Scanning and Skimming Exercises
Scanning and Skimming Exercises
Scanning and Skimming Exercises
students were asked about their experience of how history is taught at the outset of their degree
programme. It quickly became clear that teaching methods in school were pretty staid.
About 30 per cent of respondents claimed to have made significant use of primary sources (few
felt very confident in handling them) and this had mostly been in connection with project work.
Only 16 per cent had used video/audio; 2 per cent had experienced field trips and less than 1 per
cent had engaged in role-play.
Dr Booth found students and teachers were frequently restricted by the assessment style which
remains dominated by exams. These put obstacles in the way of more adventurous teaching and
active learning, he said. Of the students in the survey just 13 per cent felt their A-level course had
prepared them very well for work at university. Three-quarters felt it had prepared them fairly
well.
One typical comment sums up the contrasting approach: "At A-level we tended to be spoon-fed
with dictated notes and if we were told to do any background reading (which was rare) we were
told exactly which pages to read out of the book".
To test this further the students were asked how well they were prepared in specific skills central
to degree level history study. The answers reveal that the students felt most confident at taking
notes from lectures and organising their notes. They were least able to give an oral presentation
and there was no great confidence in contributing to seminars, knowing how much to read, using
primary sources and searching for texts. Even reading and taking notes from a book were often
problematic. Just 6 per cent of the sample said they felt competent at writing essays, the staple A
level assessment activity.
The personal influence of the teacher was paramount. In fact individual teachers were the centre
of students' learning at A level with some 86 per cent of respondents reporting that their teachers
had been more influential in their development as historians than the students' own reading and
thinking.
The ideal teacher turned out to be someone who was enthusiastic about the subject; a good clear
communicator who encouraged discussion. The ideal teacher was able to develop students
involvement and independence. He or she was approachable and willing to help. The bad
teacher, according to the survey, dictates notes and allows no room for discussion. He or she
makes students learn strings of facts; appears uninterested in the subject and fails to listen to
other points of view.
No matter how poor the students judged their preparedness for degree-level study, however, there
was a fairly widespread optimism that the experience would change them significantly,
particularly in terms of their open mindedness and ability to cope with people.
But it was clear, Dr Booth said, that the importance attached by many departments to third-year
teaching could be misplaced. "Very often tutors regard the third year as the crucial time, allowing
postgraduates to do a lot of the earlier teaching. But I am coming to the conclusion that the first
year at university is the critical point of intervention".
Alison Utley, Times Higher Education Supplement. February 6th, 1998.
is several orders of magnitude shorter. This conclusion follows from comparing properties 1
through 4 with the similar properties of visible light, but it was actually postulated by Thomson
several years before all these properties were known. Thomson argued that X-rays are
electromagnetic radiation because such radiation would be expected to be emitted from the point
at which the electrons strike the wall of a cathode ray tube. At this point, the electrons suffer very
violent accelerations in coming to a stop and, according to classical electromagnetic theory, all
accelerated charged particles emit electromagnetic radiations. We shall see later that this
explanation of the production of X-rays is at least partially correct.
In common with other electromagnetic radiations, X-rays exhibit particle-like aspects as well as
wave-like aspects. The reader will recall that the Compton effect, which is one of the most
convincing demonstrations of the existence of quanta, was originally observed with
electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray region of wavelengths.
an actor. That is part of the technique of teaching, which demands that every now and then a
teacher should be able to put on an act - to enliven a lesson, correct a fault, or award praise.
Children, especially young children, live in a world that is rather larger than life.
A teacher must remain mentally alert. He will not get into the profession if of low intelligence,
but it is all too easy, even for people of above-average intelligence, to stagnate intellectually and that means to deteriorate intellectually. A teacher must be quick to adapt himself to any
situation, however improbable and able to improvise, if necessary at less than a moment's notice.
(Here I should stress that I use 'he' and 'his' throughout the book simply as a matter of convention
and convenience.)
On the other hand, a teacher must be capable of infinite patience. This, I may say, is largely a
matter of self-discipline and self-training; we are none of us born like that. He must be pretty
resilient; teaching makes great demands on nervous energy. And he should be able to take in his
stride the innumerable petty irritations any adult dealing with children has to endure.
Finally, I think a teacher should have the kind of mind which always wants to go on learning.
Teaching is a job at which one will never be perfect; there is always something more to learn
about it. There are three principal objects of study: the subject, or subjects, which the teacher is
teaching; the methods by which they can best be taught to the particular pupils in the classes he
is teaching; and - by far the most important - the children, young people, or adults to whom they
are to be taught. The two cardinal principles of British education today are that education is
education of the whole person, and that it is best acquired through full and active co-operation
between two persons, the teacher and the learner.
(From Teaching as a Career, by H. C. Dent, Batsford, 1961)