7[1]
Should It Matter Who the Teacher
Is?
A Review of Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach
Neil Lutsky
Carleton
College
(This essay originally appeared as the
monthly “E-xcellence in Teaching” e-column in the PsychTeacher Electronic
Discussion List for October 2000).
The curious belief that it makes a
difference who the teacher is raises a troubling question: what about the
teacher ought to affect educational outcomes? To what extent are we each
effective or ineffective teachers as a function of our knowledge of the subject
matter and thoughtfulness about it, our hairstyles and body shapes, discussion
leadership skills, class preparation, social identities and personalities, uses
of technological wizardry or apt cartoons, story-telling abilities, or participation
in teaching conferences and conscientious readings of Teaching Tips?
What we assume matters matters, does it not? For example, our beliefs may
influence our self-esteem as teachers as we experience success and failure, how
we evaluate aspiring and veteran colleagues, and how we strive to improve our
teaching. (Should I get that haircut now, read Teaching of Psychology,
spend the hour in therapy, or go to the lab?) More importantly, perhaps, our
beliefs about what should matter may influence our goals as educators, that is,
what we take for ourselves and communicate to students as worthy attitudes to
bring to learning, what we strive to teach about what ought to matter in
education.
Parker Palmer, a nationally-known
education writer, teacher, and workshop leader (and graduate of an odd little
liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota), stakes out a sharp and
thoughtful claim about what matters in education in his 1998 book The
Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (Jossey-Bass
Inc., Publishers). Palmer believes, first of all, that teachers matter and
attempts to reset a balance that has, arguably, swung too strongly of late in
the direction of "student learning." (Neither Palmer nor anyone else
is opposed to students' learning, of course. The issue of balance concerns how
significant teachers are thought to be in envisioning what ought to be achieved
in education and in acting to bring about those ends.) What about teachers
matters? At the heart of Palmer's view is his belief that the person who
teaches matters, that "good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good
teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher" (p. 10).
What is Palmer arguing here? How also might his position stimulate our thinking
about alternative conceptions of what matters? And what, ultimately, matters
(in teaching, of course)? These are the questions that structure this review.
Palmer begins by suggesting it isn't how
we teach (i.e., the methods we use in teaching) that most requires the
attention of teachers (or educational reformers or organizations for teachers
like the one that sponsors this discussion list). Thus, the expectation that
education will be sustained or markedly improved by some new teaching method or
approach (e.g., assessing outcomes, service learning, inquiry-based learning,
or even lecturing as colorful electronic projections dance by overhead) is
chimerical. Palmer isn't against innovative or traditional methods of teaching;
rather, he believes that we pay far too much attention to and show far too much
faith in methodological fixes for education.
It's unfortunate that here, as elsewhere
throughout The Courage to Teach, Palmer provides little in the way of
convincing evidence in support of his assertions. He pays scant attention to
systematic research results and much prefers to cite his own experiences and
reflections, as well as anecdotes and informal findings from his workshops and
talks with students and teachers. Still, his ideas and observations are highly
provocative. In the current instance, Palmer notes that when students talk
about their best teachers, those teachers turn out to employ no substantially
common teaching method. In his view (and mine, also), great teachers can be
histrionic classroom performers or gentle discussion facilitators, highly
sensitive supporters of students or their frightful critics, and focused
research mentors or unfettered intellectual wildcatters. But if this is so,
what then matters in teaching?
For Palmer, it's that the teacher's work
as an educator and student of a discipline is strongly and obviously tied to
that teacher's sense of self. It is our deeply wrought personal commitment to
teaching, stemming from our curiosities, values, experiences, and emotions in
life that may make education possible. It is that one person—a teacher—can be
aware of the personal meaning and pleasure of his or her intellectual
commitment and, especially, of the limitations and insecurities associated with
that commitment. It is that such a person can appreciate the nascent struggles
and aspirations of students and can help create conditions in a classroom or
laboratory that may connect students and faculty to a field of knowledge and
inquiry. It is study as an authentic expression of self.
Palmer's claim is that many teachers
lose personal connectedness to their work as they defend against threats to the
self of the teacher. We are subject, for example, to the seeming indifference
or occasional hostility of students, colleagues, and administrators. We
experience inevitable failure in teaching; as Palmer notes, "the same
person who teaches brilliantly one day can be an utter flop the next" (p.
67). (My personal testimony is even sharper: the same person who teaches with
success in one section of a course can experience abject failure in another
section of the very same course on the very same day!) Most importantly, in
Palmer's view, we have internalized an academic—in his terms,
"objectivist"—bias against selfhood, and we don't want to behave unprofessionally
by acknowledging our personal stake and vulnerabilities in studying and
representing a subject matter. Finally, we fear the unmasking of illusions and
the upheaval of habits that may result from an open encounter with students'
diverse realities. Of course, these are our students' fears as well, but do we
allow ourselves to appreciate that? Palmer thinks not: "we cannot see the
fear in our students until we see the fear in ourselves" (p. 47).
If all of this sounds vaguely familiar
to psychologists, it may be because there's more than a faint echo of Carl
Rogers in Parker Palmer (although Rogers is not mentioned in the book). What
matters most in Palmer's scheme is the apparent authenticity of the teacher's
commitment to his or her vocation and role. Inauthentic teaching reflects a
turn from the deep personal valuing of the self toward, largely, the conditions
of worth specified by the norms of contemporary "objectivist"
culture. What results leads the teacher to distort his or her experience of
self and others, and to shun true encounters with students and colleagues.
Thankfully, Palmer doesn't recommend mass non-directive therapy for teachers,
but he does encourage teachers to become more personally reflective about what
initially drew them to the life of the mind and to teaching. For example, he
suggests that we think about our mentors in academia and, more pointedly, (and
I'm paraphrasing Palmer here) about what it was in us that allowed that
mentoring to succeed. "By remembering our mentors, we remember
ourselves—and by remembering ourselves, we remember our students" (p. 24).
Similarly, Palmer would have us reconsider how our fields of study elicited and
nurtured aspects of self we barely knew existed within us. What he hopes to
rekindle is the teacher's "subjective engagement" with learning and
personal commitment to teaching not as a scripted role but as a deeply human
quest for understanding and meaning.
Effective teachers embrace what Palmer
calls "the principle of paradox." If I understand his point, it is
that teaching needs to be energized rather than intimidated by tensions
inherent in apparent conflicts in education (e.g., self vs. technique,
objective knowledge vs. subjective engagement, intellect vs. emotion). Doing
so—and I am paraphrasing Palmer again (p. 74)—might allow teachers to design
classes, for example, that are both bounded and open, welcome both silence and
speech, and honor the "little" stories of the students and the
"big" stories of the disciplines and tradition. Palmer continues:
"the place where paradoxes are held together is in the teacher's heart,
and our inability to hold them is less a failure of technique than a gap in our
inner lives" (p. 83).
Given the principle of paradox, it isn't
surprising that Palmer himself embraces the creative tension between the
teacher's inner life and the role of community in knowing, teaching, learning,
and stewardship of our educational institutions. In addition, under the rubric
of "community," the latter half of The Courage to Teach
manages to challenge-smartly, I might add—a number of the sacred cows of
seemingly progressive innovation in American higher education, including the
assessment movement (pp. 93-94) and the reorientation of teaching around
student learning (p. 116, for example). Parker also manages to fit a wonderful
discussion of what he calls "teaching from the microcosm" under the
banner of community. What it's doing there isn't clear, but I hope to remember
his call to teachers to forego covering the field and to replace that with an
intensive focus on judiciously selected exemplars of a discipline when I fail
once again to address the full body of material under a topic heading.
Should it matter to teaching if the
teacher courageously confronts the kinds of personal-professional issues Palmer
identifies? I believe there are reasons to question Palmer's view. First, let's
give due respect to the null hypothesis, that, given some basic levels of
disciplinary competence and communicative skill, teachers don't matter at all.
I know the possibility is heretical, but don't we teach our students about the
fundamental attribution error and other psychological tendencies that might
inflate our sense of our own importance? The null is worth pondering here, for
it directs our attention to external factors that may affect education more
significantly than Palmer's teaching self. The null is also humbling. It
reminds us of our doubtful significance, and, consequently, allows us to
appreciate anew the courage it takes to stand against the current to generate
ripples of thoughtful skepticism, knowledge, clarity, and discovery. I like a
point made by James O'Donnell in Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to
Cyberspace (1998, p. 123): "we teachers do not automatically deserve a
future. We must earn it by the skill with which we disorient our students,
energize them, and inculcate in them a taste for the hard disciplines of seeing
and thinking."
Even if the apparent sincerity and
passion of the teacher do affect educational outcomes, as both research on
social influence and the history of demagoguery suggest they might, shouldn't
we help students to approach messages so adorned quite cautiously? In other
words, is it a good thing for students to be swayed by the teacher's self?
There is an argument to be made for educational goals opposite those implicit
in The Courage to Teach. In this alternative, heartless vision of
education, students would learn to be more critical of what is seemingly
authentic and more attentive to what is superficially tedious. (I am reminded
in the latter regard of the routine manner in which Andrew Wiles supposedly
presented and concluded his momentous talk solving Fermat's Last Theorem!) If
we are successful as teachers, wouldn't our students learn how and why to seek
meaning in dry communications, whether in the classroom or journal articles? If
we are successful as teachers, wouldn't our students become more willing to
employ the intellectual values of the discipline because of what those values
yield in the world rather than what they mean to the person who teaches?
"Just tell me about the new
continent. I don't give a damn what you've discovered about yourself."
That's the caption of a wonderful cartoon in the October 18/25, 1999 issue of The
New Yorker in which a king is shown speaking to his returned explorer.
(That's a line I'd like to append to every paper assignment I give my students
from now on!) Transposed to our current concerns, the cartoon reminds us to
take our discipline seriously rather than ourselves (although, of course, the
king isn't simply interested in the new world out of idle curiosity). Palmer
comes to a similar conclusion about the importance of a field when he promotes
a "subject-centered education" within "a community of
truth," but for him the teacher's personal relationship with a field
signals that potential value. In contrast, I am suggesting that a teacher ought
to let the discipline speak for itself and to offer an informed, thoughtful,
and open rendition of the character, accomplishments, and limitations of that
discipline for students' potential appreciation.
In sum, the relationships between the
personal self of the teacher, the professional self of the teacher, the selves
of our students, and the meaning of a discipline in life may be far more
variegated than those depicted in Palmer's portrait. Ultimately, arguably, what
matters in teaching is that the teacher is able to craft a class experience
that allows students to discover or identify ways in which a discipline—it's
epistemological values and claims to knowledge—may have meaning in life. Part
of this may involve helping students to find personal meaning in the
discipline, and part of that may be inspired by the teacher's complex example
of same. However, helping students to see beyond themselves, to recognize and
respect the possibilities of meaning in a discipline to others and even to
times in history outside our own, remains one of the fundamental challenges of
teaching. In that regard, it just might matter who the teacher is.
[1] Lutsky, N. (2002). Should it matter who
the teacher is? A review of Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach. In W.
Buskist, V. Hevern, & G. W. Hill, IV, (Eds.). Essays from e-xcellence in
teaching, 2000-2001 (chap. 7). Retrieved [insert date] from the Society for
the Teaching of Psychology Web site:
http://teachpsych.org/resources/e-books/eit2000.php
Copyright © 2000 Neil
Lutsky. Reproduced and distributed by permission. See Copyright Policy at
http://teachpsych.org/resources/e-books/eit2000.php
What We Need to
Know About Teaching and Teachers
Baron Perlman
and Lee I. McCann
University of
Wisconsin Oshkosh
(This
essay originally appeared as the monthly “E-xcellence in Teaching” e-column in
the PsychTeacher Electronic Discussion List for January 2001).
It
is critical that we learn all we can about undergraduate teaching both for
ourselves and our students. Better understanding of the phenomenology and
complexities of college teaching will help faculty, both new and senior alike,
and administrators, maintain and improve pedagogy, faculty vitality, and
faculty commitment to a teaching career.
There has been serious thought and
voluminous attention paid to teaching over the years. A recent handout on some,
but not all, books about teaching and higher education (Perlman, 2001) was 38
pages long! As a result of our work as editors of the Teaching Tips column that
appears regularly in the APS Observer, our attendance at the annual
National Institute of the Teaching of Psychology and other teaching-related
conferences, and our ongoing research into teaching, we have given considerable
thought to what we do not know about teaching. What is it we do not know about
teaching and teachers, but should? What follows are some examples of ideas on
teaching that need further exploration and attention, though we are sure the
list is incomplete.
The Prosaic
Sometimes the simple, but important,
day-to-day activities escape our scrutiny.
Efficient Ways to Survive As Teachers. Despite
McKeachie's Teaching Tips (2002) our own Lessons Learned (1998),
and a host of other practical books on pedagogy, we cannot find an archive of
simple survival tips for teachers. We are talking about simple things faculty
do that help them avoid problems and increase the time and attention they can
pay to other matters. For example, when teaching a large class always have a
pad of paper to keep track of students who need to make-up an exam, make an
appointment to talk, or who are concerned about performance. This real-time
record allows a faculty to personalize a larger class and keep track of a
myriad of details in a minimum amount of time. We are presently in the early
stages of gathering efficiency tips from faculty to share with others,
especially new colleagues.
Lecture Preparation. Robert
M. Arkin at The Ohio State University approached us with an idea for a Teaching
Tips column. He could find a great deal of information on the practice
of lecturing, but almost nothing on the composition of lectures. All teachers
prepare lectures, and spend a lot of time doing so. What advice can we offer
colleagues on the how-tos of lecture preparation?
Course Level. How do first
year courses differ from second year, or sophomore from junior? What
distinguishes an upper level course from a lower level one? Do students know
more about course level and difficulty than faculty? How do faculty correctly
place courses into their proper curricular level?
Make-up exams. All faculty
have students who miss exams, and many structure their courses so these exams
must be made up. We do not know what make-up procedures are most widely used by
faculty nor how well they work. Make-up exams are a good example of an ongoing
teaching activity we deal with regularly, but as with many such facets of
teaching, we have little data regarding how best to do it. We are presently
gathering data on this question.
Classroom Issues
Despite the superb writings of teachers
such as Stephen Brookfield and Parker Palmer, there is still much that occurs
in a classroom about which we need to learn more. For example:
Teachable Moments. All faculty
know what teachable moments are, sort of, and all want more of them. They occur
when the class is truly involved with the material, when because of good
teaching, good examples, good rapport, or a host of other reasons, time stops.
Students hang on every word of the lecture or discussion, material is
accurately and clearly perceived, and the affective miasma in the room, whether
intensity, interest, or enjoyment, enhance the learning experience. Can
teachers plan for such moments? How often do they occur in a course? Have they
been described from various perspectives? We do not know the answers.
Rapport. Everyone knows
what rapport is, a sense of mutual trust and emotional affinity, and everyone
agrees that good rapport between teacher and students is desirable. The
outcomes of rapport should be better learning, more student discussion and
participation, and simply a more pleasant experience throughout the course.
When the editor this e-column, Bill Buskist approached us about writing a
Teaching Tips column on rapport we readily agreed. But the more we all looked,
the less we could find, the murkier the concept seemed, and the more work we
had to do to understand the concept. That which we take for granted may be
poorly understood.
Ending a Course. There is quite
a bit written and data gathered on the first day of class and starting a class,
but all courses also end. We cannot find useful information on good ways to end
courses, ways that summarize and pull together both the intellectual work that
occurred and capture the spirit of collaborative learning, accomplishment, and
time well spent. Students' perceptions on the course ending experiences they
found effective and interesting would be useful. Our guess is that many faculty
spend little time ending a course, perhaps as little as a few minutes, and this
is a valuable teaching moment lost.
Teaching the Science of Psychology by
Doing.
The most important goal of undergraduate education in psychology is generally
agreed to be students' learning about the science of our discipline. How often
in a major are students required to or, as an elective, can they pursue
laboratory work? How much of this work is hands on, how much canned experiments
or virtual ones on a computer? What aspects of science do students learn in
these experiences? This is a question we intend to pursue in the months ahead.
Bigger Issues
Beyond the prosaic and classroom and
laboratory experiences lies the larger landscape of faculty development and
careers.
Continuities in Teaching. What
continuities exist in teaching and what changes over time for faculty? Why do
some aspects of teaching remain unaltered while others develop, and what
influences change or continuity?
What Losses and Gains in Teaching Accrue
Over Time?
Lifespan developmental models posit both gains and losses as development
progresses. We can find little data that address the question of losses as
faculty members’ teaching careers progress. As we gain experience and maturity
as teachers, what do we lose? We also know little about how faculty
conceptualize perceived gains in experience and expertise in teaching
undergraduates.
The Influence of Tenure On Teaching. How does
receiving tenure affect how faculty define the responsibilities of teaching? Do
teachers slack off, emphasize scholarship and have fewer concerns for student
learning? Our own experiences argue the opposite. We can find no data on this
question.
The Emotional Dimension in Undergraduate
Teaching.
Somewhat unexpected in our current longitudinal research (Perlman, McFadden,
McCann, & Kunzer, 2000) was the importance faculty placed on the emotional
dimension of undergraduate teaching, both for faculty themselves and students
(e.g., appreciating, liking, and enjoying the subject matter). For example,
enthusiasm is critically important to our cohort of faculty. However, we are
unclear (a) exactly how it is defined, or (b) why it is so important to
undergraduate teaching.
What Does Having an Interpersonal
Connection With Students Mean to Faculty? Our present research points to
interpersonal relationships with students as a critical dimension of
undergraduate teaching. Given its apparent importance, we need to learn how
faculty define such a connection, whether it has multiple dimensions, and what
those dimensions are.
How Do Gender, Race, Age, or Ethnicity
Affect Teaching and the Definition of Good Teaching? Menges (1999)
presented experiences of newly hired men and women, and perspectives of faculty
of color for all phases of academic responsibilities. Tierney and Bensimon
(1996) also addressed issues of socialization for untenured faculty,
particularly women and minorities. Neither specifically addresses how these
matters affect teaching. Qualitative studies are needed to inform us about the
influence of individual differences on teaching (Bland & Bergquist, 1997).
How Do Student Characteristics Influence
Teaching?
Students are one of the most important influences on teaching. Rojstaczer
(1999) discusses changes in his course goals and content at Duke, partially in
response to changing student preparation and expectations. More data are
needed, especially for faculty at teaching institutions. How do changes in such
characteristics over the years interact with teaching and faculty satisfaction
with it, and faculty expectations for student performance?
What Metaphor Best Captures Faculty
Teaching?
How long do metaphors, once adopted by faculty, influence teaching, and how is
it faculty adopt different pedagogical metaphors? (For example, the business
world uses metaphors, such as referring to managers as Atilla the Hun or cat
herders.) Metaphors are powerful ways of understanding and knowing, and to
understand something metaphorically provides an intuitive grasp of situations.
Metaphors provide depth and shades of meaning that rational arguments and
empirical data do not. Paradoxically, we may best understand teaching by
describing it as something else.
Conclusion
One conclusion we have reached over time
is that many of the things we know or accept as true about teaching, are, upon
investigation, opinions based on accepted wisdom rather than hard data. We
should be worried about not only about what we do not know about teaching, but
also skeptical about the things we believe we do know.
We are sure there are many other
teaching-related issues and phenomena that need systematic study and thought.
Please let us know what ideas you have for such research and writing
(perlman@uwosh.edu). Thank you.
References
Bland,
C. J., & Bergquist, W. H. (1997). The vitality of senior faculty members:
Snow on the roof–fire in the furnace. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No.
7. Washington, DC: The George Washington University Graduate School of
Education and Human Development.
McKeachie,
W. J. (2002). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college
and university teachers (11th Ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Menges,
R. J., & Associates. (1999). Faculty in new jobs: A guide to settling
in, becoming established, and building institutional support. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Perlman, B. (2001, January). Building
Your Pedagogical Library. Poster presented at the National Institute on the
Teaching of Psychology, St. Petersburg, FL. Available at the Teaching and
Curriculum Research, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Web site:
http://socsci.uwosh.edu/Teaching/index.htm
Perlman,
B., McCann, L. I., & McFadden, S. H. (Eds.). (1999). Lessons learned:
Practical advice for the teaching of psychology. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Society.
Perlman,
B., McFadden, S. H., McCann, L. I., & Kunzer, N. (2000). Faculty as
teachers: A contextual model. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Rojstaczer,
S. (1999). Gone for good: Tales of university life after the golden age.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Tierney,
W. G., & Bensimon, E. M. (1996). Promotion and tenure: Community and
socialization in academe. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
[1] Perlman, B., & McCann, L. I. (2002).
What we need to know about teaching and teachers. In W. Buskist, V. Hevern,
& G. W. Hill, IV, (Eds.). Essays from e-xcellence in teaching, 2000-2001
(chap. 10). Retrieved [insert date] from the Society for the Teaching of
Psychology Web site: http://teachpsych.org/resources/e-books/eit2000.php
Copyright © 2001 Baron
Perlman & Lee I McCann. Reproduced and distributed by permission. See
Copyright Policy at http://teachpsych.org/resources/e-books/eit2000.php
A Course, A
Course, My Kingdom for a Course
Nicholas F.
Skinner
King's College,
The University of Western Ontario
(This
essay originally appeared as the monthly “E-xcellence in Teaching” e-column in
the PsychTeacher Electronic Discussion List for February 2001).
I disagree emphatically with George
Bernard Shaw’s polemic, “he who can does. He who cannot, teaches.” Indeed, I
embrace the opposite view: “he who can, teaches” (Benjamin, 1998). However, I
am also persuaded by the wisdom of B.F. Skinner (1964), which may be awkward
for some teachers, that “education is what survives when what has been learnt
has been forgotten.” Thus, our challenge as teachers is clear—at a minimum we
must guarantee that the fundamentals of psychology survive in our students’
memories long after the curricular specifics have faded. We accomplish this
end, I believe, through a passion for, rather than mere knowledge of, our
discipline, and a respect and fondness for our students. In this column, I will
consider a number of questions to show how these attributes might be nurtured.
What Does and Doesn’t Work in the
Classroom?
In preparing these remarks, I have
discovered that it is one thing to do what one does in the classroom and quite
another to describe and understand what one does. This conundrum
notwithstanding, I believe what works in the classroom varies from teacher to
teacher and will largely reflect the answer to a more fundamental if rhetorical
question that any teacher must attempt to answer: “What do I want my classroom
legacy to be?”
My response has two components. First, I
would hope there is absolutely no doubt in my students’ minds about my total
enthusiasm for psychology. Second, I would like students to remember my respect
and affection for them.
Fortunately, most of us do like
students, and this is half the battle, but there are a few “tricks of the
trade” that can buttress one’s natural affection. For example, I try very hard
to learn my students’ names—students appreciate being called by name, and it
keeps them on their toes. I also like to speak about former students who have
earned a Ph.D., suggesting by extension that I think current students too are
capable of great things. Another notion that guides me personally in terms of a
respectful and affectionate attitude is that I continually try not to forget
what it was like to be a student, from both an academic and an adjustment
standpoint. For instance, I urge my students not to equate their self worth
with their grades, pointing out that bad marks sometimes happen to good people.
Is Less (Content) More?
I am not in favor of a “Psychology’s
Greatest Hits” approach—that is cheap and irresponsible—but neither do I
recommend that one try to cover everything on the curriculum in class, for two
reasons. First, from a practical standpoint, it is simply not possible to cover
everything. Second, and more important, years later students don’t seem to
remember a great deal of what we taught them, so perhaps we can be more relaxed
about the “curricular specifics,” that is, increase the amount they will
remember by doing less but doing it well.
How Best to Evaluate Students?
Because I have for years felt guilty
about my unavoidable emphasis on multiple-choice questions in large classes, I
take great comfort in Bridgeman and Morgan’s (1996) demonstration that more
than 90% of students obtain comparable marks on essay and multiple-choice
tests. In other words, students may prefer one form of assessment over the
other, but most handle both equally well.
Another common component of evaluation
is attendance. Dillon (1998) reported that despite the fact that faculty found
three-quarters of student excuses for missing classes to be unacceptable, fewer
than 40% said they would confront their students about the legitimacy of those
excuses, because of concerns about the negative effect of confrontation on
teaching evaluations (now so significant in hiring, promotion, tenure, and
merit pay decisions), and, even worse, fear of reprisal (perhaps not
unreasonable, given the increasing number of shooting incidents in North
American high schools of late). While this nightmarish specter is perhaps
beyond the purview of these remarks, it does speak eloquently to the importance
of a congenial classroom atmosphere for effective teaching, and, at a more
practical level, to the issue of attendance. If students know they are not
going to be challenged for missing class, or about their outlandish excuses,
their attendance will decline.
Though many students who do not attend
class attempt to cover the missed material by borrowing notes from someone who
did attend, these notes may be of doubtful usefulness. Baker and Lombardi
(1985) found that most students included in their notes fewer than a quarter of
the propositions judged worthy of inclusion and only 50% of the targeted main
ideas.
What Should Be the Role of Humor in
Teaching?
Buskist (1998) concluded that the use of
humor is not only one of the characteristics of master teachers but also an
indication of a second virtue, namely, enthusiasm. Certainly I have always
hoped that my use of humor reflects an underlying dynamic, to wit, my enjoyment
of what I am doing and what I am teaching.
Teacher humor should be neither
excessive nor gratuitous, but judicious. It must satisfy what I call “the
criterion of pedagogical purpose,” that is, it should be intended to make
students’ learning more enjoyable—and, as a result, more memorable. As the
lyric line in an old music hall tune (Peel Me a Grape) puts it, “amuse me or
lose me!”
In my experience, the most effective
humor is relevant, personal, and self-deprecating. Students love hearing
teachers tell tales on themselves. For example, during my treatment of the
effects of parental rejection, my students love hearing about my father’s
frequent reminder to me, “Nickie”—he called me “Nickie” when he was angry with
me, which was only when he was awake—“ never forget that your brother is an
only child.”
In a related (if controversial) context,
I am of the view that humor has its place not only in classes but also on
exams. Anecdotal evidence from my students is overwhelming. My personal
favorite student remark: “I look forward to your exams, Dr. Skinner.”
Empirically, my own research has convinced me that humor on exams is
beneficial. For example, in groups equated for ambient anxiety levels, students
given a multiple-choice exam containing approximately 50% humorous questions
scored on average between 3 to 4% higher than matched students writing a
conventional (humorless) form of the same exam (Skinner, 1992). Oscar Wilde was
correct—life is too important to be taken seriously!
Should We Trust Professorial Folk Wisdom?
Much of my teaching-related research
reflects a long-held conviction that the “folk wisdom” of professors and
students should not be accepted uncritically. For example, skeptical of
Joubert’s (1983) report that undergraduates with unusual first names were
significantly less likely to graduate with honors than those with common names,
I found that there was no significant difference in the percentage of female or
male students with common names versus unique names obtaining averages of 80%
or higher (in a sample of more than 500 introductory psychology students;
Skinner, 1984).
For years I followed the advice of a
respected senior colleague to put a number of easy questions at the beginning
of a multiple-choice examination “to get students off on the right foot.”
However, empirical examination of this piece of professorial folk wisdom
revealed that students doing difficult items first obtained a mean score of 85%
on later easy items, whereas students doing those same easy questions in the
first half of the test averaged about 70%, lending support to the suggestion
that an initial setback may have a salutary effect on subsequent performance (Skinner,
1999).
Finally, though each new generation of
students seems to be the beneficiary of the advice, unquestionably passed on by
senior students (and I think by many professors as well), “don’t change your
first answer to a multiple-choice question because it’s probably correct,” on
average about 50% of changes go from wrong to right (e.g., Benjamin, 1984;
Skinner, 1996). Clearly, teachers need to convince students of the relative
efficacy of answer changing.
How Much Should Research Inform Our Teaching?
Though I am opposed to research at the
expense of teaching, I am very much in favor of teachers doing research,
because that research can greatly benefit their teaching. One of the things
that made my best teachers so effective was precisely that they could bring
their own research to bear on illustrating general principles. They invariably
became more enthused when talking about their research, and this enthusiasm was
not only infectious but made the general principles more memorable.
In combination, my classroom experience
and research into teaching have led me to the view that the most effective
teachers are, as the saying goes, “to the manner born.” In other words, “the
characteristics of effective teachers are more likely to be the products of biology
than teacher training programs” (Skinner, 1999, p. 71). Truly great teachers
are successful in very large part because they are “doing what comes naturally”
rather than trying to emulate their own best teachers, which Steve Davis
recently warned against in this very column (Davis, 2000).
Conclusion
Clearly, only a few will be “great”
teachers, but this should not deter us mere mortals because, as McKeachie
(2002) points out, “[in the final analysis] teaching effectiveness depends not
on what the teacher does, but rather on what the student does” (p. 6).
Effective teachers are those who will require their students to inquire—to find
out actively the answers to their own questions, rather than osmotically
accepting and “... repeating what someone else says is true” (Postman and
Weingartner, 1969, p. 19). The good news is that one does not have to be a
charismatic inspirationalist—anyone who takes seriously the maxim, “teach me
how to do it myself,” can teach effectively.
In closing, let me recall a line
from Robert Bolt’s powerful 1961 play, A Man for All Seasons. The venerable and
wise Sir Thomas More is urging a youthful protégé to consider a life in the
classroom, because, More assures him, he will be an outstanding teacher. “But
if I were,” demurs the young man, “who would know it?” Replied the great author
and statesman, “you, your friends, your students, God. Not a bad audience,
that.” Not a bad audience indeed!
[Editors' Note: An expanded
version of this article may be found in Skinner, N. F. (2001). A course, a
course, my kingdom for a course: Reflections of an unrepentant teacher. Canadian
Psychology, 42, 49-60.]
References
Baker,
L. & Lombardi, B. R. (1985). Students’ lecture notes and their relation to
performance. Teaching of Psychology, 12, 28-32.
Benjamin,
L. T., Jr. (1984). Staying with initial answers on objective tests: Is it a
myth? Teaching of Psychology, 11, 133-141.
Benjamin,
L. T., Jr. (1998). Those who can, teach: Privileges and responsibilities in
a world of ideas. Paper presented at a meeting of the Canadian
Psychological Association, Edmonton.
Bridgeman,
B., & Morgan, R. (1996). Success in college for students with discrepancies
between performance on multiple-choice and essay tests. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 88, 333-340.
Buskist,
W. (1998, January). Doing what master teachers do: Some practical advice.
Paper presented at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, St.
Petersburg Beach, FL.
Davis,
S. F. (2000). Teaching with style—your style. E-xcellence in Teaching. Society
for the Teaching of Psychology Psychteacher Electronic Discussion List
[Online].
Dillon,
K. (1998). Reasons for missing class. Psychological Reports, 83,
435-441.
Joubert,
C. E. (1983). Unusual names and academic achievement. Psychological Reports,
53, 226.
McKeachie,
W. J. (2002). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college
and university teachers (11th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Postman,
N., & Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. New
York: Dell.
Skinner,
B. F. (1964, May 21). Education in 1984. New Scientist, 484.
Skinner,
N. F. (1984). Unusual given names and university grades: A rose by any other
name does smell as sweet. Psychological Reports, 54, 546.
Skinner,
N. F. (1992, June). The theory of erroneous zones was conceived by Sigmund
Fraud (true or false): Using humor to facilitate students’ performance.
Poster session presented at a meeting of the Canadian Psychological
Association, Quebec City, PQ.
Skinner,
N. F. (1996, August). Guess what? Gender differences in multiple-choice
answer changing. Poster session presented at the International Congress of
Psychology, Montreal.
Skinner,
N. F. (1999). When the going gets tough, the tough get going: Effects of order
of item difficulty on multiple-choice test performance. North American
Journal of Psychology, 1, 79-82.
[1] Skinner, N. F. (2002). A course, a
course, my kingdom for a course. In W. Buskist, V. Hevern, & G. W. Hill,
IV, (Eds.). Essays from e-xcellence in teaching, 2000-2001 (chap. 11).
Retrieved [insert date] from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Web
site: http://teachpsych.org/resources/e-books/eit2000.php
Copyright © 2001 Nicholas F.
Skinner. Reproduced and distributed by permission. See Copyright Policy at http://teachpsych.org/resources/e-books/eit2000.php
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