THE CHALLENGES TO TEACHERS, TEACHING, AND POST-SECONDARY TEACHING INSTITUTIONS: ASSUMPTIONS, PREDILECTIONS, PROCESSES, AND PROJECTIONS

Abstract

ABSTRACT The contemporary forces impacting teachers and teaching are capable of becoming an overwhelming, uncontrollable wave of disaster or an opportunity for proactively redesigning teaching at a higher level of commitment, performance, and relevance to make and shape critically important intellectual and societal contributions for the future. This symposium aims to galvanize the teachers in post-secondary education to reject the deadly viruses of reactive fear, credentialed complacency, and intellectual rigidity in their current stages and replace them with proactive options, alternatives, and designs. More specifically, this Introduction clarifies why the respective articles were commissioned to appear in this symposium based on the reasons, concerns, and observations that stimulated the Editor to pursue and design a symposium on teaching in the social sciences. The concluding contention of this Introduction is that all teachers can, and must, influence the events in both their personal and professional lives by actively immersing themselves in the values, visions, and cultural anchors of their profession, discipline, craft, society, and belief systems. There is no doubt in the Editor's mind that the symposium presentations will add much substance that will help make all of us great teachers. “What in context beguiles, out of context mortifies.” David Wayne