The Professor's Guide to Teaching: Psychological Principles and Practices

The Professor's Guide to Teaching explores what research has revealed about effective teaching and mines this resource to offer useful suggestions and practical recommendations for both new and seasoned instructors. The book unfolds in a logical fashion, beginning with prepping and lecturing and ending with evaluating and documenting. Chapters achieve a rare blend of theoretical depth and practical utility. For example, Forsyth's analysis of lecturing as a form of communication includes recommendations for teaching that stress the importance of considering the source of the message, the nature of the message, and the characteristics of the receiver of the message. Similarly, the author approaches classroom testing from the standpoint of psychological assessment, and so considers how testing requires the same care that psychologists use when developing questionnaires and inventories.

Preface

Introduction

1. Prepping: Planning to Teach a College Class
2. Lecturing: Developing and Delivering Effective Classroom Presentations
3. Guiding: Student-Centered Approaches to Teaching
4. Testing: Strategies and Skills for Evaluating Learning
5. Grading (and Aiding): Helping Students Reach their Learning Goals
6. Managing: Fostering Academic Integrity, Civility, and Tolerance
7. Innovating: Using Technology Creatively in Teaching
8. Evaluating: Assessing and Enhancing Teaching Quality
9. Documenting: Developing a Teaching Portfolio

References

Index

About the Author

This manuscript is "thick" with theoretical and empirical discussions and pragmatic "cookbook-like" tables and sections. The apprentice teacher can use the latter as a checklist for faculty development on the way to tenure. The seasoned teacher, searching in vain for more reflective and thought-provoking material (having accomplished good reviews and effective checklist efficiencies), will find this manuscript a cornucopia of stimuli for deepening one's skills and one's love of the profession.
—Thomas V. McGovern, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University West, Fellow of the American Psychological Association