Putting research into practice: Pedagogy development workshops change the teaching philosophy of graduate students.
Abstract
Teaching competence is an important skill for graduate students to acquire and is often considered a precursor to an academic career. In this study, we evaluated the effects of a multi-day teaching workshop on graduate teaching philosophies by surveying 200 graduate students, 79 of whom had taken the workshops and 121 who had not. We found no difference between groups (workshop attendees versus non-attendees) in their beliefs that (a) it is important to focus on in-depth learning of core concepts when teaching and (b) “memorization” is a poor learning strategy for students. On average, however, respondents who had taken the workshop allocated more in-class time for student-to-student discussions (interactive engagement) and placed less emphasis on lecturing. These results suggest that graduate students are generally aware of the importance of conceptual learning, but workshop attendees have clearer ideas on how to teach for effective learning.
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Published
2012-04-04
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