Good Teaching: Knowledge Transformed

Today, my attention was drawn to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “The Damaging Myth of the Natural Teacher”. It was the story of Dr. Viji Sathay’s process from grad school to first teaching job in 2008 to where she is today to illustrate the issues with the lack of pedagogical classes to teach higher education faculty how to become good teachers. The subtitle of the article is: “Despite decades of evidence, good teaching is still considered more art than science. That’s hurting faculty and students alike.”

This article caught my attention, and I was drawn into the story of Dr. Sathay’s foray from first year instructor with bad reviews to seasoned instructor of 13 years who has earned numerous awards at UNC Chapel Hill where she is a professor of the practice of psychology and neuroscience. Sathay indicates how misguided some of her “notions” about effective teaching were. She thought her job was to “cover the content”, and only later realized that she was not really teaching, but just “dumping a bunch of information on her students, leaving no time for discussion or practice.” She would feel frustrated when, after going through 70 slides in 75 minutes, students would miss questions on exams pulled from those very slides. She wondered all the time, “How could they not get it?” Now, she cringes thinking about how little she understood about how learning actually works.

The article goes on to address that the mistaken idea of Dr. Sathay is widespread – that good teaching is seen as a natural talent instead of a skill that can be learned and refined.

This brings me to what I read and the synchronous session with Dr. Punya Mishra this week. When elaborating on the meaning of TPACK he explained that good teaching is not only knowledge of the subject matter, but good teachers take the knowledge that they have and transform it. A good teacher understands students, student conceptions, takes the content and transforms it into ways that make sense to students. He mentioned that a lot of experts in their field don’t remember or have never known the lack of knowledge, so they don’t relate to where their students are starting on the knowledge scale. He said that good teaching with technology requires: 1) knowledge of the domain, 2) knowledge of the pedagogy, and 3) knowledge of the technology. But, they do not exist in isolation of each other – they exist in a dynamic, interactive relationship with each other.

Mishra, Koehler, and Kereliuk’s article this week, “The Song Remains the Same: Looking Back to the Future of Educational Technology”, is filled with wonderful references to music, song and tempo as analogies for the rapid changes in technology. In accord with his synchronous session and the article I reach from the Chronicle, Mishra, et.al say, “We believe that most innovations have focused inordinately on the technology rather than more fundamental issues of how to approach teaching subject matter with these technologies” (Mishra, et. al 49). What is good teaching? What did Dr. Sathay of UNC Chapel Hill learn the hard way – that teaching, GOOD teaching, comes with a dynamic, interactive relationship between content, pedagogy, and technology.

There’s so much creativity involved with this dynamic relationship. Mishra, et. al in their article state that “Teachers who do not keep up with the latest educational technologies (talking motion pictures, overhead projectors, cell phones, etc.) will almost certainly fall behind, and unfortunately stay behind” (Mishra, et. al 50). On the other hand, Richard E. Clark’s article, “Media will Never Influence Learning” concludes with a sentiment I made in my last blog entry, that instructional design students are encouraged to begin with the solutions and search for problems that are solved by those solutions (Clark 28). We are putting the cart before the horse. I firmly believe that we should not, as stated in my last blog, introduce and use “technology for the sake of technology”, but in this day and age, when we’re looking at student engagement, motivation, and yes, learning, we can’t disregard the current technologies available. Although I don’t agree with Clark that technologies have no influence on learning, I do agree that the traditional way, as he has mentioned it, do not work. What’s the problem that needs to be solved? Not, I have a solution, now give me a problem.

References

Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. ETR&D, 42(2), 21- 29.

Kozma, R. B. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. ETR&D, 42(2), 7-19.

McMurtrie, B. (2021, October 22). The damaging myth of the natural teacher. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-damaging-myth-of-the-natural-teacher?cid=gen_sign_in.

Mishra, P. (n.d.). R511 Week 9 guest Punya Mishra ASU - youtube. Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBFIiB11N5I.

Mishra, P., Koehler, M. J., & Kereluik, K. (2009). The song remains the same: Looking back to the future of educational technology. TechTrends, 53(5), 48-53.