College Teaching--How do we get better???

I recently participated in a weekend retreat on college teaching. Honestly, almost every topic we covered (from class organization, student diversity, how to engage students, etc.) made me think more deeply about teaching. I have limited teaching experience, so at times the class was able to give me background and tools for thinking about issues related to my teaching skills, and this, in turn, increased my confidence and excitement about teaching. However, at the end of the exhausting weekend, I found myself still feeling overwhelmed by my lack of experience. In many ways, I still felt the same lack of confidence when it came to teaching, and in fact, was even more overwhelmed by the task at hand after becoming aware of the wide range of teaching strategies that I was inexperienced with.

For me, I know that much of this comes down to practice, plain and simple. But this got me to thinking about the role of teacher confidence in how well a person teaches, how easily a teacher bounces back from missteps in the classroom, how a teacher appears to her students, and how all this effects learning. In thinking about this, I came across some research on how teachers’ evaluations of their efficacy in the classroom can have dramatic impacts on learning. And this got me to thinking about how these concepts fit into the larger scheme of “how do we get better as teachers,” besides the obvious answer of practice.

In this blog, I’ll introduce some of the research that’s been conducted on self-efficacy in teaching, and then I’ll briefly discuss some resources and approaches that are available to help us improve our effectiveness as teachers. And, of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.