There are a number of questions being asked here. First, do people who maintain a literacy on TOP do a better job teaching psychology? Of course, student evaluations are useful to a certain extent but there need to be other measurements, but what? And, if it is determined that reading the literature enhances one's teaching (geez, we all certainly hope so!)the next question is whether faculty are willing to give the time and effort to read articles about effective teaching strategies, how aware they are of terrific sources for such research and, finally, their willingness to integrate and modify their teaching practices accordingly. My tentative hypothesis would be that folks who don't do research would be somewhat less likely to appreciate the benefits of reading the literature, with a sub-set also not being as literate a reader of journal research articles when compared to faculty who do conduct research. On the other hand, I also suspect that there are signficant numbers of instructors who conduct research who are aware of but 1) are too busy to regularly read the literature on TOP; or, 2)read it BUT don't use the information to modify their teaching methodologies. It's a fascinating question and really should be investigated.
In fact, this discussion has motivated me to do a informal internal survey of our own faculty. What's occurred to me while writing this post is that I have never sensed that the reading and integration of the research on TOP into one's classes is given major encouragement or priority in our psychology department. There have been terrific college-wide efforts through faculty professional growth seminars to enhance awareness and ability to integrate critical thinking assignments, to develop and use informal classroom assessments, to develop more effective writing assignments "across the curriculum," , etc. But I haven't sensed a strong encouragement within our department to maintain a strong literacy on the research on TOP, per se, as well as integrating this research into our classrooms. Do other psychology departments make that a priority? My guess is that we are more the norm than the exception. That is, it is implicitly assumed that such is being done but not explicitly determined or externally validated and appreciated in any visible manner. Joan [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> Chris: We may have to agree to disagree (respectfully, of course...) >> on this issue. The question before TIPS, as I understood it, was >> whether teachers who conduct research tend to be more better (more >> effective) teachers than those who don't. > > It is you who glossed "better" as "more effective," not me. By contrast, > what I have been consistently arguing here is that researchers have > ready access to a body of (practical) knowledge that non-researchers do > not have as ready access to. This difference cannot be tapped by > comparing students evaluations because the students in the > non-researchers' classes, as much as they might like the teacher, do not > even know that this kind of knowledge could have been a possibility for > the class, and cannot reliably assess what kind difference it might have > made in their course. > > Regards, > -- > Christopher D. Green > Department of Psychology > York University > Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 > Canada > > 416-736-5115 ex. 66164 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.yorku.ca/christo > ============================= > > > --- > To make changes to your subscription go to: > http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english > > > --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
