Faculty of Education Award for Distinguished Teaching

Cynthia Weston

Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology

1) My greatest challenge has been reducing the focus on my own teaching and increasing the focus on student learning. This has meant moving from a scripted approach and a concern that students get specific information to a more flexible guide-on-the-side approach and helping students to construct their own knowledge. The hardest thing has been letting go of content. But I have found that giving students more time with less content results in deeper learning.

2) A focus on student learning, caring about students, and well-designed learning experiences that foster both. This can mean providing students with explicit learning goals, ample opportunity to practice with critical concepts, frequent feedback about how their thinking is progressing and opportunity to revise based on feedback before they are graded. It is important that students achieve learning that is meaningful not that they do it within a specific time frame.