What's Bad about Good Practices?

What's Bad about Good Practices?

By Larry D. Spence, School of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn
State

LSpence@ist.psu.edu <mailto:LSpence@ist.psu.edu>

The Socratic questioning strategy described in the article appealed to
me. I could see how it would cut down on quizzes, grading, and the whole
sad enterprise of writing multiple-guess questions that dulled students'
thinking. I made some adaptations and expectantly implemented it in my
introduction to political theory course.

Those expectations quickly dissolved. At her desk, one of my best
students stood fighting back tears. She couldn't look at me and wouldn't
answer my questions. An uncomfortable quiet had settled over the class.
I had a disaster on my hands. I asked the distressed student to sit down
as I paced across the front of the room. Then I announced that was the
end of Socratic questioning. Relief spread like a long-held breath
released. "That wasn't such a good idea," I admitted, thinking
desperately of some way to get the class on my side. "It seemed like
something that might work when I read it. I think we might do better
just discussing the study questions I assigned."

Slowly the discussion built and normalcy returned. The students liked
discussing the questions. After class I stopped Julia and apologized for
her Socratic ordeal. She still wouldn't look at me and she dropped the
course that afternoon.

I wish I could report that this was the first disaster I've faced when
trying out recommended instructional practices-some called best
practices and touted by experts. Truth be known, I've had about as much
luck picking race horses as I have new techniques and strategies. A few
became successful additions to my teaching repertoire, but only after
much tinkering and adjustment. Why the lousy track record? In the face
of authoritative endorsement, it took me time to discover that the
problems weren't all mine.

Highly touted practices that work for other instructors, in other
subjects, with other students, in other curricula often disappoint
because they don't work when the context changes. To recommend a
practice requires stripping away the myriad details that contribute to
its achievement or failure. Those details can trip and derail the best
ideas. To employ such practices requires so much trial and error that
what started out as a shortcut ends up being an extensive revision
project.

The principles that form the bases of best practices are even more
abstract. They are really proverbs. They don't state any causal
relationships in forms that can be tested. Indeed, most can't be wrong
under any circumstances. They just aren't specific enough to fail.
That's their seduction and their risk. If the practice can't fail, then
its truth is merely formal.

Let me see if I can use an example to make the point. The sixth
principle of the famous Seven Principles of Good Practice in Teaching
and Learning states that a competent teacher communicates high
expectations. It reads:

"Expect more and you will get more. High expectations are important for
everyone-for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert
themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to
perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when teachers and
institutions hold high expectations for themselves and make extra
efforts."

If I raise my expectations and students still memorize and barf back,
what has gone wrong? Since the principle doesn't say how high to raise
expectations or from what baseline and since it doesn't state how much
performance will improve, then I can't know. How much extra effort does
it take? These proverbs are shackles of unlimited demands. Maybe I
haven't worked on weekends or my students have remained unwilling to
exert themselves. How can I tell? The principle won't translate into
specific design practices that would help us find out.

More fatal is a second problem. To try to improve a process by applying
best practices is to run a race backwards. If we examine only what
works, we see only a small sample of the educational practices that we
might explore. We know from the works of Larry Cuban that bureaucracy,
architecture, and tradition determine standard instructional practices.
Thus best practices reflect the limitations of those structures and
obscure the possibilities of novel approaches. They are the cream of the
crap.

In contrast, if we think about possible practices based on what we have
discovered about brains, learning, and cognitive development, we can
think beyond the manacles of the past to propose innovations worth
testing. Such innovations would make far better use of new technologies;
most of the proverbs rule out technology. I think it makes much more
sense to try the most novel and challenging ideas to make some real
improvements and let the proverbs of the past rest in peace.

Why didn't the Socratic questioning work in my class? I could blame it
on the confounding variables, but it failed because I substituted bad
mimicry for the work of finding out what students needed in order to
learn.

Alan Altany, Professor & Director
Coulter Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723 (U.S.)
Email: altany@email.wcu.edu <mailto:altany@email.wcu.edu>
Fax: 828.227.7340
CFC Web Site: http://facctr.wcu.edu <http://facctr.wcu.edu/>
SoTL at Western: http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/ <http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/>
MountainRise, SoTL eJournal: http://mountainrise.wcu.edu
<http://mountainrise.wcu.edu/>
 
 

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Received on Wed Jul 20 15:54:44 2005