How to Improve Student Learning (For Those Who Teach)
Author: Richard Paul and Linda Elder Publisher: Foundation for Critical Thinking Copyright: 2007 Pages: 48 Dimensions: 5 1/4" x 8" ISBN (10Digit): 0-944583-12-1 ISBN (13Digit): 978-0-944583-12-8
Additional Information About: A Miniature Guide For Those Who Teach On How to Improve Student Learning
This guide presents 30 instructional ideas based on the goal of teaching all subjects so that, as a consequence, students take ownership of the most basic principles and concepts of the subject. Most of our suggestions represent possible teaching strategies. They are based on a vision of instruction implied by critical thinking and an analysis of the weaknesses typically found in most traditional didactic lecture/quiz/test formats of instruction.
Students should master fundamental concepts and principles before they attempt to learn more advanced concepts. If class time is focused on helping students perform well on these foundational activities, we feel confident that the goals of most instruction will be achieved.
Our goal is not to dictate to you, but to provide you with possible strategies with which to experiment. The specific suggestions we recommend represent methods and strategies we have developed and tested with our students. Judge for yourself their plausibility. Test them for their practicality. Those that work (i.e., improve instruction) keep; those that do not work, abandon or re-design.
Contents include:
Encourage students to think—quite explicitly—about their thinking
Encourage students to think of content as a form of thinking
Use engaged lecture
Make the point that the content is a SYSTEM of interconnected ideas
Discuss the textbook as the thinking of the author
Make the course “work-intensive” for the students, but not for you
Relate content whenever possible to issues and problems and practical situations in the lives of your students
Design instruction so that students engage in routine practice in internalizing and applying the concepts they are learning (and in evaluating their understanding of each)
Routinely ask questions that probe student understanding of the content