From Lessons Learned the Hard Way to Lessons Learned the Harder Way.

Abstract

My departure from traditional methods of teaching and assessment (i.e., lecture and close-ended exams) was prompted years ago by a “gut feeling” that has morphed into an explicit examination of my teaching practice and students’ reactions to it. The scholarly approach and empirical evidence in “Teachers and Learning” (Hutchings, Huber & Ciccone, 2011, Chapter 2) provided me with the scientific and social support I needed to publically challenge existing norms regarding teaching practices, reevaluate my data collection efforts, and advocate for change based on best practices, not on tradition, both inside my classroom and beyond. So there I was, less than a year into my first assistant professor position, teaching on a July afternoon in a poorly vented classroom in Texas. I was deeply involved in an animated lecture about an event I had experienced as a public school teacher that beautifully demonstrated a concept for the Educational Psychology course I was teaching, when a student in the front row looked at her watch. At that moment, I questioned everything I knew about teaching. I froze mid-sentence and stared in disbelief at the students in the room. How could they consider checking the time in the midst of my thoroughlyresearched, well-crafted example? How could they be distracted by hunger or heat in the room with such an excellent example of faculty engagement, enthusiasm, and preparation before them? How could they be anticipating the end of class, just 20