Course Description
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The primary goal for this course is to provide an introduction to a
way of thinking about teaching and learning. This way of thinking does
not ignore the usual focus on content: "What should be taught?," or method:
"How should we teach?," but it begins with even more basic sorts of questions,
such as:
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What is the purpose of education?
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Why do we have schools?
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What does it mean to know something?
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How do my personal goals relate to how I perceive the world and how I learn?
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Why should anyone learn a given skill or bit of knowledge?
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How does what I do in an educational setting relate to the world beyond?
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Where and how does learning occur?
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Is teaching possible?
As Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner discussed in Teaching as a Subversive
Activity, asking questions like these can get you into a lot of trouble.
Simple and obvious assumptions about teaching, such as "We need to have
clear (even national) standards for what is to be learned," "Learning objectives
should be explicit," "The teacher should always provide clear explanations
to students," "Learning should proceed from simple tasks to more complex
ones," "It's important to determine the learner's readiness to learn,"
"One has to learn the basics first," and many more, turn out to be neither
simple nor obvious.
We hope that the course will provide an opportunity for dialogue about
these issues. To expand the basis for that dialogue, we will read about,
observe, and engage in, inquiries about phenomena in general, and especially
about our own teaching and learning.
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