There’s a piece coming out in the February issue of the newsletter that highlights content from an article written by a political scientist who teaches quantitative content to math averse students. It’s a very pratical piece but also a great model—of pedagogical scholarship and of something we should all consider doing.

I meet regularly, usually over breakfast, with my good friend and colleague Larry. We share our papers, ideas, and good stuff we’re reading. I am so lucky to have this wonderful pedgogical colleague. I’ve been working on a paper that explores the knowledge bases for teaching, one of which is the experiential knowledge faculty derive from time spent in the classroom. I used the old cliché about experience being a great teacher. Larry was all over that idea. Experience isn’t a teacher—it’s yet another case where a metaphor conveys the wrong meaning. Teachers work to form and frame content in the interest of helping students learn it. Experience doesn’t do that. Learning from experience is like any other kind of learning—it takes effort and depends on focus, reflection, and practice. It never just happens.

The February issue of the newsletter contains highlights from an amazing article—one written by a faculty member who describes himself as a “bad teacher.” The piece chronicles his transformation as a teacher. It’s one of the best articles I’ve read in a long while (and you know I read more than a few articles).

In a chapter in an e-book on undergraduate student research in psychology, authors Wadkins and Miller integrate research and resources into a wonderfully pragmatic exploration of the role of faculty mentors. When undergraduates do a research project under the guidance of a mentor, the process not only develops the students’ research skills, it also “transforms their professional and academic selves.” (p. 209)

Here are my best wishes for your holiday season. May there be peace, joy, giving, and thankfulness as you celebrate with family and friends.

Even with the holidays upon us, it’s hard not to think about those students who did poorly in our courses this semester.

I’m thinking that this week you don’t have time for blog entries that require more than a quick read through. End of courses are such a harried time, so much grading, students lining up for office hours, final committee meetings and with the holidays, there are all those celebratory events at attend. To say nothing of everything that needs to be done at home!

An article in a recent issue of Change magazine reports on the transformation of general education courses at the University of North Texas. Faculty fellows, competitively selected and awarded with grant funds, redesign a general education course in ways that promote higher-level learning. Carefully constructed assessment plans are also developed for the course. I was especially interested in the blend of instructional approaches recommended for these course redesigns.

“I don’t think teachers teach it well enough. I don’t think they teach well enough citing, and what to do, and how to take the words, and how many words you can take without being considered plagiarism. They just say, ‘Don’t plagiarize.’ But they never tell you what to do to not plagiarize.” (p. 655)