Getting my teaching license this year has made me think a lot about pedagogy, and I've come to the realization that the classes I've taken have been designed poorly.
Pedagogy means setting learning goals and planning a course to meet those goals. Lectures offer content transfer. That makes us more knowledgeable about a certain topic, if we absorb it successfully, but it doesn't necessarily make us better writers or thinkers. Section has the chance to push us further, but often consists of more lecturing or a poorly facilitated discussion.
Most professors and graduate students are not teachers. They are here to be intellectuals, and teach future generations of intellectuals (maybe), but their primary vocation is not teacher. And they don't act like teachers. I have met a number of graduate students who don't know what to do when a student struggles with the material. There's also the attitude that students deemed less intelligent or unprepared aren't worth dealing with. If grade school teachers all reacted this way, we would be in trouble.
Of course college students should learn more independently than high school students. But that shouldn't be because our classes have poor (or no) pedagogy. Good pedagogy also requires students to think and prepare on their own, but supports that process. College learning has felt a lot like "sink or swim."
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