Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education)

by Jessamyn Neuhaus

For all our brainy ability to deeply and thoroughly understand our discipline, when it comes to teaching we need to better understand the classroom as a social space. Content knowledge and even pedagogical content knowledge is not sufficient because “a teacher’s success not only depends on effective methods of teaching and subject knowledge but above all it depends on the strong relationships teachers develop with their students.”10 Or as another group of researchers puts it: “Student-teacher interaction is at the core of students’ classroom experience, even in online courses.”11 Moreover, we’re hampered by the very knowledge we’re attempting to share. It’s all too easy for professor GINs to come off as know-it-alls purposefully trying to make other people (i.e., students) feel dumb.