TY - JOUR AU - Finley, Laura PY - 2010/04/26 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - GROUP TESTING: AN OXYMORON? JF - TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology JA - TRAILS VL - IS - SE - DO - UR - https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/group-testing-an-oxymoron SP - AB - A primary tenet of a humanistic approach to sociology is that individuals do not learn in isolation. Indeed, as Marx explained, we are social animals. Humanist sociologists have long recognized that we will only create a more just world when we experience connections with other humans (Rader 2003). Yet too infrequently educators fail to consider the social nature of learning, instead relying on individual-based teaching strategies. Humanist sociologists themselves are not immune from this criticism. As McGuire (2003: 236) explains, "I suspect many of us sociologists are good at selecting the right content replete with punchy details regarding emancipation, but not so good at embodying an emancipatory process itself." The "tried and true" pedagogical approach of lecturing is the most dominant of these individual-based teaching methods. These lectures are generally followed by some form of individual-based assessment, such as a multiple choice, true-false, or short answer style test. This occurs at all levels of education, but is of particular concern in higher education, where it seems professors utilize individual-based instructional methods and assessments even more. There are many reasons for the over-reliance on what Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970) called "banking education." Lack of pedagogy instruction in graduate school is perhaps the primary one (Rader 2003), as those without background in teaching methods are often bound to reproduce the ways they were taught. Tradition reigns superior. As Sperber (2000: 84) explains, "Lecturing has long been the pedagogical workhorse of higher education." ER -