Orientation for New Faculty
August 2003

Lawrence G. Shelton
Human Development and Family Studies Program
College of Education and Social Services

Cognitive and Emotional Development in Late Adolescence/Early Adulthood:
Developmentally Appropriate Instruction in the Undergraduate and
Early Graduate Years





License to Teach

Applying a Developmental Perspective

Biological Development

Cognitive Development

Personal and Social Development

Faculty Development

Suggestions and Resources



A few questions:

How many of you are licensed to teach college?

How many of you have taught college before?

What professional preparation do you have for teaching college?













A rough, quick survey of professional education requirements at UVM:
Field                                      Credits      Student Teaching

Early Childhood                     30                2 semesters

Elementary Education           43                1 semester

Secondary Education             33                1 semester




College                                      0                       0









Question:  What evidence do you have that UVM, and your department specifically, are interested in how well you teach?
Soapbox!!


If I had my way:

1.  No student would earn a Ph.D. or Ed.D at UVM without specific professional preparation in teaching.

2.  Reappointment, tenure, and promotion at UVM  would require us to demonstrate that we have been engaged in formal efforts to develop our professional skills in curriculum development, lecturing, leading discussion, advising and mentoring, and evaluation of students.  These formal activities would include workshops, courses, reading, and supervision.











 




 3.  Biological development.


Adults establish expectations and influence the way students learn to manage their bodies. 
  Just as we care about our student’s intellectual development, we must observe and care about their physical development and their health. 
We can help them with specific directions, general advice, and by establishing expectations. 
We can tell students how to stay healthy; we can encourage them to exercise, to eat well, to get adequate sleep. 
We can question their activities and habits as we advise them academically. 
We can define and support appropriate behaviors by students.

We support students’ physical development and their intellectual development by educating them formally and informally about how to be smart and stay healthy while they are here.







4.  Cognitive Development







5.  Development of knowledge and understanding


How does one develop knowledge? 

1.  Sensori-motor experience, beginning in infancy: 
Perception and action in the world result in images and patterns.




2.  Representing experience, beginning in early childhood: 
Language and drawing and kinesthetic representations of the images and patterns.





3.  Simple, concrete logic, beginning at the end of early childhood;
Specifics of logical organization, the rules of games, consistency about the facts and in our narration of them.





4.  Abstract reasoning, beginning in early adolescence:
Complex relations, patterns, and systems; testing and applying hypotheses;
thinking logically about hypothetical conditions and relations.








The phases are increasingly abstract ways of considering experience. 
The sensori-motor experiences and their resulting images and patterns are the stuff that we attempt to represent in the second phase, to organize in the third phase, and to reason about in the fourth.


Constructivist teaching



At all levels:

Experience: 
Images; illustrations;  stories; connections to their personal experience;

Representation: 
Accurate and inaccurate representations; drawing; finding illustrations; kinesthetic models; discussion;

Free-writes; editing another’s work; structured group writing and presentations; revision;



Constructivist teaching

Advanced and graduate levels:

Tutoring/mentoring

Have students read their work to you and discuss it one on one.
 
Give the final exam the first day, and then have students revise their answers periodically as they read and discuss the material.  Share and discuss drafts.

6.  Personal and social development



Identity

Voice

Autonomy

Intimacy




7.  Faculty Development




















Political advice:  If you are not prepared to teach, you are at risk for failure at teaching.  Please don’t let that happen. 



Subversive suggestion:  Regularly engage your departmental colleagues in discussions of teaching and how to do it better.













Welcome to UVM.  Teach well, and have fun.