{"id":908,"date":"2014-05-23T06:51:46","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T10:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/?p=908"},"modified":"2017-04-17T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T19:39:00","slug":"who-are-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/archives\/908","title":{"rendered":"Who Are Learners?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karen McComas<\/p>\n

I am just completing my second year as the Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. I am learning (a selfish motive for my interest in doing this kind of work) and have met fabulous and inspiring faculty members from across campus. One thing I quickly noticed is that, a bit like Cheers, we have our regulars. These are the faculty members who participate in (nearly) all of our programs and events and, when a call for applications goes out, these people are typically some of the first to apply. I wonder, as I have often wondered about myself, what compels these people to persist in their efforts to constantly improve their teaching. Almost to a person, they speak with great passion about the importance of helping their students become independent, life-long, and responsible learners. What isn’t usually said, but is implied, is how they – we – desire students who are in love with learning as much as we are.<\/p>\n

When teachers get together, they like to tell stories and sometimes those stories are about students who love learning and have incredible experiences as a result. All too often, though, the stories are sad. They might be about a student who is more worried about the two points lost on question #3, than about what may not be fully understood but could be learned. I taught for 26 years in Communication Disorders before taking my current position – and i’ve had a few students who loved learning but I’ve had more of the latter, the points students. I’ve learned a lot from all of them, and a lot about the pathology of teaching and the strength of intermittent reinforcement. I’ve had just enough of the learners to keep me coming back for more!<\/p>\n

\"mindset-image\"<\/a>Distinguishing between students in this way isn’t quite fair; students are too complex to fit neatly into one of two single dimension boxes. I’ve always struggled with how to think constructively about them. Recently, someone recommended a book to me, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success<\/em>, by Carol Dweck. It sounded promising and interesting and I devoured it (yes, I am one of “those”). I have underlined passages, flagged pages, and carry it with me just in case I have time to read a few pages again. As a result, my thinking about, and understanding of, those two types of students is changing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’m due to post again in a month – so I’ll pick up there where I’m stopping here.\u00a0Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karen McComas I am just completing my second year as the Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. I am learning (a selfish motive for my interest in doing this kind of work) and have met fabulous and inspiring faculty members from across campus. One thing I quickly noticed is that, a bit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klm"],"acf":[],"fimg_url":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/ctl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}