Waters David J, Waters Lane S
Calvin College, Grand rapids, MI, USA.
J Vet Med Educ. 2011 Fall;38(3):235-41. doi: 10.3138/jvme.38.3.235.
In previous issues of the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, wide-ranging insights on how to achieve excellence in the classroom have been framed by award-winning teachers. These recipes for educational success, however, invariably lack a key ingredient-the teacher's process of self-renewal. What skills and attitudes prime the teacher for continued high performance? To stay out of the ruts of expertise, where does the teacher turn? Teachers and administrators alike recognize its great importance, yet few opportunities for the renewal of teachers are built into the educational system. In this article, we challenge teachers to see their own self-renewal as an underutilized approach to innovate education. We propose a schema for sustained self-renewal: each educator developing her own personalized, hand-picked gallery of intellectual heroes who in turn serve as the educator's life-long teachers. To illustrate the value of this activity, we introduce our own collection of 10 gifted thinkers, providing a brief encounter with each sage as a way of stimulating new thinking on the skills and attitudes that promote personal growth and transformative teaching. We conclude that the veterinary profession should work to create better opportunities for the self-renewal of teachers. By envisioning even our best teachers as unfinished and under construction, we open up a new dialogue situating the self-renewal of teachers at the very core of educational excellence.
在《兽医医学教育杂志》的往期期刊中，屡获殊荣的教师们阐述了关于如何在课堂上追求卓越的广泛见解。然而，这些教育成功的秘诀总是缺少一个关键要素——教师的自我更新过程。哪些技能和态度能让教师持续保持高水平表现？为了避免陷入专业知识的窠臼，教师该向何处寻求突破？教师和管理人员都认识到其至关重要性，但教育系统中为教师提供的自我更新机会却寥寥无几。在本文中，我们鼓励教师将自我更新视为一种未被充分利用的教育创新方式。我们提出了一个持续自我更新的模式：每位教育工作者都要打造自己个性化挑选的智慧英雄库，这些英雄将成为教育工作者一生的老师。为了说明这一活动的价值，我们介绍了自己选出的10位有天赋的思想家，简要介绍每位智者，以激发对促进个人成长和变革性教学的技能与态度的新思考。我们得出结论，兽医行业应努力为教师的自我更新创造更好的机会。通过将即使是最优秀的教师也视为未完成且仍在成长的个体，我们开启了一场新的对话，将教师的自我更新置于教育卓越的核心位置。
