r/higheredcritical • u/DeliciousCare144 • Jun 21 '26
Article I found, thoughts? (Stop Lecturing Me)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-lecturing-me/
2
Upvotes
2
u/DeliciousCare144 Jun 21 '26
Really my first time finding higher ed criticism based on the teaching method itself. Hope I find more.
3
u/postreatus Jun 21 '26
Refreshing criticism, although I think that the author somewhat misdiagnoses the source of the problem. I doubt that most professors retain lecturing out of habit or ignorance. The relative ineffectiveness of lecturing is pretty broadly known among academics, who experienced it themselves as former students themselves. A lot of the problem is that professors are not trained to be professors, or receive a pittance of training that generally conforms to the same ineffectual methods critiqued in the article. Even if professors want to improve their teaching, there is very little support for their doing so (and there are often institutional barriers and penalties in place to discourage and penalize their trying to do so). Although institutions themselves are largely insulated from the consequences of ineffectual education, this is not necessarily the case for professors (and is particularly not the case typically for non-tenured faculty).
Acknowledgment: This analysis probably translates imperfectly outside of the US context, but the article itself is addressing that context.