At our May 18 meeting, we discussed the first half of the article, “Deep teaching in a college STEM classroom”, by Bryan M. Dewsbury, in Cultural Studies of Science Education (2020) 15: 169-191 (Dewsbury Deep Teaching). Consider the following questions:
- What is meant by ‘Deep Teaching’?
- Connect with students to connect them with content.
- We may have thought of “higher learning” as in Bloom’s taxonomy, but we must connect with students to get them “there”.
- Students want to talk about themselves and seem more comfortable doing this online. How can we encourage the level of participation we’ve had online in person?
- Continue discussion forums
- 5-minute free-write
- Think-pair-share
- How do we build relationships with students on and offline?
- Asking about and using preferred pronouns and names
- The names they tell us may be different from the names they call each other.
- How is self-awareness as discussed in the article is important for the instructor and what does that mean to you?
- Am I welcoming? Reflect on your in-class personality.
- Do the students feel they can answer?
- Do I give feedback to colleagues differently than to students? Consider the tone in electronic communication.
- Know your biases (consider taking Implicit Association Tests on a regular basis. Do we judge our students? Do we make assumptions? Many students take our class to get their degree and become a doctor. Do we assume they won’t achieve this?
- We must also deal with student biases. All of us at the meeting are female, some minorities. Be transparent: “Here’s a bias in science. Let’s discuss it.”
- What are the ways in which you build relationships with your students?