This Blog aims to open a forum for instructors, faculty members, teaching assistant (TA), and graduate teaching assistant (GTA) and those whose passion is an effective teaching to share their teaching experiences and to encourage them for using more education-based approach to their design studio teaching in the field of Architecture. This is due to the fact that very little attention has been paid to what factors contribute to the quality of teaching of studio instructors.
The majority of novice instructors and academics in higher education are usually disciplinary experts who have research capabilities than being teaching experts. They have little to no preparation in pedagogy. The pedagogical knowledge of the majority of teaching staffs is based on their own experiences as students, and learning through trial and error.
To promote the complex levels of thinking as the requirement among university students nowadays, instructors should be asked to rethink their pedagogy. The fact is that the majority of studio instructors in higher education are usually well prepared for their role as researchers, and less well prepared for their role as educators that compounds this issue; this is due to the majority of architecture instructors in higher education are hired based on their disciplinary knowledge, and many have a limited knowledge of theories of learning and strategies of teaching. In fact, the early experiences with teaching could be compared with parenting. When the studio instructors first started out they had nothing to go on but their own ideas, and it did not happen to them to get support in this matter. Teaching as a professional practice in higher education has to become more effective in order to meet current demands for greater accountability.
Mary Ashkan 