[Discussion] 'Look at Me!' A Teaching Primer

[Paksoy, Hb]

  'Look at Me!' A Teaching Primer
By MARSHALL SPECTOR

CHE
>From the issue dated September 27, 2002

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.