I'm a very amateur teacher, but have received great feedback on my "teaching style",
which I've refined based on two things: how often I get puzzled looks during a technique, how often I get thanked for using a specific technique.
I'm curious what this looks like in the big leagues - how this "scales".
Thanks for your time.
One thing about feedback this is counterintuitive is that, students are generally very bad at understanding what actually helps them learn. When I say learn I mean gain a conceptual understanding and procedural fluency in whatever they are learning that sticks with an ability to appropriately transfer that knowledge beyond the context they've seen it in.
So unfortunately when a student says "that was great!" research has found that to be negatively correlated with learning.
If you want to delve into a study that talks about this and what effective teaching looks like in the long-term I really recommend this study done at the US Air Force Academy [0].
It is the closest thing I have seen to a gold standard study in education where a lot of research is dubious at best:
Look at what Carrell and West handed us with this study:
- 7 year study at the US Air Force Academy - 10,534 students - 421 faculty members - 30 core courses, all standardized (math, science, social science, humanities, and engineering) - Random assignment of students to professors in initial course and follow-on courses
[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/653808
I've got an email in my profile if you want to discuss!
Consider three ways to teach:
A) Do what's best for the student's long term learning. ("deep learning".)
B) Optimize for the student doing well on a specific type of test (e.g. AP Calculus AB). ("teach to the test")
C) Optimize for the student doing well on a specific set of questions known in advance.
In the study, instructors had all three options.
In most high stakes testing, instructors have only options A and B.
The study seems to conflate B and C.
But A and B are more similar, than are B and C.
It would have been an interesting study if the instructors hadn't had access to the exams beforehand.
(Although typical US university high stakes exams are designed by course instructors who can do (C), I don't see this as relevant, as instructors can more easily help their students do well by making the tests easier.)