Suggestion 16. Stress the most enduring values or truths

IF YOU WANT TO:

• Emphasize conceptual understanding

• Have students apply concepts to demonstrate understanding

• Stimulate the students to think critically

Stressing the most enduring values or truths in your discipline.

"I stress the permanent values in literature, the emotional responses that a particular novel or collection of novels elicits from us all," says a professor of English. "I try to get the students to understand why they respond to a given novel the way they do."

After the class has discussed how they feel about a novel (the common emotions it arouses) he tries to lead them to analyze, understand, and explain why nearly everyone feels that way. He poses questions such as: What must literature be like in order to get us to respond the way we do? Why does a particular novel affect everyone in the same way? "Behind all my questions is the search for a way of analyzing and discussing literature that will explain the most with the fewest assumptions."

Limitations on Use of Suggestion

  Discipline:  Humanities and Social Sciences
Course Level:  None
 Course Size:  None
        Mode:  None

Copyright 1983 by the Regents of the University of California

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