Higher Education Teaching and Learning

It is a myth that we operate under a set of oppressive bureaucratic constraints. In reality, teachers have a great deal of autonomy in the work they chose to do in their classrooms. In most cases it is our culture that provides the constraints. For individual teachers, trying out new practices and pedagogy is risky business and both our culture, and our reliance on hierarchy, provide the ideal barriers for change not to occur. As Pogo pointed out long ago, “we have met the enemy and it is us.” http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/brian-harrison/2013/09/5/stop-asking-permission-change

Educational psychology has focused on the concepts of learned helplessness and more currently growth-fixed mindsets as a way to explain how and why students give up in the classroom setting.  These ideas can also be applied to educators in this day of forced standardization, testing, scripted curriculum, and school initiatives.

"Is your capacity for learning is fixed or fluid? Can you improve your intelligence and talents through hard work and practice, or are you stuck with the brains you’ve got? Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck says most of us have either a “fixed” or “growth” mindset when it comes to learning. Most of us can get through sixteen years of schooling regardless of which mindset we have, but when it comes to lifelong learning–learning for the sake of learning, without outside pressure–only a growth mindset will cut it."