No faculty member sets out to be a bad teacher—at least I hope not—but there are bad (or ineffective) teachers. I’m sure some of these faculty see teaching as an obligatory chore or are indifferent to whether students learn. Then there are those who want
Psychology programs at large, research-focused universities often ask me to provide an external evaluation for a faculty member on a teaching-track faculty who are being considered for tenure or promotion. I try to accept these invitations because I think it is vital that faculty who
The intent of professional development is to help professors become better teachers, but it is sometimes unclear what efforts bring the most improvement. Research has consistently identified several best practices in teacher professional development. We’ll address three of those practices here: focus, duration, and collaboration
Being a good teacher is important to me. How do I know whether I am one? What can I do to become (a better) one? To help answer this question I drew on my expertise as a health psychologist. Being healthy is important to me.
I think most faculty have a love-hate relationship with mistakes. On the one hand, we understand that learning is messy and involves missteps and do-overs. We know that a growth mindset is important to development. We want to see mistakes as opportunities. But on the
I recently viewed a professional development video on the STARLINK website (established by the State of Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which offers programming to participating colleges across the country) that begins with a poignant quote: “Teaching is the choicest of professions because everybody who
Summer is a great time for reflection. Most faculty are on nine-month contracts, which somewhat reduces what they have to do (though not what they want or need to do). Often, and especially if you are someone with a heavy teaching load during the academic
Like many college faculty, my first teaching experience was in graduate school. I was woefully unprepared to teach but blissfully ignorant of that fact. I had sat through three informal meetings on how to teach given by fellow graduate students who had taught a few
Books and journals on college teaching are chock full of best practices, compelling activities, and successful ideas for the classroom. These resources do help, but also helpful are experiences at the unsuccessful end of the teaching spectrum. I am referring to clinkers – those best
In the face of a long, protracted pandemic with reports of exhaustion streaming in from all quarters, many educators may feel they were not able to teach as effectively as they would have liked to. This is the perfect time to revisit (or ask anew)
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