Re: courses (etc.) on pedagogical technique

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Tina Fanetti wrote:
> What about a class in graduate school on teaching?
> I mean really teaching not just being a teaching assistant.
>
> It would be sooo useful.  Here people throw around all this
> pedagogy that I have never heard of and need to look up.

Such courses exist.  For instance:

 -- If you want to each anything in the K-12 range, you need
a teaching certificate, and in most jurisdictions coursework
in that area is required.  Because of the requirement, such
courses are copiously available.  If you've got students who
sometimes act like 12th-graders, such a course might be just
the ticket.

 -- If you want a flight instructor certificate, you have to
take the "FOI" (Fundamentals of Instruction) written test (in
addition to the technical aeronautical knowledge test).  This
covers all sorts of things, from practical psychology to how
to design tests.

 -- When I was a grad student, the department held a 1/2-day
teaching-techniques "orientation" course for first-time Teaching
Assistants.  It was pretty useless, but they tried.

 -- Of more use, the university had a "teaching support center"
that you could call on.  (They wouldn't show up unless invited.)
I invited them.  They videotaped my interaction with the class
and afterward gave a pretty insightful critique.

 -- For that matter, when I was an undergraduate, there
was a mandatory course on "technical presentations" which
included some discussion of basic pedagogical techniques.
There was also an optional course that was a projects
course, that went around rating the various professors
and giving awards for the best teaching.  Obviously that
required thinking pretty hard about what constituted good
teaching.

=============

Suggestion:  Find such a course.  Check on the reputation of the
instructor.  If you get there and find the instructor knows less
than you do (which is not particularly unlikely) drop the course
and try again.  Try again.  Don't give up.  After not-too-many
tries you should be able to find an instructor who actually knows
what's what.

A listing of courses in the Sioux City area can be found at
  http://www.aea12.k12.ia.us/tsgc/coursessummer.htm

Also, for self-study, there's thousands of web pages that discuss
such things, e.g.
  http://www.google.com/search?q=designing+multiple-choice+tests

http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/teachtip.htm