Conference Papers

| paper |

As we think about our classes or ready ourselves to enter the classroom - real or virtual - our focus is on ourselves as teachers, and the act of teaching. We strive to be current in the content area, we search for better curricular materials, and we study instructional methodologies. Indeed, so focused do we become on being better teachers that we may ignore or lose sight of the reason for our endeavor - the students. Our students are not simply an audience for our performance. Teachers are more than performers, because our "performance" requires participation of our students. When we begin to focus on the learner we are reflecting a paradigm shift occurring in American higher education: from the college as an institution that provides instruction to one that produces learning (Barr and Tagg, 1995). This paper supports this perspective by emphasizing the learners: who they are, how they learn, how our presence affects their learning, and how we can increase interactive and collaborative learning.

Susan C Paddock scp@mail.dcs.wisc.edu
Associate Professor, Governmental Affairs
University of Wisconsin - Madison

{ Top of Page }

Copyright on these papers is held by their authors or by the professional society which sponsored their original presentation.

Teaching Politics is published by William J. Ball (ball@tcnj.edu)