Learning to Think Like a ... (e.g. Physicist): What University Teaching is Good For

Over the years of my teaching, my major contribution is to demonstrate how to think, how to investigate a problem or issue or situation, how to be a scholar or a thoughtful person. I'm not sure I teach much in the sense of content, and the learning that occurs is usually demonstrated by projects students do (exams are useless, for my classes). I am student-centered, to use the current lingo, by my working with students on their projects, and by engaging with them, usually in class, taking their questions seriously. I understand inverting the classroom, or whatever it is called, and that is possible in the sciences too--but I did not see it. I do not do it now, although projects and consultation do some of it.

My physics teachers were not particularly good didacts. We learned from watching them think. The textbooks did the rest of the work. My best teachers in undergraduate humanities and social science classes were similar. (I went to Columbia, where general education is systematic and central.) 

In other words, "learning" is only sometimes about content. Often, it is about learning to think, one's attitude toward the world as understood by a discipline. What I learned was how to think like a physicist, how to think analytically about society and politics. I never did learn how to think critically about art, music, literature--in part because I did not take the right courses. As for literature and art, I eventually did learn to think critically, but only in an idiosyncratic way--using literature and art to understand problems in planning, decision-making, and design--but this was in my professorial career. 

I'm writing because professors have come to be seen "technologically," in terms of delivering learning. I think a great university offers much more.