 30-year career as a reporter. I’ve shared my passion for the craft, its important role in giving a voice to the voiceless, and a sense of the great adventures that await those who learn to practice it well. I hope I have also given them a new appreciation for the power and beauty of the English language and imbued in them a desire to write well no matter whether they are going into journalism or some other profession or simply writing for their own pleasure.

Among the lessons learned as I’ve worked to grow as a teacher is that the process of learning is often as important as the end product. For me, this is a radical change. As a journalist, all that mattered to me and my editors was getting the story, getting it right and telling it in a compelling way. All eyes were on the story, not on what I might have learned in the process of doing it. When I first arrived at La Salle, I put a similar emphasis on the end product in my journalism classes. Even though I tried to take into account the place where students were starting, I focused almost exclusively on the quality of their stories, not on the process of their own development in getting the stories.

Today, however, I take as much pride in my students’ sometimes halting efforts toward the goal as their ability to reach the goal. The terribly shy student who, despite his fears, stands to read his story to the entire class is engaged in important learning. The Dominican student, who is writing in a second language, may not turn out the perfectly polished story, but she becomes an effective communicator when she pulls at our heartstrings by the tale she tells. The C student, who seems oblivious to much of what I teach, emails me after she has graduated to ask, “What was that Robert Frost poem you read to us on our last day? I really want to remember one line.” While that student may not have produced the best work in the class, she took away from the class something important, even if it was that single line from Frost’s poem.

I’ve also learned that my students tend to under-value themselves and one of the most important jobs I can do is to encourage them to be all they can be. A certain blue-collar mentality seems to pervade the student body – the idea that you’re not supposed to be an intellectual or academically talented, so why even try? To address that, I’ve tried to expose students to the very best reporting and writing in America. I’ve also tried to give them more confidence in themselves, in the truth of their own experience and in the power of expression. Some, miraculously, have responded. It has been truly wonderful to watch as students who never thought much about themselves have discovered, under my tutelage, that they have the potential to be excellent writers. “You mean, this is really good?” “Yes, it’s really good. And here’s how you can make it even better.”

Teaching at La Salle has given me, like the Skin Horse, a few more gray hairs. But it has also made me wiser and more real.