Education Commons^™

Can They Teach? A Look At How Professors Learn To Educate, Dr. Roger Hiemstra, Elisabeth S. Mccaffery

IACE Hall of Fame Repository

The purpose of this research project was to examine ways in which higher education professors are trained to teach. Eight professors from a small, liberal arts college in the northeast, who were also recipients of the college’s annual Teacher of the Year award, were observed in the classroom and interviewed about their educational training and background. By following the strategies of inductive reasoning and synthesizing these professors’ experiences and reflections, The author determined that many professors do not receive formal teaching training. The majority of the professors claimed to have learned to teach by trial and error and by emulating …