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The proposals that we have made for better practice are united by a single driving characteristic: rather than the traditional concern with the development and transmission of geographical knowledge, they are student centred - concerned with the development of students as geographers and as individuals. In this final chapter, we round off our discussion by sketching out ten guiding principles that underpin much of our discussion and add some final thoughts on the nature of good teaching.
The ten principles that we offer are not, in themselves, wholly original. At the time when we were trying to codify our own inventory of those principles, we came across a list of 'guiding principles' compiled by a study supported by the American Association of Higher Education, the Education Commission of the States and the Johnson Foundation (Chickering and Ganson, 1987). The first seven that we list below come from that study: we see no reason to alter them in any way other than minor changes in terminology. The remaining three (8-10 below) draw on additional dimensions that have been highlighted in this book.
Frequent staff-student contact, in and out of classes, is the most important factor in student motivation and involvement. The staff's concern helps students survive rough times and keep on working. Knowing a few members of the teaching staff well enhances students' intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own value and future plans.
2 Good practice encourages co-operation among students
Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one's own ideas and responding to others' reactions improves thinking and deepens understanding.
3 Good practice encourages active learning
Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing pre-packaged assignments and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.
4 Good practice gives prompt feedback
Knowing what you know and do not know focuses learning. Students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. In getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence. In classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. At various points during college, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know and how to assess themselves.
5 Good practice emphasizes time on task
Time plus energy equals learning. There is no substitute for time on task. Learning to use one's time well is critical for students and professionals alike. Students need help in learning effective time management. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. How an institution defines time expectations for students, teachers, administrators and other professional staff can establish the basis for high performance for all.
6 Good practice communicates high expectations
Expect more and you will get it. High expectations are important for everyone- for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when teachers and institutions hold high expectations of themselves and make extra efforts.
7 Good practice respects diverse talents and ways of learning
There are many different roads to learning. People bring different talents and styles of learning to college. Brilliant students in the seminar room may be all thumbs in the laboratory or art studio. Students rich in 'hands-on' experience may not do so well with theory. Students need the opportunity to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. Then they can be pushed to learning in new ways that do not come so easily.
8 Good practice evaluates itself
Knowing how your efforts are being received by students and what they are really learning is a vital stimulus to improving teaching. Formal course evaluation may not always be necessary for this; rather, what is needed is a reflexive evaluative attitude to your teaching.
9 Good practice is clear about its aims and objectives
Educationalists state many aims and objectives and rightly so. Aims are broad desired outcomes of teaching, whereas objectives are more specific testable outcomes. Without some stated aims it is diff1cult to design and structure courses and, without some explicit objectives, it is hard to assess or evaluate them.
10 Good practice consults the educational literature
There is a well-researched educational literature relevant to teaching in higher education. A conscientious teacher will consult authorities such as Beard (1976), Brown and Atkins (1988) and Eble (1988). For the geographer, additional ideas and comments are to be found in the pages of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education. The teacher in higher education might also consult the literature for schools geography teachers in the pages of Teaching Geography, Journal of Geography and Geographical Education which are full of valuable ideas that can be readily adapted for use in higher education.
Quite what is meant by 'good' teaching is another matter. All that we can do by way of conclusion is to say what it is not and to say something about the conditions necessary to achieve it. First, mechanistically efficient teaching is almost never good teaching. Second, thinking and reading about good teaching is not a sufficient condition for it either. Moreover, thinking and reading about good teaching is not even a necessary condition for delivering it. We have all experienced brilliant teaching from people who have never opened an educational text in their lives. However, as academics we surely believe that reflection and research should provide insights into good teaching practice. In our role as teachers of geography, we should subject what we do to the same critical scrutiny that we give to our own and other people's research. Finally, good teaching may not be all that important in gaining tenure or promotion, but it is certainly more fun and more rewarding than bad teaching. In the last analysis, it is the most direct and important way by which we can discharge our responsibilities to knowledge, to our students and, through them, to society.
Pages created 20 May 1999