Section 2.3 Building on extensive prior teaching experience
Some new faculty members had had extensive prior teaching experience. One had participated in a workshop at a prior institution that had “completely changed my way of teaching” from lecturing to using more active learning strategies.
I taught the first year and my student evaluations were horrible...and then the summer after the first year, I took this class, it was a workshop,...this person, he has a bunch of publications on active learning, and he was a mind-opener for me. It was very nicely done...the first day they taught us like that; they modeled for the first day and the second day, now “let's talk about what we did yesterday, why we did it so you can see for yourself what you liked and what you didn't”...the teaching...was amazing and my student evaluations went up a full digit like from 3.5 to 4.5
Thus this faculty member began teaching the reformed courses with knowledge, experience and commitment to encouraging students' active participation in class.
Another new faculty member had had extensive experience with active engagement strategies prior to coming here as a post-doc and having co-taught six paradigms courses and two as the instructor of record here before accepting a position elsewhere. Now returning as a new faculty member, this individual was aware of nuances in using interactive strategies:
I had a constructivist attitude before I came here (as a postdoc), that teaching should build on students' ideas and I had experience teaching in a student-centered course in which class time was mostly spent in student and student/teacher discussion. It was in one of those curricula in which lecturing time is minimal. I found it very satisfying. This was basically a teaching apprenticeship with (the professor of record), who had the belief that the instructor should ask questions and not be talking for the majority of the time.
This was very different from my experiences here where (a OSU professor) sees class time as the opportunity for the instructor to share knowledge and understanding so the instructor should be doing a lot of talking; even in the small groups, the instructor should be an active participant.
Observing such differences in how much talking an instructor should be doing while enacting interactive strategies had prompted this new faculty member to form a personal stance on this issue. Also noted were the effects of time limitations and problematic classroom environments:
I'm in the middle, I certainly intervene with student groups in more of an (interactive) way but I sometimes find that I come in and intervene but misunderstand what the issue is for the students; I try to do as much listening as I can but the pace encourages me to try to intervene so that the activities are shorter; coming in to a small group and “telling” makes the activities shorter but sometimes I've come in and made things worse.
There is a big problem in the current classroom because it is hard to hear what the students are saying when they are in their groups and when students try to contribute to whole class discussions.
For this individual, the philosophical underpinnings, personal preferences, and pragmatic constraints involved in teaching in interactive ways were deeply felt and pondered.