Reader's Roadmap to Teaching Engineering
This book is organized to start with specific, practical
teaching applications and then lead to more general psychological
theories. The advantage of this order is that people tend
to learn from specifics to generalities—that is, inductively.
The disadvantage of this approach is that we may want to use
some concepts to explain the advantages of particular teaching
methods before the concepts have been explored. To aid the
reader in the resolution of this problem we have attached
a short glossary to this section.
An alternate arrangement is to use a deductive approach and
start with the theories. The deductive approach has the advantage
of logically explaining everything first, but this is not
the way most people learn. Certainly, readers who prefer a
deductive approach can read the book in a logical order. For
a deductive approach read Chapters 1, 13 to 15, 2 to 12, 16,
and 17.
The third order is to skip around to whatever topic is of
interest. Most of the chapters are essentially independent,
although Chapter 15 depends heavily on Chapter 14 and both
depend somewhat on Chapter 13.
Glossary
auditory mode: perceiving the world by talking, reading,
and listening (Section15.2.2).
concrete operational thinker: person who is unable
to do abstract thinking (14.1.1).
deductive reasoning: deduction of specific consequences
from general principles (15.2.1).
feeling type: bases decisions on subjective criteria
(13.1).
field-independent type: pays little attention to surroundings
while focused on a task (15.2.1).
field-sensitive type: pays attention to surroundings,
particularly other people, while working on a task (15.2.1).
formal operational thinker: person who is able to
do abstract thinking (14.1.1).
global learner: prefers to see big picture and fill
in missing pieces (15.2.1).
inductive reasoning: starting with specifics and inducing
generalities (15.2.1).
intuitive type: prefers to perceive the world based
on intuition (13.1).
judging type: prefers to live in a planned, orderly
fashion with control over events (13.1).
kinesthetic mode: perceiving the world through taste,
touch, smell, and feelings (15.2.2).
learning cycles: a series of steps which increases
learning (15.1 and 15.3).
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: a psychological instrument
that characterizes people into sixteen different categories
based on four dichotomies (13).
perceptive type: prefers to live in a spontaneous
way and adapt to life as it occurs (13.1).
PSI: personalized system of instruction (7.4).
sensing type: prefers to perceive the visible, real,
practical aspects of life (13.1).
sequential learner: prefers to learn in a logical
sequence and build a knowledge structure piece by piece (15.2.1).
thinking type: prefers to make judgments objectively
and impersonally (13.1).
visual mode: processing information in visual pictures
(15.2.2).
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