The Thayer Method: Unique to West Point?
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What Do Some Cadets Think The
Thayer Method Is?
• The Thayer method is a terrible way to learn math. When I
approached my teacher with a question about a homework
problem I was told to take boards. I learn best by seeing
someone who knows what they are doing work the problem.
• The Thayer method is almost a complete failure in this course.
Students that are not good at math and try to teach themselves
find it harder to understand the material after they have
confused themselves attempting to understand it.
What Do Other Cadets
Think of The Thayer Method?
My ability to teach myself has definitely
increased. I never had to really teach my
self much because I always had a
teacher who would teach it. Here, it was
more the teacher would briefly go over
concepts, and then we would do practice
problems. So, I did have to read the book
each night, study more, etc.
I would say that there is a challenging but
effective way of teaching. It’s the idea of
the student learning the next lesson prior
to coming to class, and asking questions
to clarify anything they didn’t understand.
It forces us to be more responsible for our
own learning.
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Scenario
It’s Lesson 1 in your course. You plan on doing cadet introductions, going
over the course website, and talking about your expectations for the
semester. You want to use student-centered learning (Thayer Method) in
your classroom starting on Lesson 2. There are ten pages of reading in the
text, four suggested problems, and the following three lesson objectives
assigned in the syllabus for Lesson 2:
Given a data set:
1. Calculate (in Excel) and understand the sample mean and median.
2. Calculate (in Excel) and understand the sample variance and standard
deviation.
3. Plot (in Excel) and understand a histogram.
What are some things you can do to encourage cadets to engage with the
material outside the classroom?
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Training vs. Education
• trainer is responsible
• trainer imposes
discipline
• focus on perfecting a
known, past activity.
• mastering routines is
important.
• student is responsible
• student imposes
discipline
• focus on prep for an
unknown future.
• open and critical
thinking is important.
“Students must learn on their own, outside the classroom, is the main
feature that distinguishes college from high school.” Steven Zucker
Students are coming from High School!
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The Thayer Method Today
Caution regarding the use of too much lecture:
“All too often we focus on a narrow collection of well-defined tasks
and train students to execute those tasks in a routine, if not
algorithmic fashion…
…then we test the students on tasks that are very close to the
ones they have been taught. If they succeed on those problems, we
and they congratulate each other on the fact that they have learned
some powerful mathematical techniques.” – L.D. Fink
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References
•
•
“Thayer method of instruction at the United States Military
Academy: A modest history and a modern personal account”,
Amy Shell, PRIMUS, 2002.
“Why Don’t My Students Think I’m Groovy?” Christy Price, Excellence in Teaching, 2010.
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