Garr Reynolds, on his Presentation Zen blog, discusses Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur's evolution from straight-up college lecturer to accomplished teacher and authority on student peer learning. Garr's post goes into many facets of Mazur's story, but I want to focus here on just one part - Mazur's taking accountability for his students' failure to learn:
"I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material," says Mazur. "Who was to blame? The students? The material?" In this presentation below from 2009 entitled "Confessions of a Converted Lecturer," Mazur explains how he came to the conclusion that "It was my teaching that caused students to fail!" If you have the time I recommend that you watch the entire presentation(over one hour in length). However, there is a rough edit of the same presentation that is still fairly good at getting Mazur's key points across in just 18 minutes.Watch the abridged version here on Youtube.
Mazur's sense of agency is notable, especially in education, where failures are easily blamed on students, parents or adminstrators, but the single area that can make all the difference is the approach and methods of a skilled, committed teacher.
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