Learning from Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise
Although teaching is perhaps the central public activity of most university English professors, there is surprisingly little research in the specifics of expert professorial practice. Many previous studies describe, recipe-like, the end products of successful teaching, while others conflate expertise in this subject matter with pedagogical expertise. This study focuses on the moves the expert professor makes in a semester-long process of literary teaching_of a literature far removed in time and space from most undergraduates' experience_and discusses a day-to-day case study of an advanced undergraduate literature course in the writings of John Milton. By employing a 'situated learning' model explaining the incremental growth of students' knowledge and critical skills, the author details how an expert professor teaches complex works to undergraduates with no previous exposure to an author's writings. This process is generalized to describe literary learning in its particulars and the paths students must take from possessing scant knowledge about an author or historical period to their developing mastery.
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Learning from Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise
Although teaching is perhaps the central public activity of most university English professors, there is surprisingly little research in the specifics of expert professorial practice. Many previous studies describe, recipe-like, the end products of successful teaching, while others conflate expertise in this subject matter with pedagogical expertise. This study focuses on the moves the expert professor makes in a semester-long process of literary teaching_of a literature far removed in time and space from most undergraduates' experience_and discusses a day-to-day case study of an advanced undergraduate literature course in the writings of John Milton. By employing a 'situated learning' model explaining the incremental growth of students' knowledge and critical skills, the author details how an expert professor teaches complex works to undergraduates with no previous exposure to an author's writings. This process is generalized to describe literary learning in its particulars and the paths students must take from possessing scant knowledge about an author or historical period to their developing mastery.
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Learning from Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise

Learning from Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise

by John V. Knapp
Learning from Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise

Learning from Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise

by John V. Knapp

Hardcover(New Edition)

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Overview

Although teaching is perhaps the central public activity of most university English professors, there is surprisingly little research in the specifics of expert professorial practice. Many previous studies describe, recipe-like, the end products of successful teaching, while others conflate expertise in this subject matter with pedagogical expertise. This study focuses on the moves the expert professor makes in a semester-long process of literary teaching_of a literature far removed in time and space from most undergraduates' experience_and discusses a day-to-day case study of an advanced undergraduate literature course in the writings of John Milton. By employing a 'situated learning' model explaining the incremental growth of students' knowledge and critical skills, the author details how an expert professor teaches complex works to undergraduates with no previous exposure to an author's writings. This process is generalized to describe literary learning in its particulars and the paths students must take from possessing scant knowledge about an author or historical period to their developing mastery.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611490916
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 05/01/2008
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 310
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

John V. Knapp is professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments     7
Introduction     13
Current Conversations in the Teaching of College-Level Literature     26
Step One: Scant Beginnings     68
Step Two: Milton's Sonnets     84
Step Three: Longer Poems     97
Step Four: Drama and Nonfictional Prose     122
Step Five: Milton's Paradise Lost     148
Step Six: Completion of Paradise Lost     170
Study Discussion     187
Course Materials     201
Interview One     241
Interview Two     257
Notes     262
Bibliography     280
Index     307
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