I always seem like a depressed pessimist when writing these blogs… 🙁 At any rate, as usual, these readings and videos seem wonderful in theory, but they just gloss over the problems. Perhaps the issue is that those who go into pedagogy enjoy their work too much… To be fair, most people who stick through a PhD and build a career, enjoy their work. But for those in pedagogy, their work is guided learning, teaching itself, and they can’t seem to grasp the idea that some student’s don’t want to be a part of it.
This does not apply at the graduate level, because presumably all of us actually enjoy what we do and wouldn’t be here otherwise. But most of our readings seem to cover all schooling at all ages. And I am certain I have encountered more than a few undergrads who simply didn’t want to be there. And of all the students, these are the ones most resistant to “fun” and active learning. They are also the ones most in need of being reached.
Thomas and Brown suggest that learning is inexorably tied with play and fun, and when combined properly, people are happy to learn. Which I would agree with, though their example of middle-school kids learning about Harry Potter lore is borderline absurd. First and foremost, the Harry Potter books are fun, for most students, spatial statistics and antebellum US history are not. You can certainly improve upon dry boring lectures, but you’ll never make it exciting unless you have the talent of someone like VT’s John Boyer or Youtube’s Dan Carlin.
Second of all, aren’t we ignoring the fact that high school age and younger kids have a psychological need to rebel against authority? (Again, this is not applicable to graduate students.) I’d wager that if you took a class of 8th graders, and required them to read Harry Potter, and assigned homework on the subject, and tested them, and then said that their futures depend on their ability to recall mundane details, they would hate it as much as they hate earth science or algebra. To those students, the teacher is the authority they are supposed to rebel against.
I hate to sound so negative, but the fact is that there isn’t enough flexibility for undergrads to exclusively take interesting courses. Sometimes they have to take required courses they despise. I certainly don’t blame them for that, but it doesn’t change the fact that some of them really don’t want to be sitting in your class.
The single most difficult moment in my short teaching experience was for a summer program introducing STEM fields to 8th graders. All of them were bright, and some of them wanted to be there, but a few very clearly didn’t. Who knows if their parents forced them to be there, or if they misjudged how interested they were in the program… Either way it seemed like torture for them. We tried to make our session as active as possible, running a real-time epidemic simulation and infect an imaginary population with some horrific pandemic influenza virus to see how many survived. Most of the students were happier playing the game than listening to our PowerPoint intro, but the more we tried to engage the disinterested ones, the less interested they were. I honestly think they’d have preferred to sleep through a lecture than be bothered by us. As soon as they structure of the rigid lecture (we teach, you listen) disappeared, they were free to completely disconnect. They certainly didn’t like the lecture either, but the game certainly didn’t help. Honestly it completely prevented me from reaching the other students. I felt like I was hurting these poor kids (because I remember being in their shoes in 8th grade myself). In fact, the only time they paid any attention was at the end when they got to control the learning entirely (asking questions about famous epidemics).
TL;DR: All of the methods we’ve read about so far are wonderful for interested students, but they make the fatal assumption that all the students want to be a part of this experience. If I get one thing out of this class, I hope I learn how to deal with these ones who don’t.
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Unrelated side-note: One of the readings talks about the transition from black and white to color TV. Ever wonder what it looked like?
September 18, 2017 @ 11:26 am
You raise a very valid point about the relationship between student engagement and their desire (or need) to be in the course. This makes a tremendous difference, and I do agree that much of the readings tend to focus on how to engage students who want or are willing to be engaged. At the same time, I think you touch on an incredibly important point: “the only time they paid any attention was at the end when they got to control the learning entirely (asking questions about famous epidemics)”. I think teaching and learning are both an exploration, and when viewed in such light they enable both students and teachers to learn about a topic or the presentation of that topic, but to encourage students to reflect on the best ways they personally learn best. I teach in History, and one of my secondary goals is to encourage students to consider precisely how they learn by introducing a wide range of materials, teaching methods, and approaches to the study of the topic: Arab-Israeli Dispute. While this may seem a bit schizophrenic, student assessment and my explanations of the logic behind the assignments underscores the relevance to whatever their interest or lack of interest. My course is divided into four sections, each organized in a different way (conceptual frameworks/theories, chronological order (i.e., covering 1980s), issue-oriented (i.e., covering Jerusalem), and Israel, Palestine, and You). These headings offer students a bit of variety and give them space to decide on what they like and do not like.
Students are tasked with writing a Section Paper, in which they choose the most meaningful section, then need to justify why that section was the best for learning about the course content, as well as to critique issues/topics left out of the section. Students are empowered to say what they like and dislike, and justify why they like it (and by extension, dislike the others). While I realize this may not work well in other courses, the approach worked quite well with prompting a bit of reflection on learning styles in the National Security and International Security courses I taught last year. I’m teaching a different course this year, so we’ll see if it works. I think it relates to that idea of providing space for students to take ownership over the learning process (like the end of the course for your 8th graders) – not in a superficial way, but in a way that challenges self-reflection.
September 20, 2017 @ 3:31 pm
Excellent point. It does seem a bit silly that I mentioned the solution in my own post, buried under nay-saying. But there has to be some control over what they learn, we can’t have college level Montessori. I know standardization is a bad word in modern pedagogy, especially the standardized tests associated with the Common Core system, but students do need to learn the boring parts too.
That said, it seems like you found a good balance with the “choose your own section to emphasize via section paper” formula. Allowing them to choose one area to focus on does seem to give them some choice while ensuring they get exposed to all four sections. I will definitely try to introduce more choice in my future lab courses. I wonder how much freedom I could give them…
September 18, 2017 @ 4:41 pm
I think you’ve pinpointed a critical point: is the student willing to learn? By and large, I feel like most of the students I’ve encountered really do, but you always seem to linger of the students who clearly give the impression they’d rather be anywhere in the world but class. In some circumstances I can understand why. Some students are taking classes that are requirements of some general education requirement. I’m also optimistic that this course will help with some styles or techniques that can incorporate some of those students.
September 20, 2017 @ 3:33 pm
I hope so. Those students are certainly a minority, but they are incredibly distracting. Most notably because I was one, and I remember utterly hating some courses as a teenager. I feel guilty that I’m the source of their boredom, and that prevents me from focusing on the students who really want to learn. The worst ones are the ones who nearly fall asleep – maybe they’re tired from gaming or partying all night long, or maybe I’m just boring…
September 18, 2017 @ 7:30 pm
First of all… I appreciate your pessimism. I often feel pessimistic as well as I try to respond to our readings. I think you brought up a great point in saying “readings and videos seem wonderful in theory, but they just gloss over the problems.” We’ve talked in class about how lectures can be inspiring, but aren’t often effective at teaching, and that’s how I feel about a lot of these readings. Langer says that she’s going to talk about the why, but not the how. I feel like the how would be really helpful. The people that do talk about the how often do so in a more idealized sense, and don’t offer a realistic plan for how to implement change.
September 20, 2017 @ 3:43 pm
My sentiment exactly. To be honest, I was hoping for “how” more than “why” when taking the FP certificate courses.
September 19, 2017 @ 2:42 pm
I think Coffeeseltzer offers some wonderful perspective here and you have some other good comments as well. The reason none of the readings deal with “students who don’t want to learn” is because humans are hide-wired learners. Even rebellious or apathetic teenagers are indeed learning — all the time, every day. What they learn might not align with the objectives for a particular course or curriculum, but they are definitely learning. The readings we consider here are designed to help us engage a broad range of learning styles and preferences. And as teachers, I think we have the obligation to teach in ways that keep our courses from being id’d as boring or “despised b/c required.” We’ll be working on ways to adapt “mindful learning” techniques to specific situations / disciplines tomorrow in class and I hope that will help give you some ideas that will work in your own situation.
September 20, 2017 @ 4:07 pm
You’re right that we’re all continuously learning. My concern was that the rebellious naysayers would have a paradoxical reaction. The more you try to engage them, the more they retreat. Maybe I was just doing a bad job of it. I look forward to the mindful learning techniques.
September 20, 2017 @ 11:14 am
You definitely bring up some interesting points and there have been great discussions that have followed. Your example of introducing STEM fields to 8th graders was really interesting, and I couldn’t help but wonder how the day would have gone if you had first had students ask about famous epidemics and then followed that with the simulation. Could you have incorporated the material from the PowerPoint presentation into the discussion of famous epidemics and the simulation? The students who appear disengaged may not initially understand why the material is relevant or interesting or why they should care. As educators, there are ways that we can try to engage these students and help them see connections with their interests and things around them. In my own undergraduate education, I definitely did not want to be in some of my classes. But those were typically the classes where I didn’t see the larger context and didn’t see how it connected to my interests. So I was not very engaged in those courses. It did not mean that I did not want to learn or didn’t want to be a part of it. I just didn’t understand how the equations that I was learning about in mechanical engineering connected with my interests or anything outside of the class (anything other than engines). So I just tried to get through those classes. Looking back, I wish someone had brought in a real-world example (something other than an engine, please!) or provided me just a little more context.
I also think that we as educators should not jump to conclusions about the students in our classes. Each individual in your class has interests and reasons for pursuing their education. They just may not be the same as yours. One of the most challenging experiences I have had while teaching was during an introductory class. I had one student who was really struggling. I felt like nothing I tried to do to help was working. I kept working with this student throughout the semester and I learned about their interests outside of the classroom and some of the challenges that they were experiencing. I had forgotten about all of the different things that students are dealing with, particularly during their first year of college. Students have a lot going on in their lives and we often only see them in one context. I would encourage you to take a step back and try to see the whole individual when you look at the students in your class.
September 20, 2017 @ 2:31 pm
I’ve found myself frustrated with some of the readings for many of the same reasons. Even at the college level, not every student is there because they want to be. And for those who aren’t, even if they are “constantly learning,” it’s going to be a miserable experience.
It would definitely be interesting to encounter material in this course that directly confronts totally miserable students. Because that’s a reality instructors face every day. A lot of this advice will work for your average college student, even somewhat surprisingly and counter-intuitively. That is great. But for other students, it might come across as glib, insubstantial or a bit hack-y.
Also, quite a lot of students are dealing with serious psychological and psychosocial problems. This is an epidemic on college campuses: depression, anxiety, substance abuse problems, eating disorders, girlfriend/boyfriend abuse…. anyone who’s taught, even just one class, has had a student in this situation. In all likelihood we didn’t know about it, and it affected their schoolwork. On the note of teaching to unreceptive and miserable students, I’d be interested in learning tactics that worked with this without having to explicitly address it. Maybe it’s too taboo to start teaching with the assumption that some kids are psychologically impaired, but it would actually be much more representative of the reality we deal with as college instructors. It’s going to be complicated to develop pedagogical tools with this in mind but the benefits could be enormous.
September 20, 2017 @ 3:41 pm
That’s an excellent point. I had not considered the psychological impairment, thought it should be on every teacher’s mind. That could completely change the teacher-student dynamic – I hope we’ll cover this a bit in our course.
As for the undergrad – I regularly see the “it’s a job” attitude reflected on college related social media. I would say at least half of the students, perhaps more, are only there because a degree –> a job. If they learn something interesting on the side, that’s great, but if they were truly interested they could just watch a middle-brow Youtube video, take a MOOC, or read a Wikipedia entry. The primary reason those students attend your course is to get a grade. We should not plan an entire curriculum under the assumption that these students have some childlike drive to learn, or some need for enlightenment.
Example of this on social media, the top comment on this Reddit thread.