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Kenneth Eble wrote about teaching, "It is attention to the particulars that brings any craft
or art to a high degree of development" (1988, p. 6). This exercise is designed to uncover "this high degree of
development" embodied in the particulars of classroom practice. What is it that good teachers in the different disciplines
and interdisciplines know and can do in the classroom that will have a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on students?
What episodes and "telling moments" reflect that know-how? Identify
a telling episode or some incident of actual classroom practice that reveals something distinctive about your approach to
teaching your students. You might select a particular assignment you have made, a laboratory demonstration you have used,
an interactive group activity you have organized, or a lecture and follow-up discussion you have conducted.
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Outline (bullets, numbers, etc.) that classroom episode. In that outline you should make clear what
you expected students to be able to do intellectually, physically, or emotionally after experiencing the episode; what you
did in the episode; what your students were supposed to do; and how you determined whether the episode had the desired influence
on the students (did it help and encourage them to learn something worth learning in a way that has had a sustained and substantial
influence on how they think/act/feel without harming them?) In addition to that
outline, write a brief memo (1-5 pages) on your episode using any of the following prompts that you find provocative:
What made it work? What did you assume about how and why people learn? Where did it fail?
How would you change the episode next time? Why did you choose to document this particular classroom episode? Is it a particularly
compelling, insightful or artful rendition of a key concept in the course or field? A new metaphor or demonstration you have
developed to illuminate a topic that students perennially find particularly difficult? An exercise which allows students actively
to experience and engage in scholarly inquiry? A unique interpretation you bring to the topic that distinguishes you from
your colleagues?
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What did you hope students would be able to do intellectually or physically as a result of this session?
Did you hope to change any attitudes? Why did you decide to use these practices to promote these learning objectives? Did
the class session go as planned or deviate from your design? How so? Why? Did you change direction to take advantage of some
new opportunity, get around an obstacle, or deal with a new circumstance? What
context is needed to understand the sample? What questions are you trying to help students learn to answer? What larger questions
will these answers illuminate? What reasoning or other abilities are you trying to help students develop? Where are we in
the unfolding of this help? What have you and the students been doing up to this point in the term? What topics have you considered?
What will you do in the days and weeks to follow? What will you ask students to do? This
exercise was developed by Ken Bain based on an earlier exercise developed by Russell Edgerton, Pat Hutchings, Kathleen Quinlan,
and Lee Shulman.
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