How to teach the teachers

A Q&A on innovative pedagogy with Eric Mazur (Harvard Crimson)

March 23, 2012

Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and the Area Dean for Applied Physics at SEAS.

The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared in The Harvard Crimson on March 23, 2012.

Physics professor Eric Mazur has been recognized internationally for his research program in optical physics as well as his work in science education. The Harvard Crimson interviewed Professor Mazur to find out more about his role as a science educator.

The Harvard Crimson: When did you start getting interested in science education?

Mazur: When I became an assistant professor here at Harvard in 1984, I was asked to teach. Of course, I knew it was going to be part of my job description, so I took my teaching very seriously. However, as is common practice all over the globe, when you teach in higher education, you get absolutely no training—no theories, no coaching, nothing. I based my opinions and my approach on my personal experiences, and my personal experiences were no different from the experiences of many students today—or the experiences of students in the 19th century or in the 16th century; namely, you sit in benches and you listen to a professor, and you take notes, and then you walk away thinking you’ve learned things. I did to my students back in 1984 exactly what my teachers had done tome, naively believing that was how I had learned science. I was devoted to teaching right from the start—I was just incredibly ill informed, unprepared, unqualified, and misguided in my approach, but I think that is no different than anybody else.

THC: When did you start realizing that this teaching style wasn’t working?

Mazur: I started having students solve basically two types of problems on exams. One of them was a word based conceptual problem, and the other was a textbook problem on exactly the same subject—and what I found was a true eye opener. Students could do perfectly well on the textbook problem, but on the word-based problem they floundered. They had not internalized the information and they could not deal with it conceptually, but they were able to solve a textbook problem simply by rote, following a prescription. And that’s when I really started grappling with new approaches for teaching. That’s when I had students start learning by questioning and having students ask one another questions.

To learn more about Mazur's new teaching style, read the full interview here.