Publisher's Synopsis
This book has been written and organized to prepare critically reflective teachers to take their place in society and to do that with the knowledge, personal framework and tools to be successful. the reader will begin with an exploration of the role of higher education-it's history and development-in influencing society. He will examine how being critically reflective can serve as a fundamental principle to guide our professional journey. She will start drawing the under-painting of a self-portrait of our identities to see what anchors us to our unique qualities that set us apart as individuals and will help inform our professional decisions and life-path. Out of the heightened awareness of our identities and experience we'll initiate crafting a framework by which we think and are guided in our teaching practice. Readers will engage in exercises to flesh out this framework by unpacking our learning experiences and articulating what was previously implicit: our personal theories of teaching and learning.Readers will experiment with ways in which we become more conscious of how our thinking and feelings inform our actions and how this increased consciousness can guide us in creating powerful and compelling learning experiences for our students. We'll look at the changing population of diverse higher education students and how we can build community with them by using our sense of identity as a bridge.Readers will learn to revise artifacts from our academic experiences to serve as benchmarks of our professional development and the major skill areas of teaching: preparing to teach, successfully executing our teaching plans in and out of the classroom to encourage deep and lasting learning in our students, effectively assessing their learning as an authentic process and how to document all these efforts throughout our careers for our own development and in preparation for when we are evaluated by others. I look forward to our collaborative journey together.
