Teaching

I'm often asked "What's good teaching" as if there were some magic formula that once mastered would solve all teaching challenges. Of course there are generalities that apply such as knowledge of subject matter, organization of material, ability to actively engage students, and believe it or not humor. But more specifically there is something called Disciplinary Differences. That means that students who choose to study a certain subject must be taught how to think as a professional in that discipline thinks. Janet Gail Donald in her book, Learning to Think (2002), not only makes the case for adding this to our teaching objectives, but offers strategies to help do this. This is confirmed by work by David Kolb on learning styles. Kolb has demonstrated through a lifetime of work how different professions fit his learning cycle. For example, he found that business students are Accommodators, history majors are Divergers, engineering students have an Converging style and mathematicians and sociologists are Assimilators (Kolb, 1981). Their work causes me pause when thinking about what is good teaching - clearly no "one size fits all" will work. Their research and work leads me to believe that my work becomes understanding how educators think and modeling that for my students. It's also enlightening to know that education students fall right in the middle of being concrete, active accomodators! What's good teaching in your discipline?