Thriving in Academe
Best Practices

Reflecting on the Literature on Learning

• Read about and attend professional development seminars on learning. It isn't necessary to delve into esoteric and specialized journals on psychology and neuroscience to acquire grounding in the learning literature. As noted earlier, a variety of sources present the current understanding about learning in accessible forms. Take advantage of them. A few pages at a time read here and there will enrich your experience in the classroom and bring tangible benefits to your students.
• Reflect, both informally and formally, on your teaching. As a responsible and thoughtful professional, you probably do this anyway. But reflection can be informal—reviewing in your mind what happened in the previous class—and increasingly more formal, taking the shape of journaling, classroom assessment, classroom research, and action research. Whatever form it takes reflection is inherently inquiry, and in this context it's inquiry about learning. As a result, reflection will naturally motivate you to delve into the literature of learning to resolve a classroom issue or problem at hand.
• Meet with colleagues. In the spirit of constructivism, meet with colleagues. Share and discuss short selections from the literature of learning and your classroom inquiries on learning. You will enjoy it. The discussions will enrich your relationships with one another, and your students will benefit from your sustained reflection on their learning.

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