Old-Time Teaching in the 21st Century

Abstract

This is the story of three professors who found collective success in certain old-time approaches to teaching. Using three different first-person perspectives from Professors Burg, Piedmont, and Kamke, we examine some of the key components of such teaching orientation that may be helpful for professors navigating increased enrollments, while trying to engage students to learn not only the subject matter, but also, perhaps more importantly, about themselves as human beings.

The relevance of this classic approach is reflected in the fact that all of us, typically unawares, continue to apply, and expand on, the way of education to which we were introduced a long time ago. In essence, that old-time teaching showed us how to be, in the words of Angyal, simultaneously autonomous (i.e., being oneself, standing alone) and homonomous (belonging/surrendering to something greater than oneself).

Key words:

• autonomy/homonomy
• higher education
• old-time teaching
• teaching perspective