This is an interesting and timely series Scot.
Most of us who are college or University “teachers” actually teach with no training and little forethought ? in/about teaching that is. There is distinct value in being taught by those “who do” in a discipline, and this is how the University is supposed to work. But the idea that one (even a talented scholar) can simply step in front of a class and do a good job teaching is ludicrous. It took me some 12 years or more (during which time concerns over tenure and promotion dominated the scene) to realize this.
(It is particularily ironic that when asked what I do most assume that I am primarily “just a teacher” with summer off when this has actually consumed so little of my time and effort to date.)
You’ve sold at least one copy of this book for Bain.

Scot:
I appreciate this series as well. I am teaching a new group not at all like the one I am used to teaching. I am struggling with my management style for this new group (realizing differing audiences bring different questions and assumptions to the table). What I can get away with in my familiar group isn’t working so well in the new group. These are solid points to ponder from Ken Bain.
Derek Leman

When I was on the school board, 93-99, our school began to ask similar questions and moved from the model, what should kids know to what should students know and be able to do. this provoked significant discussion in the community. However, the outcome was that students were better prepared for college and better able to think for themselves. The school district adopted a system of learning to facilitate critical thinking and the development of skills to help students become life long learners.
This has influance me as a person and I think even in the church, it is better to help the congregation become their own knowers and become critical biblical thinkers than to simply tell them what the bible says and indoctrinate them. Dependent knowers are created and they begin to fear thinking for themselves apart from the church or pastor. I believe that a mature Christian or a mature student must become a knower… able to think critically and biblically then they will be able to test the prophets adequately.

I have found that a “good teacher” considers him or herself as being in “good company”. Apart from “good company” the teacher is alone and can not be influential since the “good company” establishes the teacher as being “good”.
The first lesson our dear savior saw that we needed was the lesson of Life and had to influence/raise us by His body nailed to the cross taking on our sins causing us to experience what some might call non-life by accepting His cross.
I suspect that “good teachers” are those thougth by good and excpect the same results as they teach well.

Re good teaching and what the students are able to do. I also learned that the highest most accurate Student Assessment is not the information the student can pit out on the test paper but whether or not the student can critically think through something and act on it. They called them performance based assessments. It is close the the biblical idea of knowing… which involves the kind of knowing and seeing that produces life change and activity. It’s applied knowing that is implemented in some sort of action.
I agree that it is not enough to teach information but to challenge students to do.

I read a great book a while back called “Made to Stick.” It dealt with the problem of communication. The person in the know seems to assume the person in the know-not will understand the process. This is not the case. You have to really back up to understand.
http://www.matthewsblog.waynesborochurchofchrist.org
There must be a foundation for learning to take place.

Number 3 is especially important, but it presupposes teachers are listening to students. Too few stop to get inside a student’s world. Consequently, the classroom experience is merely a talking head and students walk away with maybe 7-10% of what was heard/read in the discipline. Learning to hear what students’ think and feel about issues goes a very long way toward learning. While I don’t endorse the full-blown reconstructionism of Dewey, there is something there for us.

In agreement with a couple of the above comments, two words come to mind in description of a good teacher, interaction and dependence. My experience both as a student and an educator confirms the importance and effectiveness of planning with the desired results in mind and teaching so as to equip student not only to have information but to know how to do certain skills. The addition I would suggest (and maybe Bain addresses this elsewhere in his book) is that those skills we desire to teach should lead students toward interaction with other students and toward and understanding of how and when they should rely upon others (put themselves in a place of dependence) in the educational process. While independent thinking has merit to a degree, the greater benefit comes when we can cultivate interdependent thinkers who know how to engage others in the educational process and know how to depend on others in the meantime.

I have a friend who taught a few college courses. I’ll ask him. Actually, I have another good friend who’s taught as well. They’re both in Texas.

This is rich pedagogy and I’m looking forward to the next installment. I remember college professors who were some of the most captivating people I’d ever heard. They were captivating for a number of reasons but most often because of a singleness of purpose and the introduction and well navigated experience on conflict.
To get me to think on my feet, one OT prof made me write a heresy paper on Pelagius and then defend his views as if in the first person. Only I had to defend the paper standing atop a boulder just outside the cafeteria while all the Bible professors went to lunch. In one such address, I told them that the book of Romans wasn’t inspired.
Teaching as a Subversive Acivity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner is a very good book in the same fashion.

Scot,
These questions are great. I am getting a lot out of this series. I began reading the book yesterday.

Teaching is the bridge to an end, that is, the teacher is the bridge. If we sre talking of what makes a “good teacher” then we are talking what constitutes him/her as a “good bridge”.
‘Good teaching’ by a ‘good teacher’ will always carry the weight to the end of being taught well so that others might get the same intimacy for the subject being thaught.
A ‘good teacher’ exemplifies the end of the bridge by his/her intimacy with the subject as the reward for the spark which started them on their journey to cross the bridge.
All subjects are there for intimacy, to be known about. Intimacy is in every subject to be experienced because of and by the bridge.
May we, by the present Life of the risen Christ Jesus in us, accept His intimacy as well as His teaching.

In the Coracle » » links for 2008-08-13 » “It’s almost like you’re writing a book one post at a time” – Kedge

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