I dearly loved this book. So much so that after finishing the Kindle version, I bought a paper copy because it’s one of those books that needs to be highlighted, written in, tagged with sticky notes everywhere.
But meanwhile, here are the notes and highlights I kept for myself in the Kindle edition.
What the Best College Teachers Doby Ken BainYou have 107 highlighted passagesYou have 13 notesLast annotated on October 29, 2012It has occurred to me that teaching is one of those human endeavors that seldom benefits from its past.Read more at location 35We wanted to know what outstanding professors do and think that might explain their accomplishments. Most important, we wanted to know if the lessons they taught us could inform other people’s teaching.Read more at location 53I have directed this book to people who teach, but its conclusions should also be of interest to students and their parents. Read more at location 54To begin this study we had to define what we meant by outstanding teachers. That turned out to be a fairly simple matter.Read more at location 55All the professors we chose to put under our pedagogical microscope had achieved remarkable success in helping their students learn in ways that made a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on how those students think, act, and feel.Read more at location 56we did have two acid tests that all instructors had to meet before we included them in our final results. Read more at location 79First, we insisted on evidence that most of their students were highly satisfied with the teaching and inspired by it to continue to learn.Read more at location 79Rather, we wanted indications from the students that the teacher had “reached them” intellectually and educationally, and had left them wanting more.Read more at location 81The concept of deep learners, first developed by Swedish theorists in the 1970s, helped us spot indications of sustained influence.’ Read more at location 106Dr. Fox experiments, aRead more at location 135Let’s begin with the major conclusions of this study, the broad patterns of thinking and practice we found among our subjects. One word of caution, however: anyone who expects a simple list of do’s and don’ts may be greatly disappointed. The ideas here require careful and sophisticated thinking, deep professional learning, and often fundamental conceptual shifts. They do not lend themselves to teaching by the Read more at location 170Our conclusions emerge from six broad questions we asked about the teachers we examined. Read more at location 172Note: su.mary of qs nswered Edit
What Do the Best Teachers Know and Understand? Without exception, outstanding teachers know their subjects extremely well.Read more at location 173They know how to simplify and clarify complex subjects, to cut to the heart of the matter with provocative insights, and they can think about their own thinking in the discipline, analyzing its nature and evaluating its quality. That capacity to think metacognitively drives much of what we observed in the best teaching. Read more at location 181the best teachers assume that learning has little meaning unless it produces a sustained and substantial influence on the way people think, act, and feel. Read more at location 1862. How Do They Prepare to Teach? Exceptional teachers treat their lectures, discussion sections, problem-based sessions, and other elements of teaching as serious intellectual endeavors as intellectually demanding and important as their research and scholarship.Read more at location 187the best teachers often try to create what we have come to call a “natural critical learning environment.”Read more at location 1976. How Do They Check Their Progress and Evaluate Their Efforts? All the teachers we studied have some systematic program-some more elaborate than others-to assess their own efforts and to make appropriate changes.Read more at location 206I suspect that part of the success they do enjoy stems, in part, from the willingness to confront their own weaknesses and failures.Read more at location 214Second, they didn’t blame their students for any of the difficulties they faced.Read more at location 216Third, we noticed that the people we selected generally had a strong sense of commitment to the academic community and not just to personal success in the classroom.Read more at location 219Ultimately, I hope this book will inspire readers to make a systematic and reflective appraisal of their own teaching approaches and strategies, asking themselves why they do certain kinds of things and not others.Read more at location 229Most of all, I hope readers will take away from this book the conviction that good teaching can be learned. Read more at location 233We found two other kinds of knowledge that seem to be at play. First, they have an unusually keen sense of the histories of their disciplines,Read more at location 267Here are the key concepts we found. 1. Knowledge Is Constructed, Not Received Read more at location 275By the time we reach college, we have thousands of mental models, or schemas, that we use to try to understand the lectures we hear, the texts we read, and so forth. Read more at location 281I’m arguing something much more fundamental: the teachers we encountered believe everybody constructs knowledge and that we all use existing constructions to understand any new sensory input.Read more at location 289must use their existing mental models to interpret what they encounter, they think about what they do as stimulating construction, not “transmitting knowledge.”Read more at location 292Our subjects generally believe that to accomplish that feat, learners must (1) face a situation in which their mental model will not work (that is, will not help them explain or do something); (2) care that it does not work strongly enough to stop and grapple with the issue at hand; and (3) be able to handle the emotional trauma that sometimes accompanies challenges to longstanding beliefs. Read more at location 296The teachers in our study often talked about “challenging students intellectually.” That meant they wanted to create what some of the literature calls an “expectation failure,” a situation in which existing mental models will lead to faulty expectations, causing their students to realize the problems they face in believing whatever they believe.Read more at location 298the best teachers understood that their students may find so much emotional comfort in some existing model of reality that they cling to it even in the face of repeated expectation failures. Read more at location 303Such ideas have important implications for the teachers. They conduct class and craft assignments in a way that allows students to try their own thinking, come up short, receive feedback, and try again. They give students a safe space in which to construct ideas, and they often spend a great deal of time creating a kind of scaffolding to help students engage in that constructionRead more at location 304Teachers in our study come down on the other side of that controversy. They believe that students must learn the facts while learning to use them to make decisions about what they understand or what they should do. To them, “learning” makes little sense unless it has some sustained influence on the way the learner subsequently thinks, acts, or feels. So they teach the “facts” in a rich context of problems, issues, and questions. Read more at location 313questions play an essential role in the process of learning and modifying mental models.Read more at location 331Some cognitive scientists think that questions are so important that we cannot learn until the right one has been asked:Read more at location 333The more questions we ask, the more ways we can index a thought in memory.Read more at location 334“When we can successfully stimulate our students to ask their own questions, we are laying the foundation for learning,”Read more at location 335People learn best when they ask an important question that they care about answering, or adopt a goal that they want to reach.Read more at location 337We found that highly successful teachers have developed a series of attitudes, conceptions, and practices that reflected well some key insights that have emerged from the scholarship on motivation. Read more at location 345children with the fixed view of intelligenceRead more at location 373Note: kaileigh Edit
Rather than laying out a set of requirements for students, they usually talk about the promises of the course, about the kinds of questions the discipline will help students answer, or about the intellectual, emotional, or physical abilities that it will help them develop.Read more at location 396Note: incorpotsate this Edit
The most effective teachers help students keep the larger questions of the course constantly at the forefront.Read more at location 420“WGAD”-“Who gives a damn?” At the beginning of his courses, he tells his students that they are free to ask him this question on any day during the course, at any moment inRead more at location 421Northwestern, offered these details: “On the first day of all my courses … I devote some time to the promised `payoff,’ connecting course themes or required skills to issues or interest likely to be on their minds. Some people might find this crude;Read more at location 424The people we explored know the value that intellectual challenges-even inducing puzzlement and confusion-can play in stimulating interest in the questions of their courses.Read more at location 431In the broad literature on human motivation, there are frequent discussions of three factors that can influence different people in varied ways.Read more at location 437Note: 3 Edit
SomeRead more at location 437Note: 1 Edit
OthersRead more at location 438Note: 2 Edit
Finally,Read more at location 441Note: 3 Edit
They bring to the table challenging objectives, but they also listen to their learners, to their ambitions, and try to help them understand those aspirations in more sophisticated and satisfying ways.Read more at location 454Finally, our subjects realized that learning doesn’t just affect what you know; it can transform how you understand the nature of knowing.Read more at location 457intellectual development of undergraduates. Both Perry and Blythe McVicker Clinchy and her colleagues have suggested four broad categories through which students can eventually travel, each one with its concept of what it means to learn.Read more at location 459Note: categories Edit
According to this scheme, people don’t just march upward; they move back and forth between levels and can operate on more than one developmental stage at a time. In their major they might rise to the level of procedural knowing; in other fields, they might remain received or subjective knowers.Read more at location 473The best teachers talked about stimulating an “incremental series” of changes in people’s view of knowledge, and the need to adopt different approaches for various levels of learners.Read more at location 475Some instructors have deliberately introduced students to the concepts of connected and separate knowing and have acknowledged the value of both tendencies. TheyRead more at location 483The most successful teachers expect the highest levels of development from their students.Read more at location 492the teachers we studied emphasized the pursuit of answers to important questionsRead more at location 496The best college and university teachers create what we might call a natural critical learning environment in which they embed the skills and information they wish to teach in assignments (questions and tasks) students will find fascinating-authentic tasks that will arouse curiosity, challenging students to rethink their assumptions and examine their mental models of reality.Read more at location 509They create a safe environment in which students can try, come up short, receive feedback, and try again. Students understand and remember what they have learned because they master and use the reasoning abilities necessary to integrate it with larger concepts. They become aware of the implications and applications of the ideas and information. They recognize the importance of measuring their own work intellectually as they do it, and in the process they routinely apply the intellectual standards of a variety of disciplines. They cease to be Aristotelian physicists and become Newtonian ones because they’ve come to care enough to question themselves. Read more at location 511As we began our study, we played a game with the teachers: If college courses didn’t exist and you wanted to invent them, what questions would you ask yourself?Read more at location 518In contrast, the best educators thought of teaching as anything they might do to help and encourage students to learn.Read more at location 525For our subjects, that scholarship centered around four fundamental inquiries: (1) What should my students be able to do intellectually, physically, or emotionally as a result of their learning? (2) How can I best help and encourage them to develop those abilities and the habits of the heart and mind to use them? (3) How can my students and I best understand the nature, quality, and progress of their learning? and (4) How can I evaluate my efforts to foster that learning? Read more at location 528Note: Four fundamental questions an educator should ask Edit
The other questions, however, survey matters that most disciplines do not study, and so depend on the vast and growing body of learning research and theory. Read more at location 5341. What big questions will my course help students answer, or what skills, abilities, or qualities will it help them develop, and how will I encourage my students’ interest in these questions and abilities? Read more at location 536“What key information or concepts can I clarify to provide students with foundations (scaffolds) from which they can continue to build their understanding?”Read more at location 564In short, what can we do in class to help students learn outside of class? Read more at location 565How will I confront my students with conflicting problems (maybe even conflicting claims about the truth) and encourage them to grapple (perhaps collaboratively) with the issues? Read more at location 574Teachers in the study generally assumed that they had some major responsibility to help students become better, self-conscious learners.Read more at location 603We found among the most effective teachers a strong desire to help students learn to read in the discipline.Read more at location 60713. How will I create a natural critical learning environment in which I embed the skills and information I wish to teach in assignments (questions and tasks) that students will tasks that will arouse curiosity, challenge students to rethink their assumptions and examine their mental models of reality? How will I create a safe environment in which students can try, fail, receive feedback, and try again? Read more at location 648The baker’s dozen can help us remember what to ask when we plan a course, but if we expect to learn from the practices and thinking of highly effective teachers, we must do more than become routine experts, applying and perfecting some inherited pattern-even if it comes from the best.Read more at location 723Steele and other researchers discovered that if they can keep people from thinking that someone else might be viewing them through the lens of a negative stereotype, they can significantly change what those people accomplished.Read more at location 751Trust in the students also depended on the teacher’s rejection of power over them. TheRead more at location 798Trust, rejection of power, and setting standards that represented authentic goals rather than schoolwork are apparent in the kind of syllabus the best teachers tended to use.Read more at location 803Note: three parts of syllabus used by best teachers Edit
This “promising syllabus,” as we dubbed it, had three major parts. First, the instructor would lay out the promises or opportunities that the course offered to students.Read more at location 804That section represented an invitation to a feast, giving students a strong sense of control over whether they accepted.Read more at location 806Second, the teacher would explain what the students would be doing to realize those promises (formerly known as requirements), avoiding the language of demands,Read more at location 806Third, the syllabus summarized how the instructor and the students would understand the nature and progress of the learning.Read more at location 809“Everything you learn,” Ralph Lynn often said, “influences who you are and what you can do.” Read more at location 913Two questions stand at the heart of this enterprise: What reasoning abilities will students need to possess or develop to answer the questions the discipline raises? How can I cultivate the habits of mind that will lead to constant use of those intellectual skills? Read more at location 920the best educators often teach students how to read the materials.Read more at location 958personal sessions gave students a richer context in which to understand and remember the facts, and a compelling incentive to do so. Read more at location 987The best teachers want to challenge students to think differently, to ask questions that expose problems with the faulty notions students bring into the class, and generally to put them intellectually in situations in which they must question and rebuild their conceptions. They stress the need for students to grapple with important concepts and ideas, to see them from a variety of perspectives, and to build their own understanding of the material. They believe that students are unlikely to engage in any meaningful learning, to re-examine their thinking in some fundamental way, unless (1) they come to care deeply about issues involved in their thinking-deeply and extensively enough that they are willing to grapple, probe, question, look for reasons, and build coherent conceptual frameworks-and (2) they have ample opportunity to apply their learning to meaningful problems. Thus they ask students to solve intellectual, artistic, practical, physical, and abstract problems that the students find intriguing, beautiful, and important. They often create collaborative environments and both challenge and support their students’ efforts, providing them with honest and helpful feedback. Read more at location 1020Note: what the best teachers ask of their students Edit
The best teachers ask themselves what they hope students can do intellectually, physically, or emotionally by the end of the course and why those abilities are important.Read more at location 1026No single approach can work for everyone. Paul Baker put it this way: “My strongest feeling about teaching is that you must begin with the student. As a teacher you do not begin to teach, thinking of your own ego and what you know . . . The moments of the class must belong to the student-not the students, but to the very undivided student. You don’t teach a class. You teach a student.”13 Read more at location 1048To understand what makes teaching successful, we must explore both principles and techniques. Read more at location 1064Seven fairly common principles emerged in the practices of the teachers we studied. Read more at location 1064A few of the teachers we studied used a technique that we first encountered in the 1960s, but that has probably been around much longer than that. At the end of class, they would often ask students two questions: “What major conclusions did you draw?” “What questions remain in your mind?” (In the 1980s a few educators discovered this routine, gave it various names-one-minute paper, immediate feedback, and so forth-and claimed it as their own.)Read more at location 1110Sometimes the best teachers leave out their own answers whereas less successful lecturers often include only that element,Read more at location 1152In the hands of the most effective instructors, the lecture then becomes a way to clarify and simplify complex material while engaging important and challenging questions, or to inspire attention to important matters, to provoke, to focus.Read more at location 1153With some topics they might give students a written “lecture” to read in class, asking them to identify its central arguments and conclusions. Because students can read in fifteen minutes what it takes fifty minutes to say in a lecture, they could then gather in their groups to discuss for another fifteen minutes the meaning, application, implications, and so forth of the material in the “lecture.”Read more at location 1160A simple yet profound perception guides the natural critical learning experience: People tend to learn most effectively (in ways that make a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on the way they act, think, or feel) when (1) they are trying to solve problems (intellectual, physical, artistic, practical, or abstract) that they find intriguing, beautiful, or important; (2) they are able to do so in a challenging yet supportive environment in which they can feel a sense of control over their own education; (3) they can work collaboratively with other learners to grapple with the problems; (4) they believe that their work will be considered fairly and honestly; and (5) they can try, fail, and receive feedback from expert learners in advance of and separate from any judgment of their efforts. Read more at location 1170Note: massive Edit
They consciously try to get students’ attention with some provocative act, question, or statement.Read more at location 1176Because the best teachers plan their courses backward, deciding what students should be able to do by the end of the semester, they map a series of intellectual developments through the course, with the goal of encouraging students to learn on their own, engaging them in deep thinking.Read more at location 1236professors we studied assume that learning facts can occur only when students are simultaneously engaged in reasoning about those facts. Read more at location 1248They know how to make silence loud. Read more at location 1299Paul Heinrich of the University of Sydney introduced us to the idea of “warm” and “cool” language.Read more at location 1320Warm language is “essentially story telling,”Read more at location 1325use cool language to remind, to summarize, and warm language to invite, to stimulate. Read more at location 1332The best teachers didn’t ask students to discuss readings; they provoked and guided them into discussing ideas, issues, or problems that some article or chapter might help them approach.Read more at location 1383If the first law of good discussions is to allow students an opportunity to collect their thoughts (perhaps by writing) and to talk with a neighbor before addressing the whole class, the second rule is to get everyone involved early.Read more at location 1417“McEvoy-minute around.” In small discussion classes, he has everyone sit in a circle. He then gives each student one minute to make his or her initial contribution to the discussion. “The longer my students sit without saying anything,” one professor told us, “the harder it is to bring them into the discussion.”Read more at location 1419Most important, that humility, that fear, that veneration of the unknown spawned a kind of quiet conviction on the part of the best teachers that they and their students could do great things together.Read more at location 1573Some people asked students to write immediate responses to a particular class, taking two or three minutes at the end to explain what major conclusions they had drawn, why they had drawn those conclusions, and what major questions remained in their minds.Read more at location 1727Note: i ove this summary idea Edit
John Sexton took the oath of office as the fifteenth president of New York University in 2002, he called for a new kind of professor in the twenty-first century. “We must recast our notion of what it means to accept the title of `professor,”‘ he argued. The concept of the “tenured professor as an ultimate independent contractor” must give way to the view that faculty members in the university embrace community responsibilities for the “entire enterprise of learning, scholarship and teaching.” Read more at location 1908At its core, such a community is defined by engagement, by commitment of faculty and students to sustaining the community and its conversations. Read more at location 1917
Dudley Herschbach has suggested that every dissertation should contain a chapter on how to help other people learn the subject of that study.Read more at location 1929
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