{"id":3638,"date":"2013-10-17T11:31:46","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T15:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/tasupport\/?p=3638"},"modified":"2021-08-13T16:22:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T20:22:29","slug":"engaging-history-students-with-a-learner-centred-approach-to-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2013\/engaging-history-students-with-a-learner-centred-approach-to-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging History Students with a Learner-Centred Approach to Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

By; Brennan McConnell<\/em><\/p>\n

Understatement: providing a learning environment that engages students is challenging.<\/p>\n

Students arrive in class with a range of experiences, knowledge, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and future goals. To be skillful as a teaching assistant or an instructor, one must above all else develop a style of teaching that engages students. This is best done by adopting a learner-centred approach to teaching. A learner-centred approach can mean many things, but Dr. Maryellen Weimer outlines what she thinks are the five most important characteristics of a learner-centred approach, some of which I shall briefly detail in order to begin my exploration of the notion of learner-centred teaching as it relates to my own experiences as a teaching assistant for history.[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

First of all, Weimer insists that teachers should strive to make students work harder than, or at least as hard as, the teacher themselves during the class session: \u201cWe ask the questions, we call on students, we add detail to their answers. We offer examples. We organize the content. We do the preview and the review.\u201d This point struck me as one I may indeed be guilty of as a teacher. Either because of a desire to stay \u201cin control,\u201d or as a by-product of my inexperience as a teacher and my ensuing desire to demonstrate my ability within whichever field I am teaching, I certainly think I have room to offload more of the \u201cburden of teaching\u201d to the students themselves.[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

Her second point implores teachers to incorporate \u201cexplicit skill instruction,\u201d rather than assuming that students have, or can self-teach, basic proficiencies in research or writing. This point strikes to the root of the idea of a learner-centred approach, forcing teachers to abandon their preconceptions of what students should know or be capable of, and instead focus in on their individual potentials and capacities. The astuteness of this point strikes me as the greatest challenge I face every time I go through the process of instructing students to research and write their first or second-year history papers (an issue faced during both the preparatory instruction leading up to submission and during the marking phase that concludes the process). Time and again, I am compelled to try my best to escape my own expectations of what students \u201cshould know,\u201d so that I can actually help them to acquire new skills.[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

Weimer\u2019s fourth point, that \u201cLearner-centered teachers search out ethically responsible ways to share power with students,\u201d is another one with which I heartily agree, even though to date I have practiced it too little. As I have slowly become more comfortable teaching, I have begun to include students in certain decision-making processes in the classroom; however, adopting this approach is challenging since so much of the power I would like to share with students (over choices in assignments, readings, or discussion group themes, for instance) is simply not mine to decentrify. Working as a TA has its positive and negative aspects, as any job does, and the lack of control, even with the most progressive and supportive professors, is certainly one drawback that makes me increasingly excited to become a teacher in my own right.[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

Weimer further explores the model of learner-centred teaching in her more recent article entitled \u201cEncouraging Student Participation: Why It Pays to Sweat the Small Stuff.\u201d In it, Weimer suggests that a details-oriented approach to instructing one\u2019s students can pay off and foster in-class student participation. One detail that she challenges teachers to focus on is that of asking questions more frequently of students \u2013 a practice that, studies show, teachers do less of than they believe they do.[2]<\/sup> This point challenged me to think critically about the frequency that I open my class up to discussion, something I believe to be a strong-point in my teaching habits, but which I will certainly be more conscious of in future sessions. I must become more attentive to whether I do in fact question students as frequently as I believe, and even more importantly if I ask questions at the right times. For instance, Weimer emphasises that questions are best asked not <\/i>after one has given a lecture-style explanation of content, or in the moments before the end of class.<\/p>\n

More than the frequency and timing of my questions, the article made me aware of improved methods of questioning students to encourage student participation. According to Weimer, studies indicate that while faculty claim to wait 10-12 seconds for a response to questions before they \u201cask the question again, call on somebody, rephrase the question, answer the question themselves, or decide nobody has anything to say and move on,\u201d2<\/sup> the average instructor in fact only allows a mere two or three seconds for reflection and response. This problem of patience speaks to the very heart of developing a learner-centred teaching model.<\/p>\n

At its core, the greatest difficulty faced by those who seek to centre their teaching style on their learners is the challenge of adapting their own expectations, frames of reference, and general mental space to that of their students. Learners think about problems, content, and instruction differently than teachers do, and if teachers cannot adapt to see their own lesson from a learner\u2019s point of view, their efforts will inevitably meet with disengaged students. This problem is isolated in the case of the discrepancy between faculty\u2019s expectations of, and the reality of, the silences they provide. As a teaching assistant, I have come to understand that silences are pedagogical spaces, which, if used correctly by a teacher, allow students to engage with material in their own ways and on their own time. Instructors who give only as much time to think about and answer a question in a seminar as they themselves would need, rather than as their students may need, is just as unfair as one who provides students only as much time to finish an exam as would be needed by the person who designed it. Reflecting on past TA evaluations submitted by my students, I remember one student\u2019s particularly helpful suggestion that I should a) leave more time for students to respond to questions, and b) ask more follow-up questions, or even challenge specific students for their thoughts, rather than answering questions that seem to challenge the class. This reflection on past teaching habits clearly meshes with the intent of Weimer\u2019s article.<\/p>\n

Other methods that can aid in student engagement with material follow on the same theme as these challenges to ask questions well and leave silences for growth. For instance, in a TA training session I attended encouraging the use of alternate activities in discussion groups, I learned of activities like \u201cthink\/pair\/share,\u201d which meet another challenge posed by Weimer, to \u201cencourage reflection before response.\u201d2<\/sup> Another method she suggests is to give students time after a difficult question to jot down their thoughts or to allot a block of time for quiet reflection on a thought before answers are solicited. Such approaches also have the added benefit of allowing for more diverse voices a chance to engage with the class discussion than perhaps a more aggressive style would encourage; for instance, my previous habit of asking questions, and almost immediately following up on them, likely catered to students more comfortable with jumping into conversation with little reflection, while excluding those students who were more inclined either to thoughtful contribution or who needed more time to \u2018get up the nerve\u2019 to participate. A more patient and thoughtful style of questioning has a range of advantages recommending it, encouraging more diverse student participation and more thoughtful contributions, and demanding less frequent teacher-focused, lecture-style instructional interventions.<\/p>\n

At its core, learner-centred teaching represents a huge shift in the way I will approach teaching students history. As I have frequently been charged with encouraging student participation in discussion groups during my four separate appointments as a teaching assistant, it is a little surprising that as simple a question as \u201cHow often do you ask a question and when do you ask it?\u201d or \u201cHow long do you wait?\u201d could so profoundly alter my self-perception as a teacher. I am excited to see how these and other simple questions will modify my style as a teacher to better serve my students.<\/p>\n

Bibliography:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>1. Weimer, Maryellen. \u201cFive Characteristics of Learner-Centered Teaching.\u201d Faculty Focus<\/i> Aug. 8 2012. <http:\/\/www.facultyfocus.com\/articles\/effective-teaching-strategies\/five-characteristics-of-learner-centered-teaching\/>.<\/p>\n

2. Weimer, Maryellen. \u201cEncouraging Student Participation: Why It Pays to Sweat the Small Stuff.\u201d Faculty Focus<\/i> Sept. 18 2013.<http:\/\/www.facultyfocus.com\/articles\/teaching-professor-blog\/encouraging-student-participation-why-it-pays-to-sweat-the-small-stuff\/>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By; Brennan McConnell Understatement: providing a learning environment that engages students is challenging. Students arrive in class with a range of experiences, knowledge, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and future goals. To be skillful as a teaching assistant or an instructor, one must above all else develop a style of teaching that engages students. This is best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[759],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nEngaging History Students with a Learner-Centred Approach to Teaching - Teaching and Learning Services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By; Brennan McConnell Understatement: providing a learning environment that engages students is challenging. 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