1. Teachers do learning tasks
less.
Assign to students some of the tasks
of organizing the
content, giving examples, summarizing discussions, solving problems,
and
drawing diagrams, charts, and graphs.
2. Teachers do
less telling; students do more discovering.
Give a quiz on your syllabus and
policies without going over
it first. Let students discover information in assigned readings
without
presenting it first or summarizing it later.
3. Teachers do more design
work.
Design activities and assignments that
move students to new
skill levels, motivate engagement in the course content by doing the
work of
practitioners in the discipline, and that develop self-awareness of
their
learning of the content.
4. Faculty do more modeling.
Demonstrate how a skilled learner (the
teacher) continues to
learn. Show them drafts of your articles, notes on your own reading in
professional journals; talk aloud as you solve a problem, thereby
revealing and modeling your thinking
process.
5. Faculty do more to get
students learning from and with each other.
Create work for small groups to do in
class.
6. Faculty work to create
climates for learning.
Create a climate that promotes
interaction, autonomy, and
responsibility (more in chapter five).
7. Faculty do more with feedback.
In addition to assigning grades, use
other means of
providing frequent feedback (more in chapter six).
From American Educator, AFT - A Union of Professionals Teaching facts is critical to developing higher order thinking skills. An excellent case is made and the origins of our disdain for teaching facts in the works of Rousseau, Dewey, Freire and others is examined.
