Best Practice

Teaching practice: The lecture

Pedagogy
Learning at large? It may be unloved and even considered by some unethical, but the lecture still has a role to play. Matt Bromley continues his teaching practice series with a look at how to make a success of the lecture format

Editor's Note: This article is part of a series of 10 best practice pieces to have published in 2017. Access them here:


A lecture: A long serious speech, especially one given as a scolding or reprimand. Otherwise known as a chiding, a rebuke, a reproof, a reproach, a remonstration, a berating, a castigation, a tirade, a diatribe, an harangue, an admonishment, and a lambasting.

So, it’s fair to say that the humble lecture has acquired something of a bad name for itself.

The Harvard physicist Eric Mazur said it was “almost unethical to be lecturing” these days and, as long ago as 1869, Charles Eliot – in his inaugural address as president of Harvard University – declared that “the lecturer pumps laboriously into sieves (and although) the water may be wholesome, it runs through (whereas) a mind must work to grow”.

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