Reading through Markwell and Courtney's Article reminds me a lot of my life through college. I quickly relate to almost every stage of cognitive devt they describe. From a student that entirely believed as gospel every sinngle word that came from my teachers' mouths and text books; to one that seeks reasons to most of the statements that the same teachers say today. Boy, this article has made me appreciate how far I THINK I have come from as a student in class and a student of life in general. But the most important point I draw from it is the fact that being a TA, (especially in general chemistry labs that have students of different backgrounds- majors, freshmen to seniors) I have to realize that my students are going to be at different stages of processing the information I am trying to portray to them. But this article also made me grinch even more at the fact that some of college faculty think that you do not need to be trained to teach successfully. That you "pick" it as you keep teaching. But, how long would we need then as teachers before "picking' that "talent" of teaching. What about the students that paid so much to get the best teaching in the world while we are still figuring it out? As a personal opinion, I think there should be a law that requires that faculty have at least one teaching class under their belt before they can teach. And I am not by any way trying to say most are not qualified or trying to be political, because these are some of the smartest brains in the US. I think realizing that knowing and understanding your audience/students is one of the biggest things to successful teaching.
With that said, I close my blog by saying that I am more challenged and challenge all of us to reflect and always challenge ourselves to be at the pluralism stage of information processing.
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