Today in my Ed Psych course I asked, “Why do we want students to
participate in class?” The preservice teachers easily
acknowledged that increased participation likely leads to
increased mental engagement & having students hear ideas of
other students has clear benefits concerning the language
accessibility of the exchanges. I then asked, “What things can a
teacher do to discourage/encourage participation?” While there
are obvious answers, I think one of the more nuanced ideas
related to valuing student ideas. When exploring this, we noted
that teachers need to flexibly use student ideas, but doing so
requires a very well developed pedagogical content knowledge.
Leave a comment sharing how you encourage your students to
participate in class discussion or other activities? Last night
I tried a new approach with one of my college classes. The
course is about science education. We read an article that
summarizes a high school science activity that addresses
climate, heat capacity, investigation design, & the nat