Do as I say, not as I do: a personal odyssey.

This is the final article in the series we have edited for this column. We have presented a variety of viewpoints and teaching strategies across the continuum of age groups, from early childhood to graduate education. The authors have included classroom teachers and beginning faculty members, as well as experienced and veteran professors. The article below was written by a retired teacher educator whose interest and involvement in the field continues. She recently completed, with co-author Jeanne Machado, the fifth edition of Student Teaching: Early Childhood Practicum Guide, published by Delmar Learning, 2004.--S.G. & J.W.

What does the concept of best practices mean when it is applied to college/university teaching? Most instructors at the undergraduate and graduate levels teach in the way they themselves were taught: they lecture. According to popular belief, one history professor used the same notes for his lectures for 30 years. Do instructors in departments of elementary and secondary education do likewise? Since most of them, at one time, taught in pre-kindergarten or K-12 schools and had classes in the methods of teaching, do they, too, lecture when hired to teach college students?

When I first started teaching Psychological Foundations of Education at California State College (now University), Hayward, I did what my role models in college did: I prepared lectures, stood at a lectern or table, and delivered them. I did this in spite of the fact that I had been a science major and a science teacher in both high school and junior high settings. During my three years as a preschool teacher-director, I noticed that 4-year-olds enjoyed science in the discovery center more than my junior high students, who hated reading the text and answering the questions at the end of the chapters. Eventually, as Cal State Hayward's teacher preparation programs changed, classes that had been offered three times a week for an hour or twice a week for an hour and a half, were offered only once a week for three or four hours. This scheduling change posed a problem. There was no way I could lecture for that long without losing my voice and putting many of my students to sleep.

Initial Changes and New Teaching Techniques

What could I do? My initial changes involved bringing in as much audio-visual stimulation as I could--films and videotapes, overhead masters, diagrams on the chalkboard. Since I am a visual and auditory learner myself, these were the tools I thought I should use for my own students. But I was forgetting two facts: college/university students have multiple learning styles, and textbooks' costs were rising. Thinking back on my own learning in college, I asked myself why science had been such an exciting major. Eventually, I realized that I loved science because it was interactive. After listening to lab instructions, I could get actively involved--and that meant using visual, auditory, and tactile modes to learn.

During my seventh year at Cal State Hay ward, I was asked to teach courses in the early childhood master's degree program. Later, stimulated by the concept of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP), I tried using interactive techniques in two of my undergraduate classes, an introductory early childhood course and a child development course. Techniques designed to involve students included brainstorming, having them work in small groups, and designing assignments that provided for a variety of interpretations. (One student, for example, titled her paper "The Left-Hander's Term Paper" and wrote it from back to front. Another turned in a sculpture; now that was a challenge to grade!)

Initially, however, some students were confused. What did working in small groups and trying to piece together a puzzle have to do with child development or children's learning? Was not this activity a waste of student time? I used the puzzle activity as an example of problem solving and cooperative learning. Others complained when I assigned them to work in small groups on one of the chapters in the textbook and then report back to the class as a whole. Wasn't I supposed to be the instructor? Others, however, understood quickly that working with peers employed their visual, aural, and (sometimes) tactile senses; they understood that in listening to one another, they occasionally gained insight into how they themselves learned best. Best of all, in teaching each other, their presentations were sometimes more relevant and couched in terminology more easily understood than what I might have used.

The most successful techniques for me were brainstorming and jigsaw. In the jigsaw technique, students were assigned to two groups, a home group and an expert group. Each expert group studied the content of one chapter from the textbook, usually a chapter they chose. After an hour or so of cooperative study, students returned to their respective home groups and taught each other the material learned in their expert groups.

Next Step: Collaboration

Later, I wondered if I could apply the same instructional strategies to my other courses. Again, how could I change? Many of the education students at Hayward complained that they could not afford to buy all of the textbooks required by their various classes. The educational psychology course Teaching and Learning was only one of four required in the first quarter of a newly state-mandated program designed to prepare teachers in only one post-graduate year.

Having attended many committee meetings with colleagues and established working relationships with several, I approached David Stronck, who taught a methods course, Principles of Education, and inquired about using one textbook for both of our classes. David and I had known each other for several years; both of us had been science teachers prior to the completion of our doctorates, although he had remained in the science education field and I had moved into educational psychology. The text I was using included several chapters related to how students learn, and it seemed appropriate for a methods class. At the same time, I asked David about the instructional methods he was teaching. It seemed logical to me to teach the educational psychology course using the same methodology that he would be teaching in the methods course. Would he be amenable to dropping his methods textbook and adopting the educational psychology one? He could use the chapters related to student learning; instructional planning; behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist approaches; information processing; and discovery learning. I would use those related to theories of growth and development, learning theory, classroom management, special students in regular settings, assessment of student learning, and standardized testing.

Transition Difficulties

This collaboration proved to be easier to work out on paper than in reality. The principal questions were: Could I teach theories of development, using discovery as a technique? Would the scientific method lend itself to an exploration of theories of development? Did social learning theory apply to the subject of classroom management? How might information processing be applied to tests and measurements? It was easier to employ brainstorming, for example, in exploring the various ways in which students learn, or to the concept of multiple intelligences. Jigsaw proved to be a way to use more of the text and omit fewer chapters. Unfortunately, most textbooks are written with semester schedules, not 10-week quarters, in mind. Notice that my concern still focused on covering a text, rather than on choosing what principles I considered essential.

The next step was to apply these different techniques to the educational psychology course, and to convince my colleague that he could use the same textbook. After considering several texts, we chose the Biehler and Snowman (1990) text that several of our colleagues and I had been using.

Results

Fortunately, since David and I (with our science backgrounds) planned our syllabi in similar ways, it was perhaps easier to collaborate. We began with a course description (from which we derived course objectives), and listed course requirements based upon the objectives. The objectives were related to those approved by the California State Commission of Teacher Preparation. We listed our office hours and telephone numbers, as well as those of the textbook and publisher. Then, we presented a detailed week-by-week schedule of class meetings and assignments, along with what requirements were due on which specific dates. Penalties for absences and late requirements were also given, as were grade expectations. We modeled our mutual respect when visiting each other's classes through our questions to each other, our respectful responses, and even through our disagreements, which were often handled with humor.

Some of my early childhood students were expecting a standard educational psychology course, and they grumbled about working in small groups and complained that the puzzles, for example, had no bearing on learning theory. David faced some of the same complaints: What did a chapter on theories of learning have to do with preparing lessons for their own students? There were some students who understood immediately what David and I were attempting, and they would instruct their peers. Ah, was there a lesson in this. Why shouldn't university students exhibit as much variability as children and students in kindergarten through 12th grade?

It would be wrong to suggest that our cooperative teaching experiment progressed smoothly, because it did not. David and I taught independently of each other. We shared one textbook and we gave each other our respective syllabi, but I was not always careful to check with him about any changes he might have made in his schedule, nor did he always ask me what I was doing in my class. We did rely on each other's syllabus and decide which chapters each would assign.

Conclusions

The second year went more smoothly and the third was better yet. David and I continued to collaborate in teaching these two courses until I retired. What did Ilearn? Changing my mode of teaching university undergraduate and post-graduate students from using a standard approach to applying the concept of DAP is a process that takes experimenting, monitoring and evaluation, revising, and, most of all, time. I moved from a lecture-question-answer methodology to providing students with choices and with the right to explore and interact with each other. I learned that covering material in a textbook is less important than focusing on a few major concepts and teaching them in differing ways; this process modeled for my students the same methods they were learning in the general methods course. Both they and I learned more effectively through the repeated exposure to the instructional methods that David and I were using.

Reference

Biehler, R.F., & Snowman, J. (1990). Psychology applied to teaching (6th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Helen C. Botnarescue is Professor Emeritus, California State University, Hayward. David R. Stronck is Professor and Team Leader, Department of Teacher Education, California State University, Hayward.