Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Volume 25, Number 2

Ever since Ernest Boyer (1990) argued to expand the notion of what should count as academic scholarship to include teaching, there have been several important changes in what we know about the teaching-learning connection, the interplay between an instructor's teaching activities and the learning needs of students. The most important change is the move from efforts to improve "teaching" to those that improve learning. Indeed, it is now learning that is center stage in higher education. More than a decade ago, Barr and Tagg (1995) called this a change from the "instruction paradigm" to a "learning paradigm." Although all of the changes they discuss impact course design and classroom activity, the ones about the nature of learning are of particular importance. In Barr and Tagg's chart "Comparing Educational Paradigms" (p. 16), the Instruction Paradigm defines learning as something an instructor feeds in doses to passive students; in the Learning Paradigm, students "must be active discoverers and constructors of their own knowledge." A good teaching-learning connection provides active experiences and feedback, so that students have many opportunities to hear about or observe new material, try it out, and work toward mastery.