How do you feel about creating uncertainty in your classroom? It can be an unnatural, unsettling premise for you as a content expert and for our MSHE graduate students. Read more about some tips of embracing uncertainty in your teaching in an article published March 27, 2023, by Jeremy T. Murphy and Meira Levinson of The Chronicle Higher Education.
5 Simple Ways to Spark Curiosity through Uncertainty
- Pursue the unanticipated in class discussions: Getting to know your students’ backgrounds and experiences will help you anticipate where discussions will go. This will help you empathize with how their perspectives may interact with topics and themes from readings and current events.
- Welcome wrong answers and devalue right ones: When you consider a constructivist learning approach, there is no clear “right” or “wrong” in what you and students contribute.
- Leverage uncertainty to build suspense and surprise: Some issues work better when you do not rush to a correct response. As the article suggests, “letting them sit with uncertainty [piques] their interest and curiosity” (Murphy & Levinson, 2023).
- Model not knowing: Admit to students when you do not know through strategic storytelling. Illustrating your uncertainty through a lived experience will model for students how you expect them to learn through their uncertainty.
- Create systems for honoring the unknown explicitly: In some form create a place where students can ask questions and express uncertainties in an non-punitive way. Consider setting up weekly reading reflections where you invite students to write about what surprised them and what question they still have after doing required readings.
If you have any questions, or would like to create a plan for embracing uncertainty in your teaching, contact Chris Neary at christopher.neary@northwestern.edu.
Sources used
Murphy, J. T., & Levinson, M. (2023, March 27). How to embrace uncertainty in your teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-embrace-uncertainty-in-your-teaching
Oleguson, B. S. (2015). Constructivism learning: A paradigm for teaching and learning. IOSR Journal of Research & Method in Education, 5(1), 66-70.