Alison King - citation

"Guide on the Side" v. "Sage on the Stage"

These labels come from Alison King, Professor of Education at California State University, San Marcos. I came across them in a chapter she wrote for Changing College Classrooms: New Teaching and Learning Strategies for an Increasingly Complex World (Chapter 2, Inquiry as a Tool in Critical Thinking, D.F. Halpern editor, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass 1994). In that chapter she cites them as coming from her article From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side in College Teaching, Volume 41 #1, 1993, pages 30-35. Those of you near a university library would do well to find and read the latter. In it Dr. King presents several marvelous strategies for those lecturers among us hunting for acceptable ways to engage students as active learners.

return to the Secrets of Good Lessons page