Hello All,
This is a summary of easily-applicable ideas for improving teaching I extracted from the 3 presentations we had this spring; I read this on Friday. They are mostly from the talk of Pedro Noguera, but these ideas have been reiterated and spoken about by all of us. They by no means represent a complete list, but this is something we can add to. I identified three groups, with the ideas within each:
Teacher support for students:
Teacher-student mentoring
Teacher expectations for student assignments clearly delineated
Emphasis on development of supporting skills (eg. test-taking, bibliography) in students
What is the "core" syllabus, and what can be traded for improved learning?
Teacher preparation
Voluntary objective (not by the department, but by a separate entity (CETL?)) observation
Early teacher evaluations - Why wait until it's too late to do anything (can be in addition to normal evaluations)?
A repertoire of teaching methods in addition to and supplanting the "cemetery" method
Conversation and mentoring between departmental faculty on teaching styles
Posting evaluations publicly - teacher accountability for learning
Curriculum
Establishing personal connections to the syllabus for students, to enhance their participation in the learning process
Project-based learning
Emphasis on critical thinking skills
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