Best Teaching Practices Focus for Learning Communities Workshop

Dr. Bobbi Jentes Mason is a “big ideas" person.  Her friends even bought her a license plate, "N2Ideas." Many of those ideas focus on changes in education—big changes.

"In the past, we thought teaching and learning were the same thing," the director of single subject teacher education at Fresno Pacific University told a gathering hosted by Learning Communities at West Hills College recently.  “If the student didn’t learn it, something was wrong with the student.  Our focus was on what the teacher did—on the input."

"Today, we’re shifting our focus from what we (instructors) do in the classroom to what or how students demonstrate their understanding—the output," she said.

She quoted authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe who have written a book, “Understanding by Design," who suggest that we need to turn the traditional view of teaching on its head and go to backward design.

There are three stages of backward design," she said.  “The first stage is to determine what you want students to know and/or be able to do.  Once you understand that clearly, you move to stage two—the evidence.  What kind of assessment tools am I going to use for them to demonstrate to me that they understand?  Stage three is where we plan what we want to do."

She also shared information with groups in Lemoore and Coalinga (via video teleconference) about the big three “A"s that keep appearing at conferences for teachers—assessment, accountability and accreditation:

• Assessment involves performance exams—what students have learned and what colleges and universities are doing.
• Accountability is data driven.  She said the Bush administration has a task force looking into mandated testing for college graduates.  “That is an external force that we are all going to face."
• Accreditation that flows out of accountability, which she says will be much more data driven in the future.

Dr. Mason also quoted the work of Harvard University President Derek Bok in his latest book, “Our Underachieving Colleges—A Candid Look."

"There is a huge gap in college teaching between the best practices and common practice," she notes that Dr. Bok writes.  He suggests we need to intensify research about testing and measurement and transform campuses into learning organizations in more thoughtful ways rather than just through trial and error.

"This is part of what we’re doing here today," Dr. Mason told the West Hills’ faculty and administrators who participated.

"The essence of good instruction is not in presentation of content (which she calls a data dump) but in coaching students to perform better," she said. 

Dr. Mason’s visit to West Hills was funded through a Learning Communities' grant from the Carnegie Foundation.