The Contrarian Instructor: Leading College Students to Ask and Answer Their Own Questions

Are your students motivated and able to learn as much as you would like them to? Do they readily apply what they have learned? Do they even remember much of this learned content the next semester? Do they ask meaningful questions or are they mostly concerned with asking what will be on the next examination? This book discusses findings from psychology, education, and other disciplines showing that there are ways instructors can design curricula, classes, and learning experiences to improve the students’ ability and desire to probe for new insights, and to apply them to their own agendas. Although this book reviews many approaches for providing students with the motivation and guidance to learn, it is not a manual of specific classroom techniques. Rather, the book will inspire and equip instructors to ask their own questions about how their classes could better inspire and equip their students to ask and answer their own questions in principled ways.