Discussion is an opportunity for students to practice communicating with each other and weighing judgments or proposed actions together, as they must if they are going to be citizens of a democracy. So discussion might be the single most important skill a student can learn in college.
Reading is hard. It requires greater focus and concentration and attention than looking at photos or memes. The dopamine hits that bombard TikTok users are hard to come by in books. What does BookTok have to teach us about motivating students to read?
There's something to be said for being the kind of educator that authoritarians want to ban, if you can afford the risk.
Aristotle described a broad education as one of the distinguishing characteristics of a free person but also of a free and independent mind, hence “liberal" education. Citizens in a democracy need education to free their mind.
The core principles of feminist pedagogy are radically inclusive and democratic: An insistence that education be applicable to real struggles to liberate; An effort to make classroom spaces more egalitarian or democratic; and The validation of lived experience as a source of knowledge
Highlander was all about empowering marginalized, oppressed people to realize how much they actually already knew, to find solidarity with others around them, and to use their knowledge to bring about social change together.
Reading a peer's work triggers many students to recognize improvements that they could make in their own. In fact, giving feedback might actually support more learning and growth than getting feedback.
course planning
To be helpful, feedback should focus on helping students to improve their work, not on evaluating them. And it should connect back to expectations that were clear from the start.
Dewey was not just concerned with adapting education to meet the moment of the Industrial Revolution, but in realizing the democratic ideals of the United States.
Despite being suspended and banned from campus or even denied their degrees in some cases, the students in those encampments got a better education than many of their classmates, in the ways that matter.
Formative assessment is dialogic in nature, a conversation where student and instructor communicate back and forth about beliefs, strategies, expectations, and judgments. Both the student and the instructor get feedback that will help them do better.
course planning
It's important for instructors to get to know the learners in the room, because the learners' prior knowledge and goals play a huge role in determining what they'll learn, and how much they'll learn, and how quickly. Everyone in the room will learn a lot more if the class becomes a community.