IBL SIGMAA Spring Workshop Series: Georgy Kuster

Traditionally learning has been treated as a natural consequence of teaching. The goal of education however, is not teaching, rather the goal of education is learning. That is, as educators our role is to impact the minds of our students. By placing the focus of education primarily on learning we centralize the students in the classroom, and we can begin to aim toward intentionally engaging in teaching practices that support thinking and learning. This shift in focus requires a careful analysis of what exactly we desire our students to understand, how that
understanding develops in our students, and how we as teachers can support its development. In this workshop, we will discuss the principles and practices of Inquiry-oriented Instruction, a student-centered form of instruction that relies almost entirely on student thinking and shares many characteristics with IBL. The goal of this workshop is to help instructors develop and/or implement lessons that foster and utilize student thinking to support learning.

Speaker Bio:
George Kuster is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at Christopher Newport University. His research focuses on the teaching and learning of mathematics. Some past projects include how students use variational reasoning in differential equations, characterizing Inquiry-oriented Instruction, and helping teachers implement student centered teaching methods.