Learner-Centered Teaching
Five Key Changes to Practice
Chapter One
Lessons on Learning
What I have come to believe about learner-centered teaching grew
out of a serendipitous confluence of events and experiences. I will
highlight three of the most important, roughly in the order in
which they occurred, although all three overlap and are so intertwined
that a stream-of-consciousness recounting would more accurately
reflect the nonorder of their occurrence.
In 1994, after almost fifteen years of working in faculty development,
disseminating educational materials, a variety of administrative
assignments, and teaching the occasional upper-division
and graduate courses, I returned to the classroom to teach entry-level
required courses to beginning students. It was a sort of a
midlife career move. As I took stock in midcareer, I realized that
the most important and personally satisfying work I had done, the
work with the greatest chance of making a difference, was work I
completed in the classroom. I decided to return, finishing out my
career as it had started, by teaching undergraduates.
At that time, I was motivated not to teach as I had during the
first years of my career. Stud ... read full excerpt from Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice ebook
