November 2006

Lead article: Learning through teaching model results in improved student learning

In 2007, CTE will co-sponsor presentations by two Carnegie scholars who teach at Georgetown University, Prof. Randy Bass and Prof. Heidi Elmendorf. Recently, Elmendorf’s essay “Learning Through Teaching: A New Perspective on Entering a Discipline” was published in Change (November/December 2006). Information about Elmendorf’s work and results of her study are summarized below.

Elmendorf has implemented an experiential model of learning through teaching. The model gives students an opportunity to use what they are learning in a college classroom to develop curricula, and then teach those curricula in an elementary school. The project was with a science course for non-science majors, but the author believes the underlying principles can be applied generally.

Three questions about student learning guided Elmendorf:

1. Can we apply the common saying “I understood that subject best when I had to teach it” to students in our courses?

2. If so, what differentiates their learning through teaching from their learning through more traditional pedagogies?

3. What is the impact of tightly integrating the cognitive aspects of learning with affective aspects (motivation, confidence, sense of purpose) and metacognitive aspects (perspectives on knowledge and awareness of learning)?

Students in the course chose between participating in a traditional laboratory section or a community-based teaching section. The evidence from the project showed that “casting students in the role of teacher is a remarkably powerful way of making visible, to both the students and their instructors, some invisible shortcomings of traditional educational approaches” (p. 37).

The author attributes students’ improvement to several factors, including the following:

• When students teach, the thinness of their knowledge is exposed to themselves and their instructors.
• Students learn differently as teachers than they do as students.
• As teachers, students develop a sense of responsibility, which provides motivation to learn.
• Students had an opportunity to re-learn, to re-visit ideas from new perspectives with new questions and new goals.           

Elmendorf’s work is an excellent example of how teachers can study their own teaching. Discovering new ways to improve student learning can be one way to make teaching more enjoyable.               

 —JE