From the issue dated September 27, 2002
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'Look at Me!' A Teaching PrimerBy MARSHALL SPECTORI 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. http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 5, Page B15
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
