Teaching Experience:
2001 Lead Ecology Instructor, Columbia University’s Biosphere
2 Center,
Earth Systems Field School I (six-week ecology &
geology field course for undergraduates).
2001 Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Arizona
(Animal Sexual Behavior, for non-science majors)
1997-1998 Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Arizona
(Ecology, Systematic Botany)
1994-1995 Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Arizona
(Intro Botany for non-science majors)
1978-1980 Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of English,
University of California at Berkeley
Educational Philosophy:
My approach to teaching science is to coach the students
in teaching themselves through active learning (performing tasks and analyzing
results), using demonstration and lecture only when necessary. Apart from being
effective, this approach teaches students that science is a cycle of planning,
trying, analyzing and then planning again, rather than a matter of absorbing
endless facts and concepts. Even in a lecture-based class, examples can be presented
as intriguing detective stories, with the instructor not revealing the outcome
until they have asked the students to speculate on what was found. It is especially
important to constantly remind students of how little is known, and how much
more there is to discover about the natural world. Traditional lecture courses
have the insidious and deadly effect of convincing the student that everything
worth knowing has already been discovered. Stressing the unexplored generates
excitement and raises the hope in the student that they themselves can make
new discoveries, and that they do not have to wait until they are a professor
to do so.
Another crucial task of science education is to teach students
the difference between facts, opinions, and theories. Confusion about these
distinctions are a large part of the understanding gap between the public and
the science community. How a teacher approaches this depends on the stage of
learning in the students. For example, students in the early stages of learning
who see the world as right and wrong, are confused and annoyed by being presented
with conflicting but potentially valid theories. Unless they are explicitly
taught the distinction between fact and theory, they will jump to the conclusion,
shared by many people in the public sector, that scientists never actually figure
anything out, and that experiments simply generate conflicting evidence.
When I teach, I provide my students with feedback on how they
are doing, and on how they can improve, throughout the course, so that the final
grade is not a surprise. I also actively solicit feedback from them on how I
am doing, so that I can correct shortcomings and oversights as early as possible.
Unless it is an advanced course, I also try to spend at least some time teaching
them how to be a better student in general. Amazingly, the study skills that
are crucial to success in the academic environment are seldom taught. Most students
figure out how to study by trial and error, but even those who are gifted with
good concentration and memory can learn to more efficient and effective in their
studies. When I taught the lab section for an Intro Botany course to a class
of non-science majors, I included a brief "study tip" at the beginning of each
lab -- how to take notes, how to read to remember, how to review material, including
one of my favorite learning techniques: take a chunk of reading or lab work
and turn it into a potential exam question.
Apart from the few who become scientists, most people only encounter
real-life science in the classroom. That experience will color their impression
of science from then on. The facts may fade, but if you teach them how scientific
knowledge is created, how hypotheses are tested, and the difference between
suggestive and definitive results, they can rely on that understanding for the
rest of their lives.
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Last Updated: 30 October 2001
© copyright 2001 Margrit E. McIntosh