Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning

by James M. Lang

I still remember a Renaissance literature course I took as an undergraduate in which the instructor put us in small groups with instructions to discuss key passages of whatever text we were studying that day. I loathed those sessions, saw them as pointless, and can assure you I learned nothing from them. Looking back now, through the lens of many years of teaching and reading about teaching and learning in higher education, I can see multiple problems with the way those sessions worked: we had no real task to complete, beyond the vague injunction to discuss the passages; the teacher offered no guidance or supervision while we worked and instead did something inscrutable up at the front of the room; and although a connection may have existed, she did not articulate for us any connection between what we were doing in those group sessions and what we did on our essays or exams.