Stand and Deliver: An Epistemologically-Driven Perspective of College Lecture

Current pedagogical trends reveal lecture is steadily losing favor as contemporary techniques (e.g., constructivist, experiential, and flipped) gain popularity in higher education. While these techniques have merit and evidence for their use is compelling, we contend that lecture need not be abandoned entirely. With support from personal epistemological theories, as well as research on student preference, we purport that there is still a place for lecture in the modern academy. We consider students’ personal epistemological maturation during the college years; namely, the ways in which students view and construct their knowledge and beliefs. We posit that active lecture may be beneficial, given the ways in which it appears to complement students’ epistemological maturity, as well as personal preference. Finally, we conclude that efforts should be made to investigate how active lecture facilitates knowledge acquisition in particular for first and second-year students in comparison to contemporary techniques