Good Teaching Attributes

"Ongoing practice of learned skills Unpracticed skills atrophy. New and complex skills need to be built on solid former skills. Learners need to be able to apply skills in new situations."

It has been a common problem for my students that they fail to remember what they learned previously and have trouble applying existing knowledge into a new situation. This attribute of "ongoing practice of learned skills" caught my attention because it is one of the most effective approaches that ensure life-long learning and higher levels of cognitive thinking.

Skillful teaching is what helps students learn (Brookfield, 2006, p17). Only when students consistently practice the learned skills, can they deepen their understandings, and strengthen long term memories, to help students learn better. It is easy to drift into mindless practice mode. To help students improve learning efficiency, a clear learning outcome needs to be established first. What is the purpose of practice, what learning outcomes are students expected to achieve, how we evaluate students' learning at the end of the practice - such questions need to be answered before designing the practicing activities.

A thoughtful practice also asks students to deepen their understanding through applying the knowledge, and reflect on what they've achieved. For science disciplines, the laboratory portion of the course is designed hands-on practice to enhance students' learning. A well designed lab should be matching the lecture portion in pace, with clear connections to core concepts being introduced in the lecture. In order to help students to connect to prior learning, I often explicitly point out, which PowerPoint slide, which chapter the lab is built on, and where to find additional information if a student needs to refresh his mind. Also because of the nature of the lab, there are skills being practiced in a repeating way, I also think it is a good idea to lead students to independent problem solving. Guiding questions such as, "remember how you solved the problem last time, the only difference here is…, how would you use a similar strategy to solve this new problem?" will help students eventually apply the existing knowledge in the new problem solving scenario.

Practice needs to be frequent It is human natural that people forget. According to the forgetting curve (Loftus, 1985), most of the memories are lost in the first few hours after learning. However, each repetition in learning increases the optimum interval before the next repetition is needed. Reviewing materials in the first 24 hours after learning information will greatly reduce the amount of the knowledge forgotten. Although remembering is perhaps the lowest level of cognitive domain in Bloom's taxonomy, it sets the foundation for higher levels of mastery.

Practice does not have to be formal assessment. But it is better for us instructors to have a clear picture how we can assess student's skills before and after practice and also give valuable feedback to students for future learning activities. It is also helpful if we can get feedback from students, in order to know how well the practice fits into their learning curve, and how effective the practice is.
Reference

Brookfield, S. (2006). Chapter 2 The core assumptions of skillful teaching. In The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Loftus, G. R. (1985). Evaluating Forgetting Curves. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11. 2 : 397

Reflection on Teaching Styles

Graphic Source: https://natashakenny.files.wordpress.com/)

 

My Teaching

I still see myself as a novice teacher who is still developing my own teaching approach, constantly reflecting on daily practice, and improve instructional skills.

I started teaching from 2009, working as a teaching assistant at UBC, where I taught first and second year chemistry courses. In 2013, I relocated to Illinois and have being teaching chemistry and physics lab courses at University of Illinois at Springfield since then. Most of my students are in their 20’s with some of them in their 30’s who return to school to complete the degree.

Because of the nature of the lab courses, students usually watch videos, and preview the instruction materials, and take a pre-lab quiz before walking into the lab. In the lab, I start by a 10-15 minutes lecture where I pinpoint where students need to pay attention to, and have some class discussions too. Then students work in groups of 2-3, and practice hands-on-skills. I always walk around in the lab and answer questions. The weekly assessment is the lab report in which students develop scientific writing skills, and demonstrate their understanding of concepts by answering particular questions. It is student-centered however, with a considerable amount of guidance from the teacher. My goal is to help my students become more self-directed, apply what they’ve learned before, research on resources, and work towards solving the actual problem (for higher level courses). My feedback to them also includes a descriptive comment of their actual work, also comment of their learning strategies.

Reflection

When I read the word “professional practice”, the first image that came to my mind is a highly experienced teacher standing in the middle of the classroom, surrounded by students, who confidently and resourcefully deliver a lesson. Also this teacher is responsive to questions that students raise, and always come up with the right approach to lead students towards being a self-directed, and self-motivated learner. Frequent, deep and comprehensive reflective thinking is also part of the professional practice. Besides these, professional teaching practice also means a solid understanding of ethical principles, codes of conduct, and professional behavior in and out of the classroom. A sustainable professional practice and training also includes development of a personal career plan that leads to where best suits personal interest and where one bring in higher impact to global educational system.

Starting PIDP3260 Professional Practice

Can you find me in the picture? @Delicate Arch - The Arches National Park

The journey continues...finally the second to the last course in PIDP.

The focus of PIDP3260 Professional Practice is the use of feedback mechanisms to guide instruction and to improve one's professional practice. This feedback is given by students, colleagues, mentors, our supervisors, and our own self-reflection. The course introduces issues, themes and concepts of effective instruction, instructor competencies, informal/formal assessment and evaluation, as well as ethics, professionalism and career management - topics that are not commonly covered in teacher's education courses. I have already seen the clear relevance of this course after a brief preview. Although blogging is not a requirement in this course, I will continue to use it to document my learning journey.

First PowToon Video!