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TO LECTURE AND/OR NOT TO LECTURE, THAT IS THE QUESTION... OR
NOT.
I hope this essay will stimulate discussion on the list and
serves as encouragement for you to attend the next event in
the Faculty Series on the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning,
a faculty led panel discussion on the "Art of Lecturing" on
9/25 from 1 - 1:50 pm in Killian 104.
I hope you can make it and participate.
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This article is available online at this address:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i05/05b01501.htm
- The text of the article is below -
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From the issue dated September 27, 2002
'Look at Me!' A Teaching Primer
By MARSHALL SPECTOR
I have always received high marks on student evaluations of
my courses. I rank especially high in clarity, organization,
and preparedness. That has been true when I teach philosophy
of science (my specialty), introduction to philosophy, logic,
or the history of philosophy (most often, the period from
Descartes through Kant). It was after taking my
Descartes-through-Kant course at Duke University many years
ago that a student wrote in the comments section of the
evaluation sheet that "Spector always clearly laid out what
the philosophers were saying, so that the students could
thereby understand their systems."
I was proud of that comment, even though I noticed the pained
expression of one of my colleagues when he read it in the
campus course-evaluation book. It took me many years to
understand what bothered him. It was not jealousy. It was a
negative reaction to a display of teaching virtuosity that I
have since come to share.
Please don't misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with
clarity of presentation, with being able to lay out the major
issues and questions, outline the main attempts at their
solution, and then, in the coda, present one's own answers in
a neat package.
Such a performance -- what I call the inspired presentation of
material -- can be impressive to watch. The students will
often learn the material, and at the end of the course, they
will have a set of notes that may rival a good textbook, which
they may even consult later in life.
In certain types of courses, and at times in most courses,
inspired presentation is the ideal way to proceed. I can think
of no better way to teach differential equations to physics
majors, or statistics to psychology majors. That mode of
teaching also offers the teacher personal rewards. It is
exhilarating to bring off such a performance. It feels good to
know that you have impressed a roomful of young people with
your knowledge, style, and perhaps even your personality. It
is a type of intellectually respectable showing off. "Look at
me! Aren't I smart?"
But sometimes getting the material across isn't enough. I have
come to understand and appreciate another goal in teaching,
for which inspired presentation is not appropriate. The other
goal is ensuring that the students are at least as interested
in pursuing the material of the course when it is over as they
were when it began. Have they been hooked?
The inspired presentation of material is very good at
transmitting information, but not necessarily good at
maintaining or increasing students' interest in the subject.
When a good lecturer clearly and completely covers the
material, there is nothing to be said except: "OK, now I know
how to solve second-order differential equations." "So that's
what Hume really said about causality!" "Now I know how to do
a reductio ad absurdum proof." "Wasn't that teacher great?"
There is no space for the student to be active or creative.
The only role for the student is that of a good sponge. (I
don't mean to imply that soaking up knowledge as a sponge does
not require talent and hard work.)
Again, that approach may be quite proper in many courses, and
it has a place in some parts of almost every course. The
purpose of a statistics course for psychology majors is not to
produce students who are more interested in creatively
pursuing the study of statistics at the end of the semester
than they were at the beginning, but to supply budding
psychologists with a necessary tool of their trade. There is
no particular reason for the students to have any special
interest in the tool itself.
Making sure that students remain interested in the material
requires different strategies on the part of the teacher,
underlying all of which is the recognition of certain
psychological and intellectual needs of the students. Those of
us who aspire to inspired presentation must recognize that the
pride we take in our ability to show off intellectually is a
human trait that our students share. If our own continued
interest in our specialties is at least partly due to the
pleasure we take in successfully solving problems in them --
subject-matter problems, or research -- as well as teaching
problems, like designing a lecture, then perhaps we can help
maintain our students' interest by encouraging them to grapple
with the material just as we do.
Recognizing that our students too want to be able to say
proudly "Look at me!" is not a deep insight. But it carries in
its wake the realization that the inspired presentation of
material cannot satisfy that desire, and hence may not be the
best way to maintain students' continued interest in the
subject matter. How many professors, after all, would be
satisfied by hearing lectures -- even good lectures -- day in
and day out from experts on various subjects without the
opportunity to participate, or at least to express their own
views and have them taken seriously?
Realizing that our students share our need for recognition of
creative accomplishment (or at least the valiant attempt at
it) also indicates the kinds of strategies that we can use to
satisfy their need, and thus to keep them interested. We can
ask questions, make provocative claims, stage debates, even
lecture from time to time -- but our goal must be to generate
a situation in which students attempt to sort out the issues
and relate them to their own experience, solve the problems
involved, convince one another (and perhaps the teacher) of
their own views -- in short, to do the sorts of things that we
would do among our colleagues.
We find that type of activity so exhilarating and satisfying
that we want to do more of it, and we come away from it with a
heightened interest in the issues -- the material. Is it not
obvious that our students should react in the same way?
That approach, however, does not efficiently get the material
across. As we know from our own professional discussions, we
can spend hours formulating a position that takes only five
minutes to state clearly after the dust has settled. Equally,
encouraging our students to struggle to find an answer that we
already know is not a good way of producing a high number of
truths per hour. At times, the professor needs great patience
in the face of the fumbling that seems to be a necessary part
of the struggle.
But a student's successful struggle with the material
increases the chance that he or she will remain interested in
the issues ("Look at me! I figured that out. Now let me try
another."). That is of greater value than a notebook full of a
teacher's insights. As the Chinese proverb has it, give a man
a fish and you have given him a meal; teach him how to fish
and you have given him a livelihood. As teachers, our goal
should be getting students to want to fish.
That mode of teaching is hard. I used to believe otherwise. I
used to believe that preparation and delivery of a good
lecture (with space for discussion -- usually questions
directed to me) were difficult and involved a great deal of
talent, compared with leading a discussion. I still believe
that the inspired presentation of material is valuable. But in
that case, the hard work comes before the classroom
presentation. The hard work of getting students to want to
participate comes before and during class.
How to tell if a class is going well also differs. When I was
presenting material, I could sense that things were going well
by the attentive, receptive expressions on students' faces.
Students were indeed looking at me. (We all know that certain
students are more trustworthy than others as guides in this
respect. It takes only a week or so to find out which ones are
reliable barometers.) But in a discussion, things are going
well when the students are ignoring me!
It was a frightening feeling at first to watch a heated
discussion among students where I -- the teacher -- couldn't
get in a word edgewise, or where they would respectfully
listen to my view (when I insisted on giving it) and then
quickly get back to debating their own views. It was only with
great difficulty that I came to see that those were the
occasions when the course was succeeding -- proceeding toward
the goal of self-sustaining, continued interest in the
material.
Comparing teaching to parenting is unavoidable. You know you
are succeeding as a parent when you are no longer needed. It
is a painful experience, but we recognize it as indicative of
success. In each case, backsliding is easy. I have taken over
the class discussion, told the class what an issue is really
about, and felt proud at my display of insight -- just as I
have taken over when my children tried to tie a shoe, do a
math homework problem, or settle a dispute with a classmate or
a teacher.
At those moments, I feel needed, important, competent --
perhaps even essential. But I am not cultivating the students'
continued interest in the material and self-reliance in
dealing with it.
One final consideration. I have always looked askance at
scientists who attempt to discuss issues in the philosophy of
science. They often produce a strange mixture of wild claims,
oddly expressed insights, boring truisms, and just plain false
statements, which were refuted by philosophers generations
ago. I used to wonder why the scientists hadn't simply
attended a few good inspired presentations of material in the
philosophy of science. But of course if they had, we might not
have the benefit of their insights.
I am by training a philosopher of science, and de facto an
educator. I am not by training a philosopher of education. My
comments in this essay may be the sort of strange mixture I've
observed when scientists grapple with philosophy. I could
probably have reached the insights here more efficiently had I
listened to a good lecture or read the proper book in the
field. I could thereby have short-circuited the struggle to
achieve them.
I'm glad I didn't.
Marshall Spector is a professor of philosophy at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook.
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Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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