Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh's blog

A couple of days ago on Twitter, the ever-lasting debate between lecture and active learning reignited due to some talks at an Educational Research Conference held in Dublin. These talks stated direct guidance (which includes lecture) was superior in terms of student learning due its reduction of students’ cognitive load. The main citation used for this argument was an article by Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark published in 2006. So, let’s dive into what this article says.

Once one knows about Critical Pedagogy (with respect to Critical Thinking, as was covered in the previous blog), what does one do with that knowledge? Can we implement strategies that embrace Critical Pedagogy while teaching the content we need to cover? Are there ways to build criticality in our students while maintaining our requirements for classroom rigor?

I recently participated in a conference known as the Digital Pedagogy Lab as a fellow, which required leading a workshop (or an equivalent). I chose to structure my workshop around the ideas of critical pedagogy and STEM, and particularly how we use these ideas in a practical way in the classroom (both F2F (face-to-face) and DL (distance learning)). This blog will be one of a two-part series on these topics.

Hi everyone! My name is Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh, and I am a new Lead Contributor/Blogger for the Two-Year College component of ChemEd Xchange. I am beyond thrilled, though, to join ChemEd Xchange and learn more about your interests on this platform. I am hoping you, as the audience, will help guide the topics I write about so that we can focus our discussions to interests both you and I share.