Experiences of a New Teacher
- PDF / 196,508 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595 x 842 pts (A4) Page_size
- 51 Downloads / 207 Views
This article is an attempt to put together my experiences gathered over the last six years of teaching biology. Since joining as a research faculty, I have learnt that teaching is a tough but extremely rewarding (both scientifically and emotionally) activity when done the right way. As research institutions across India are increasingly focused on imparting quality education, I consider it imperative that every researcher aims to be a good teacher. I have been striving to be one, but at this point, I am far from it. In this article, I share my opinions based on my personal experiences. These experiences have helped me improve my teaching, as well as, connect better with the students—in the class, as well as, in the laboratory.
1. Laboratory Teaching Versus Classroom Teaching I consider teaching to be a vital aspect of research, and I believe that every researcher should aspire to be a good teacher. This might sound simple, but the act of explaining new information to students, who are not well versed with it can be challenging. I realized this after taking up my assignment as an independent researcher. In principle, teaching in a laboratory to graduate students at the bench should not be different from teaching a classroom full of students. In practice, this is not the case. The former involves talking to your students about the subject one has expertise. This is where we excel since, as researchers, we are well versed in our research domain. We have thought about the subject in different ways, and hence explaining it to a newbie is a relatively easy job.
Purusharth I Rajyaguru is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is interested in understanding the fundamental aspect of mRNA fate determination. Purusharth is a cricket enthusiast and cinema buff who loves to read J. Mathrubootham to his kids, every Sunday.
Keywords Biology, classroom teaching, scientific videos, history of science, research.
Classroom teaching, on the other hand, is often not about our research domain. It also involves dealing with a large number of ∗
Vol.25, No.9, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-020-1041-8
RESONANCE | September 2020
1231
When I began classroom teaching, I was a bit reluctant to say, “I do not know the answer at this point. However, I will read more about it and get back.”
active minds working on the same problem at a given point of time. I like to think that clarity of expression on the part of the teacher promotes clarity of concept in student minds, empowering them to think about the concepts and leading to more questions for the teacher to handle, which in turn could be challenging. As researchers, we are often egoistic about what we know. Hence a good classroom question could sometimes leave us stumped. When I began my classroom teaching, I was a bit reluctant to say, “I do not know the answer at this point. However, I will read more about it and get back to you.” It took me a while to gather the courage to make the above statement in my class in response
Data Loading...
