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In the program that I attended, much of the curriculum is dedicated to research in teaching. Our teacher training involved many different theories, both traditional and new on what it meant to be a teacher. Theories such as Gardner's multiple intelligences, and of course inquiry-based education, served as touchstones that we came back to again and again. We would have to gear teaching lesson plans to different students – this one will be for visual learners, that one would be for auditory learners, and a third one would be for kinesthetic learners – people who needed to work with their hands. All of the current teacher research indicated that each style of learning required a different style of teaching. The challenge for the modern teacher is to incorporate all of these different styles into a coherent lesson plan.
The great things about teaching research is that it doesn't only teach you how to become a better teacher, but how to be a better learner as well. You see, teaching research is ultimately about understanding how the mind works. By understanding the different strategies that people use to learn and organize information, you can incorporate new strategies for yourself and develop the ones that you already have. I apply the facts that I have learned in teaching research to my life in all kinds of situations – not just in teaching. Every time I am trying to learn something new, I think about how best to organize the information. Who would guess that you could learn so much in the process of teaching middle schoolers?
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