Evidence-Based Teaching E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B TL Single Issue Teaching and Learning
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 214

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

What could be more important to college and university facultythan teaching well? Indeed, in the past several years researchers have not onlyinvestigated key variables influencing teaching and learning, theyalso have applied empirical findings to develop and refine newsystems of teaching and learning--approaches that provide theinfrastructure for the day-to-day organization and assessment ofstudent learning over the course of an academic term. This volumepresents an overview of these systems and offers an assessment ofthe effectiveness of each relative to both student learning andenjoyment of the learning process. Written by leading teaching scholars, these systems include thelecture, problem-based learning, case studies, team-based learning,interteaching, service-learning, just-in-time teaching, Web-basedcomputer-aided personalized instruction, and online teaching. Eachcontributor outlines the basic principles of a system, describeshow to implement the system, and reviews the system'soverall effectiveness. This is the 128th volume of the Jossey-Bass higher educationquarterly report New Directions for Teaching and Learning,which offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques forimproving college teaching based on the experience of seasonedinstructors and the latest findings of educational andpsychological researchers.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Editors’ Notes

Although college and university teachers have long emphasized effective teaching (e.g., James, [1899] 1962), the last two decades have witnessed an especially powerful upsurge in empirical research on investigating what it means to teach effectively (for example, Bain, 2004; Gurung and Schwartz, 2009; Lowman, 1995). This trend was likely prompted by the convergence of two important events: the publication of Ernst Boyer’s (1990) now-classic Scholarship Reconsidered, which ignited the SoTL (scholarship of teaching and learning) “movement,” and the national call for teachers at all levels to become more accountable for the effectiveness of their teaching methods. The result of this outpouring of pedagogical research is the building of a firm evidence base for many teaching practices. Indeed, disciplinary-specific pedagogical journals as well as more general teaching journals are flourishing and new ones have appeared (for example, the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning); teaching conferences or research conferences with teaching programs embedded within them are as popular as ever; and teaching and learning centers, which exist primarily to improve teaching effectiveness, are now the keystone feature of faculty development on hundreds of college and university campuses.

SoTL exists in many forms, but for our purposes, we have conceptualized it as having primarily only two. One form is research that is conducted on discrete aspects of teaching—those techniques and tactics that can be dropped into a course at any point during the semester and at the teacher’s will, such as demonstrations, discussion questions, classroom assessment techniques, and so on. The research question of course is always the same: Will this technique or tactic improve students’ learning of concept X? The defining feature of this sort of SoTL is that the research is conducted on only one unique aspect of the class. A glance at any pedagogical journal will reveal that this research constitutes a substantial proportion of SoTL work.

The other form of SoTL has been the development and refinement of “systems” of teaching and learning that define how a course is taught throughout the semester. This sort of research aims at identifying not only the system’s effectiveness at achieving high student learning outcomes throughout the course but also the key components of it that are responsible for this achievement. Among the earliest, and indeed the classic example, of such systems is Keller’s (1968) personalized system of instruction (PSI) in which a given course is structured, from beginning to end, in a format that strictly defines both the teacher’s role in facilitating learning and the student’s role in interacting with that information and exhibiting the extent to which it is learned.

Since Keller’s original research, a variety of systems of teaching and learning have emerged. This volume of New Directions for Teaching and Learning focuses on these systems for two reasons. The first is to introduce readers to the array of such evidence-based systems that are currently in practice in many colleges and universities, thus providing an accessible resource to support instructional efforts and inform and improve teaching practices. The second is to summarize the empirical evidence that reinforces the effectiveness of some of these systems.

We began this project after many years of work to enhance teaching and learning processes in our individual instructional practices and with graduate students and faculty members in faculty development settings. After reviewing the data, we strongly believe that several evidence-based systems of teaching and learning can be used in a variety of different instructional settings, depending on one’s teaching goals and student learning objectives.

Accordingly, there are two primary audiences for this volume. The first is graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, full- and part-time faculty members, tenure track and non–tenure track instructors—in short, anyone providing instruction to students within a higher education context. The second is faculty developers—those academic professionals responsible for assisting instructional staff in providing high-quality learning experiences for their students. Both of these audiences will likely benefit from having a concise and clear resource for understanding, implementing, and revising contextually appropriate systems of teaching and learning.

In addition to serving as a compendium of the latest research and theory on evidence-based teaching (EBT), this volume also provides a rationale for adopting EBT practices as well as the need for continued empirical investigation to provide richer and broader evidence of teaching effectiveness. We provide ten examples of evidence-based systems of teaching and learning, including the lecture, in this volume. Our coverage of systems of teaching is not exhaustive; rather it is representative of the kinds of systems of teaching and learning currently in practice. Our authors are expert practitioners who invented and developed a particular system or who are leading researchers into a specific system. In general, each article adheres to the same format, starting with an introduction to the system, followed with advice on how to implement it, and concluding with a summary of the evidence that supports the effectiveness of that system relative to student learning and student enjoyment of learning.

As you read and think about the contents of this volume, keep in mind that every system of teaching and learning may be applicable to a range of instructional settings, but not likely all of them. Thus, in thinking about how well a particular system may work for you as a teacher, be mindful of the particular instructional context in which you teach. It is also important for you to think carefully about what sort of modifications you could make to tweak or otherwise tinker with a given system so that you could implement it for your purposes. In that way, you, too, can participate in, and contribute to, the growing body of literature on EBT.

William Buskist

James E. Groccia

Editors

References

Bain, K. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Boyer, E. L. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.

Gurung, R.A.R., and Schwartz, B. M. Optimizing Teaching and Learning: Practicing Pedagogical Research. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

James, W. Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1962. (Originally published 1899.)

Keller, F. S. “Good-bye, Teacher . . .” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1968, 1, 79–89.

Lowman, J. Mastering the Techniques of Teaching. (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.

WILLIAM BUSKIST is the distinguished professor in the teaching of psychology and a faculty fellow at the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Auburn University.

JAMES E. GROCCIA is director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and associate professor of higher education at Auburn University.

1

Need for Evidence-Based Teaching

James E. Groccia, William Buskist

This chapter reviews the current status of university teaching and provides an overview for the need for evidence-based teaching. It describes problems with defining evidence as well as distinctions among systems of teaching and specific teaching actions.

Teaching is just too damned difficult to get right. It is always possible to improve.

—Petty, 2006, p. ix

Petty’s words send a clarion message to college and university teachers around the world. However, we believe that rather than being a mere possibility to improve as teachers, it is always necessary to improve. One way of improving our teaching is to adopt teaching methods that are based on or supported by evidence of success in enhancing student learning.

Current Status of Higher Education: Critics and Supporters

Most teachers base their instructional practices on tradition, the opinion of experienced practitioners, ideology, faddism, marketing, politics, or personal experience gained through trial and error (Beder and Medina, 2001; Slavin, 2008). This volume presents several of what we call evidence-based systems of teaching. We encourage readers to look at the evidence supporting each system and consider if one or more of these instructional approaches would help them achieve their teaching and student learning objectives. We hope that this volume will help develop a new tradition of teaching—one based on evidence and research-supported practice.

Some faculty may see evidence-based teaching (EBT) as the latest fad in education, but we believe that it is more than a new trendy fashion. It refers to an approach that holds that practice should be capable of being justified in terms of sound evidence about its likely outcomes. As Robert Cole (1999) stated: “Education may not be an exact science, but it is too important to allow it to be determined by unfounded opinion, whether of politicians, teachers, researchers, or anyone else” (p. 1). Yet it is ironic that within higher education institutions dedicated to the discovery, transformation, and dissemination of knowledge, the choice of teaching strategies is based largely on experiential, commonsense, or anecdotal evidence.

In recent years, there have been calls for education to follow the fields of medicine and agriculture and embrace evidence as a foundation for practice. These calls have resulted in several national efforts in the United States, such as No Child Left Behind, What Works Clearinghouse, Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center, and the Best Evidence Encyclopedia; the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordination Centre in the United Kingdom; and the Campbell Collaboration in Norway (Slavin, 2008). However, these efforts have focused on primary and secondary (K–12) education, not higher or tertiary education.

As the world continues to shrink, or become “flatter,” in Thomas Friedman’s (2007) terms, the quality of higher education and the need to facilitate high-level learning has never been more important. The new world economy is highly knowledge intensive, and to succeed, one must be good at constantly learning—if one stands still, one falls back (Rischard, 2002). What goes on inside the world’s higher-education classrooms has a profound impact on more than an individual student’s grades: Global economic and social success, and even worldwide survival, may rest in the balance (Groccia, 2010). Higher education stands at a crossroads; millions of students are entering a higher-education system that requires a recalibration of teaching methods and learning outcomes (American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2007). To be maximally relevant to this emerging new world reality, everyone involved with college and university teaching, regardless of discipline, must recognize the need to use the most effective teaching and learning methods.

Higher education, specifically its focus on quality teaching, has experienced much criticism in the past two decades. Under the general term “accountability,” legislative and governing bodies as well as public interest groups increasingly ask for evidence of higher education’s impact. Rightly or wrongly, parents and students appear to believe that colleges are expensive and wasteful. The public seems to be increasingly dissatisfied with higher education’s perceived lack of interest in teaching due to increasing emphasis on research, publication, and disciplinary specialization, all of which seem to be largely unrelated to students’ academic welfare (Bok, 2006; Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, 1998; Kline, 1977).

Despite increased curricular offerings, expansion of educational services and resources, the use of powerful educational technology, and development of innovative new curricula to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, there is little hard evidence that our students learn more than they did fifty years ago (Bok, 2006). As a result, Bok has called for increased attention to improved teaching, more student engagement in learning, and higher quality faculty development to revitalize U.S. higher education.

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE, 2006), in its review of worldwide educational statistics, provided evidence that U.S. higher education, when compared with educational outcomes in other countries, is not doing so well by its students. For example, in the report, the United States ranked sixteenth of twenty-seven developed countries in the percentage of students who complete their first undergraduate degree. This report clearly indicates that American higher education is underperforming relative to many other countries (NCPPHE, 2006).

The ever-increasing price of attending America’s colleges and universities has also drawn increased attention with respect to whether students and their parents are getting what they paid for. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (2007), for the 2006–2007 academic year, the net cost of attending college grew at a faster rate than both median income and disposable per capita income during the 1980s and 1990s at all types of U.S. higher-education institutions. Adding to the problem of rising costs is the added debt burden that students and parents must shoulder as they try to finance college education. According to data published by the Project on Student Debt (2010), in 2008, 67 percent of students graduating from four-year colleges and universities had student loan debt, and the average debt for a graduating senior rose to $23,200 from $18,650 in 2004 (a 24 percent increase). An even more important impact for the future is the resulting reduction in access to higher education for students with limited financial means due to increasing costs and debt.

Thus, given that college and university education is expensive and at many institutions the quality of education students receive may be questionable, it seems reasonable to ask, if not demand, that teachers modify their approaches to instruction and use the most effective teaching methods currently available. Using proven effective teaching techniques would enhance the quality of student learning and perhaps quiet critics who lament the poor preparation of students for living and working in the “real world.”

Nature of Evidence-Based Teaching and Its Implications for Teaching and Learning

EBT has its roots in the clinical fields of medicine, nursing, psychology, and social work. Sackett, Rosenberg, Gray, Haynes, and Richardson (1996) defined evidence-based medicine as “integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research” (pp. 71–72). The American Psychological Association (2005) defined evidence-based practice as the “integration of the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences” (p. 1). Kazdin (2008) defined evidence-based treatment as “the interventions or techniques . . . that have produced therapeutic change in controlled trials” (p. 147). Based on these definitions, Metz, Espiritu, and Moore (2007) developed this definition of evidence-based practice for out-of-school educational settings: “The integration of the best available research with out-of-school time expertise within the context of child, teen, family, and community characteristics, culture, and preferences” (p. 1). Adapting these definitions to settings in higher education, we define EBT as

the conscientious, explicit, and judicious integration of best available research on teaching technique and expertise within the context of student, teacher, department, college, university, and community characteristics.

EBT is not without controversy. Researchers and educators disagree about several critical issues, including definitions of what constitutes evidence, appropriateness of adopting medical or agricultural models for use in educational settings, the managerial agenda of evidence-based education, the role of values in educational research and practice, and the amount of accumulated knowledge necessary on which to base practice (Biesta, 2007). We do not attempt to resolve these issues here but instead take a more pragmatic, applied approach and focus on general systems of teaching that link research to practice in ways that might also be labeled evidence suggested, evidence informed, or evidence influenced.

One does not need to use a meta-analysis of all relevant randomized controlled trials to establish a definition and basis of evidence for good practice. Rating systems to assess the hierarchy of levels of evidence as espoused by others (e.g., LoBiondo-Wood and Haber, 2006) go far beyond the typical college classroom instructor’s expertise and time availability. In the face of current realities of how college faculty teach and the process by which they choose their instructional approaches, any decision to adopt a particular system of teaching that considers evidence from reviews of systematic descriptive, quantitative, and qualitative studies would be a clear improvement. The teaching systems presented in this volume rest on accessible and useful evidence. Teachers can be secure in their choice of any or all of these approaches, as each has been clearly documented to be effective in enhancing student learning.

In addition to what we know about teaching, we also know a lot about how people learn (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 2000). Ambrose and others (2010) described seven principles of learning that underpin academic practice and form the building blocks in the construction of integrated, holistic systems of teaching. These seven principles are:

1. Prior knowledge influences current and future learning.

2. How students organize knowledge influences how they learn and how they apply what they know.

3. Motivation determines, directs, and sustains learning.

4. Students develop learning mastery by acquiring component skills and practicing combining and integrating them.

5. Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback facilitates learning.

6. Emotional, social, and intellectual climate factors influence learning.

7. Metacognitive monitoring of learning facilitates further learning.

These seven evidence-based principles identify specific behaviors or conditions that influence learning, either of which in turn influence specific faculty teaching skills and techniques that can be then combined into integrated systems of teaching. However, our focus on systems of teaching does not describe the empirical evidence behind these principles of how people learn or the specific components of teaching and learning (e.g., feedback, active learning, testing effects, dual code channels) or other teaching techniques that are not part of a formalized, highly developed instructional system approach. Instead, our focus is on the integrated systems of teaching per se and their overall effectiveness in (a) producing changes in students’ learning and (b) the extent to which students enjoy the process of learning. Indeed, the importance of investigating specific components of these integrated systems is a strong impetus for future research on these systems, a topic we take up in the final article in this volume.

Before we suggest that faculty members adopt EBT methods, it is useful to get a sense of current teaching approaches used in U.S. college classrooms. The most recent data reported by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles (DeAngelo and others, 2009, p. 10) on faculty approaches to teaching are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Faculty Approaches to Teaching

Source: Adapted from DeAngelo et al., 2009. p. 10.

The teaching techniques highlighted in the DeAngelo et al. report, with the exception of cooperative learning and lecturing, are specific pedagogic actions, not integrated systems of teaching. According to these data, there has been a marked reduction in the use of extensive lecturing from 2005 to 2008 coupled with small increases in student-centered teaching approaches. In light of this information on how faculty members currently teach, there seems to be much room for the adoption of evidence-based teaching methods. Access to models of teaching systems based on evidence, such as those presented in this volume, should lead to higher-quality teaching and higher-quality student learning.

Will individual faculty members who have chosen to apply EBT be able to sustain these practices without fundamental changes in departmental, college, or institutional structures? We believe so. The concept and application of academic freedom ensures that individual faculty members have the authority to use instructional methods that they deem, based on their own professional judgments, effective in achieving their teaching and learning objectives. Use of teaching practices that are supported by evidence, although they may be nontraditional and uncommon, should be more justifiable to deans and department heads (and also to students who may have developed a degree of comfort with traditional teaching approaches) than practices based on tradition and common sense. To be sure, the primary purpose of this volume is to heighten faculty members’ awareness of EBT in an effort to help them improve their teaching practices and thereby enhance their students’ learning, thinking, and analytical skills as well as their motivation for, and enjoyment of, learning.

References

Ambrose, S. A., and others. How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010.

American Association of Colleges and Universities. College Learning for the New Global Century: A Report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise, 2007. http://www.hivcampuseducation.org/LEAP/documents/GlobalCentury_final.pdf

American Psychological Association. Policy Statement on Evidence-Based Practice in Psychology, 2005. http://www2.apa.org/practice/ebpstatement.pdf

Beder, H., and Medina, P. Classroom Dynamics in Adult Literacy Education. Cambridge, Mass.: National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy, 2001.

Biesta, G. “Why ‘What Works’ Won’t Work: Evidence-Based Practice and the Democratic Deficit in Educational Research.” Educational Theory, 2007, 57, 1–22.

Bok, D. C. Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. Reinventing undergraduate education: A blueprint for America’s research universities. Stony Brook: State University of New York. 1998. http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/pres/boyer.nsf/

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., and Cocking, R. R. (eds.). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2000.

Cole, R. Manifesto for Evidence-Based Education. Durham University Center for Evaluation and Monitoring, 1999. http://www.cemcentre.org/evidence-based-education/manifesto-for-evidence-based-education

DeAngelo, L., and others. The American College Teacher: National Norms for the 2007–2008 HERI Faculty Survey. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, 2009.

Friedman, T. The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. New York: Picador, 2007.

Groccia, J. E. “Why Faculty Development? Why Now?” In A. Saroyan and M. Frenay (eds.), Building Teaching Capacities in Universities: A Comprehensive International Model (pp. 1–20). Sterling, Va.: Stylus, 2010.

Kazdin, A. E. “Evidence-Based Treatment and Practice: New Opportunities to Bridge Clinical Research and Practice, Enhance the Knowledge Base, and Improve Patient Care.” American Psychologist, 2008, 63, 146–159.

Kline, M. Why the Professor Can’t Teach: Mathematics and the Dilemma of University Education. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.

LoBiondo-Wood, G., and Haber, J. Nursing Research: Method and Critical Appraisal for Evidence-Based Practice. (6th ed.) St. Louis, Mo.: Mosby, 2006.

Metz, A.J.R., Espiritu, R., and Moore, K. A. “What Is Evidence-Based Practice?” Child Trends. Washington, D.C.: Atlantic Philanthropies, 2007. www.childtrends.org

National Center for Public Policy on Higher Education (NCPPHE). Measuring Up 2006: The National Report Card on Education, 2006. http://measuringup.highereducation.org/_docs/2006/NationalReport_2006.pdf

National Center for Educational Statistics. Digest of Educational Statistics 2007. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/ch_1.asp

Petty, G. Evidence Based Teaching: A Practical Approach. Bath, U.K.: Nelson Thornes, 2006.

Project on Student Debt. “Quick Facts about Student Debt.” 2010. http://projectonstudentdebt.org/files/File/Debt_Facts_and_Sources.pdf

Rischard, J. F. High Noon: Twenty Global Issues, Twenty Years to Solve Them. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Sackett, D. L., and others. “Evidence Based Medicine: What It Is and What It Isn’t.” British Medical Journal, 1996, 321, 71–72.

Slavin, R. E. “Perspectives on Evidence-Based Research in Education—What Works? Issues in Synthesizing Educational Program Evaluations.” Educational Researcher, 2008, 37, 5–14.

JAMES E. GROCCIA is director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and associate professor of Higher Education at Auburn University.

WILLIAM BUSKIST is the distinguished professor of the teaching of psychology and a faculty fellow at the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at Auburn University.

2

The Lecture

S. Raj Chaudhury

Academic lectures for the purpose of instruction maintain an important presence in most colleges and universities worldwide. This chapter examines the current state of the lecture and how learning sciences research can inform the most effective use of this method.

Most people tire of the lecture in ten minutes; clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to lectures at all.

—Canadian satirist Stephen Leacock

Leacock’s quote (Sherin, 1995, p. 104) notwithstanding, several years ago I attended a memorable hour-long lecture. In his acceptance speech for an award from the American Association of Physics Teachers, physicist Dean Zollman recounted a lesson he learned from his daughter, Kim, when she visited his university (Zollman, 1996).

One day we were walking down a hallway, and Kim was looking in the rooms as a young, rather inquisitive girl does. She saw a scene which for her was very unusual—over a hundred students sitting in a room and watching one person talk… . She asked me the rather obvious question, “What are all those people doing?” I came up with what I thought was an excellent answer, “They’re learning physics.” Her response was “Do they just sit there?” (p. 114)

Zollman went on to share that

thinking about how people might learn physics was rather new to me, but I realized immediately that this question was profound. At the age of eight or nine she knew that just sitting there was not the way that people learned—it certainly wasn’t the way that she learned. (p. 114)

Zollman delivered his speech in a large hall attended by several hundred people, all of whom had substantial training in physics and experience in teaching it. No doubt that many of them, as I did, marveled at the power of this story and made mental notes to think further about this issue—how do our students learn when they sit in large lecture classes alongside scores of their classmates listening to one person talk? Zollman’s lecture was inspiring, effective in delivering a message that I still remember, and at the time prompted further thought on an important issue in student learning.

Teachers rarely lecture under such optimal conditions. A typical fifteen-week semester might require instructors to deliver forty-five lectures to students who may have little background or interest in the subject matter. Other classes and distractions from work or co-curricular activities can further reduce the impact of learning from a lecture (Davis, 2009; Di Leonardi, 2007; Exley and Dennick, 2004; Svinicki and McKeachie, 2011).