College Instructors as Coming of Age Shepherds

I was surprised to learn of the role that individual choice in course planning (by both the professors scheduling the course and by students choosing courses) played in reducing opportunities for “community” to develop among even those freshmen who lived in close proximity to one another.  Nathan identified the US cultural values of freedom and individualism as some of the larger driving forces behind organizing university course offerings in this manner.  I found it illuminating to consider this very one-the-ground reflection of cultural ideals at play – ending up by actually countering the cultural ideals of community and collegiality so (ostensibly) highly valued by the university.    Also surprising to me was the degree to which relationships that pre-dated the freshman year thwarted opportunities/probabilities for establishing new relationships/friendships.  The upshot of all of this, especially for students who are privileged most by dominant culture “norms” (white skin, economic status, etc.) is to be mired in “the relationship among ignorance, intolerance, and ethnocentrism” (Nathan, p. 87) without hope of true freedom in regards to new relationships and friendships.

My advice to new undergraduates would be to recognize this time, their freshman year, as a rite of passage and to attempt to fully appreciate the liminal qualities and transformational potential of the year.  Of course, for many of the freshman who have been raised up in the US, a culture that does not overtly recognize this time in a manner that honors this period of people’s lives in such a way, they may be rather hard-pressed to understand how to accomplish such.  And based on Nathan’s reflections about international students, this may be an equally unlikely and unfamiliar concept for those students. 

                My advice to a new college instructor (myself included!) would be similar to my advice to college freshmen – that is, recognize that the freshman year CAN be an importantly transformative year for those students and act accordingly.  One approach may be to simply make direct statements to that effect.  For example, “Your first year in college can be considered a rite of passage.  As such, you may think of yourself as living in an in-between state, in between the home you grew up in with the guidance of your parental units and the world of adulthood with all the self- and other -responsibilities that status implies.  What unfolds for you in this year may hold the seeds for your future...” and then speak as candidly as is appropriate about ways they can honor this time and make it truly useful and beneficial to themselves.  Of course, if there are ways to tie that into the course content, all the better! 

                I also believe it could be quite appropriate and helpful to explicitly discuss the challenges as well as the benefits of nurturing relationships across perceived cultural and ethnic/racial identities.  For white US students in particular, the likelihood that they will naturally fall into those relationships appears to be quite small and this is unfortunate for them on both psychological and pragmatic real-world levels.  Review the findings of Nathan and others, and openly discuss the ways that ethnocentrism can negatively impact them in their own lives.

My perspective of undergraduate students was quite sketchy prior to reading this book and has most definitely been enhanced through reading it.  One of the aspects I found most helpful was Nathan’s exploration of the concept of cheating.  I was grateful for the author’s disbelief and resistance to those national broad-stoke studies that end with a summary “everybody cheats” analysis.  Nathan summarized it so well I will remind us of her words, “Cheating must be interpreted in its lived contexts, and when it is, it can be said that most of the time, most students don’t cheat.  Seventeen percent of students are habitual cheaters… a statistic that offers a very different picture of the student body from reports highlighting the 83 percent of students who admit engaging in some dishonest act.”  (p. 128)  Another aspect of the book that landed for me involves the ways in which dominant cultural norms have coercive effects (e.g. not asking questions in class to avoid becoming the class “witch” – a troublesome use of a stereotype, however, that is another subject worthy of its own attention!).  And while these coercive and corrosive effects heavily impact student culture and behavior, there is hope to be found in norms within “contesting subcultures” that are present within the dominant student culture, such as the “hard but not boring” alternative cultural texts identified by Nathan. (p. 144)  Overall, I was encouraged by Nathan’s writing to see students in the fullness of their human potential, rather than narrowly as less-than-fully-intellectually-mature actors with limited agency and consciousness.  Seeing students in this light reminds me of my responsibilities to them as a co-collaborateur in building a better today and tomorrow.

Formative Trumps Summative

While I am sold on the concept that a midterm formative assessment is a GREAT idea, I am puzzled at my resistance to the notion that I may need to change course procedures or expectations in response to students’ feedback.  I suppose I believe I have such a thorough and cohesive approach that any alterations might mess with the carefully constructed (expected) end results…  In any case, with full intentions of being open to learning something I don’t know I don’t know – here is my (draft) formative midterm assessment:

This midterm assessment will take place at about the 7^th week of class during the twenty minutes just prior to a break.  Classes are held for 2 hours and 50 minutes once per week so one or two breaks are planned for each session depending on activities/need.  Students will congregate in their working groups (small groups designed for heterogeneity of age/education – sophomore, junior, etc. level and educational field – music, PE, Middle or Elementary grades, etc.).  I will provide an overview to the whole class and written instructions for the group facilitator (a rotating responsibility built into the working group structure) and will leave the room to encourage more candid responses.  They will first spend five minutes briefly addressing each of the following questions individually, then ten minutes discussing within the working groups, with the final five minutes for documenting working group consensus on the final narrative item.   The summary/consensus reports, as well as the individual responses, will be turned in to me.  At the beginning of the following class period I will summarize the responses and hold a discussion regarding my responses to their feedback and any changes that may be appropriate.  The assessment will include both Likert scale items and narrative items.

Thank you for providing this feedback.  I appreciate your input and we will discuss results of this Midterm Formative Assessment at our next class meeting.

Please circle the number that represents your response to the following:

Overall, how interested are you in the course topics?

1 = Not at all,     2,     3,      4 Neutral,     5,     6,     7 = Very much

Overall, how engaged are you by the following class activities and formats:

``Whole class discussions                     1 = Not at all,     2,     3,      4 Neutral,     5,     6,     7 = Very much

``Working group activities                    1 = Not at all,     2,     3,      4 Neutral,     5,     6,     7 = Very much

``Movies/videos                                     1 = Not at all,     2,     3,      4 Neutral,     5,     6,     7 = Very much

``Whole class activities/simulations     1 = Not at all,     2,     3,      4 Neutral,     5,     6,     7 = Very much

``Outside class activities

(attendance at cultural events, etc.)      1 = Not at all,     2,     3,      4 Neutral,     5,     6,     7 = Very much

Preparation for class

(readings, journaling, etc.)                    1 = Not at all,     2,     3,      4 Neutral,     5,     6,     7 = Very much

Please respond briefly in writing to the following:

What is helping you learn?

What is hindering your learning?

What might we do differently for the remainder of the semester?

My DRAFT Course Objectives

• Articulate one’s cultural heritage and how it affects one’s worldview, values, and assumptions.
• Gain a broad theoretical understanding of the social and political functioning of schools through studying the experiences and contributions of four cultural groups that have traditionally been marginalized in US public K-12 educational systems (Indigenous/First Nations Peoples, Chicano(a)/Latina(o) Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans)
• Cultivate the attributes of flexibility, respect, and self-reflection necessary for adapting to changing and diverse communities and for building authentic relationships with people diverse from yourself; Build intercultural communication skills (verbal and nonverbal) and other skills necessary for working collaboratively in a diverse group toward a common goal.

The Right Stuff

I am free-styling – thoughts generated by my reflections as I attempted to address this week’s prompts!

 I will be teaching a course next semester, a course I taught as an intensive one month class this past summer.  In all honesty, it would have been much better for those students if I had had this class (COMM 702) before I taught that course!  One piece I was really missing was thinking about students’ needs and strengths through a developmental lens, such as the stages of intellectual development offered by Perry (cited in both the Lang and Davis texts).  Whether or not Perry’s stages are truly developmental or are more a result of the way school has been done unto students in the US over the past several hundred years may be a moot point.  In any case, none of my prior training -- as an elementary teacher, as a special education teacher, or as an adult group facilitator had prepared me for the unique presentation of college students in their early 20’s. 

Nor had my nearly 20 years of experience as a consulting teacher and teacher study group facilitator.  I have facilitated or co-facilitated seminars with teachers and community members each school year for most of my teaching career.  The seminars, held monthly from September through May, were designed as continuing education courses for career k-12 teachers and were based on the national Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Program.  Through the years I have sometimes been asked to teach the seminar as a college class for teachers-in-training (pre-service teachers).  I had done so on a couple of occasions but ended up believing that the format of a one semester college course was too restrictive to do justice to the program.  The one month intensive course had addressed a number (though not all) of the concerns I had experienced in my earlier attempts, but I was still left with significant questions about the full semester format. 

My current belief is that, previous to this class, I did not have "the right stuff" when it came to teaching young college students.  There were two key areas in which I had gone astray with my previous attempts at teaching an introductory level college course.  One, I did not even consider stages of intellectual development.  This seems rather odd to me given that an understanding of developmental stages was at the center of my teaching with k-12 students…  Huh (shaking my head a bit here).  Two, I had adapted the course syllabus only slightly from the syllabus provided to me by the department chair.  Whereas it is of course important to keep to the priorities of the department, as I look now on the manner in which the learning objectives were articulated I see that in large measure my goals for the course had not mapped on very well to those objectives.  I fully expect that this opportunity to re-write that syllabus with my new expanded vision will much improve the course – for students as well as for me!

Would Good Teaching by Any Other Name... Smell So Dour?

      Regarding academic honesty, Lang and Davis both provide many suggestions for minimizing the likelihood of and opportunities for cheating.  Lang cites an author (McKeachie) who bemoans the inevitability and magnitude of college student cheating stating that “studies of cheating behavior over several decades invariably find that a majority of students report that they have cheated at some time.”  Lang provides additional examples of reports of cheating indicating that some 47% of graduate students report cheating.  Another researcher (McCabe) who has pursued this topic for over 15 years in the USA and Canada asserts that “On most campuses, 70% of students admit to some cheating.”   At this point Lang wonders halfheartedly “if we can trust the research” (p. 199) but then proceeds as if he does.  I have to say that I do not – trust the research that is.  If anywhere near that many people around me are cheating I am completely unaware of it. 

     Here’s my theory regarding why the research may be (and probably is in my opinion) inaccurate.  It is likely that people who have cheated, when offered the opportunity via a survey to admit to cheating, are anxious to confess in order to alleviate their guilt.  In survey research there is a construct known as nonresponse bias.  That is, folks who are filling out the survey are significantly different than the folks who are not filling out the survey and thus the survey results would significantly change if we were able to poll those nonresponders – a tricky thing to do since they are not responding!  If assessment of nonresponse bias was to be accomplished (and there are ways to do this) I predict that the findings would indicate that the vast majority of students do NOT cheat.  I admit I have not read the original research so perhaps nonresponse bias has been addressed; however, the manner in which the findings are stated makes me skeptical.  What do “cheated at some time” and “some cheating” really represent in real world Joe- and Jolene-student terms?  Are we asking if they ever in their lives cheated? Are we asking strictly about school work?  Are we asking about specific instances or just in general “have you ever cheated?”  Nope, I do not trust the research.  It does not match my lived experience nor by current observations.  Not even close.

     A related concern for me is the primary approach that both Lang and Davis take in addressing issues of cheating.  Since these books are both oriented toward good teaching, why is the “because it’s just good teaching” argument so secondary to the question of what to do about cheating?  Why not begin from the premise that good teaching by its very nature reduces students’ felt need and opportunities for cheating and progress from there?

I'm no Luddite, but...

     Lang’s best argument for using technology in the college classroom was identifying the use of technology as an important and student-relevant technique for wise and principled teaching when utilized in the context of a solid grounding in learning theory.  My limited experience teaching in a college classroom includes only an undergraduate course that I organized as a seminar and that experience speaks to both the pros and cons of classroom technology use.  My pedagogy for the seminar included a belief that the circle discussion format was a critical piece for navigating the content - exploring the history of education in US schools through the lenses of racialized privilege and oppression.  Because the history of US education is also the history of racial privileging and oppression in this country, it is a particularly difficult course for students who benefit from white skin privilege and who have never been educated about that nor had the opportunity to consider our country’s history from that perspective.  I assert that, for most learners, if course content is both novel and challenging to previous beliefs or worldviews, opportunities to participate in psychologically safe and structured conversations are essential if the content is to be absorbed and/or understood.  Additionally, given the demographics of this region, in almost every instance the majority of learners in that course will be students who identify as racially white, thus I anticipate a high need for carefully constructed discussion opportunities.  I had imagined the use of technologies to be potentially disruptive of the kind of focus and listening that I wanted to establish in the classroom (the idea of wireless devices with “you’ve got mail” chimes and Instant Message beeps seemed untenable!).
     At the same time, when I developed the course, I did give some pause to consider the use of technology in the classroom and I did grieve a bit my own lack of savvy regarding its potential integration.  The ideas in the Lang and Davis chapters have given me the encouragement to re-think this.  Perhaps there could be a specified time when wireless devises were turned on and used to find resources on explicit topics?  I especially liked Davis’ idea of “putting students’ equipment to work” - including laptops and cell phones – for use in small groups.  This begins to recognize the very integral part such devices are playing in students’ lives.  Also, asking students to work together and share their equipment/results could take account of the possibility that some learners may not have such devices.  My primary question at this point is – how might I begin to get myself familiar with the operations of some of these newer devices?  I am no Luddite, but I am a grad student on a tiny budget!

Air time and Pause Time

     Silence is golden, yes?  Silences may be pregnant with meaning or at least gestational, yes?  This week’s readings on classroom discussions mention silence numerous times, though rarely in a positive light.  While we are encouraged to wait in silence for 10-30 seconds after questions, and not to fear silence (Lang, 2008, p. 101, referencing Davis!), and even to “enforce silent wait time” (Davis, 2009, p. 109), avoidance of silence appears to be the overarching objective.  The “terror of silences” (Lang, 2008, p. 86) can be circumvented with planned (brief) periods of purposefully silent individual musings, or “low-stakes” writing (Davis, 2009, p. 99, 100, 101, 103, 119, 131; Lang, 2008, p. 90), or by paired or small group conversations, or by simply allowing the presumably aversive silence to demonstrate to students that they will not be rescued with more questions, lecture material, or an early class release.

     This negative take on silence apparently arises out of a belief that putting ideas into words is a primary modality through which learning occurs, along with a further belief that, “course discussions are one of the most frequent and best opportunities” for such learning to occur (Davis, 2009, p. 97; Lang, 2008, p. 87-88, 97).  While I accept that there is sufficient research to support this contention, I believe the role of silence within discussions/conversations warrants further considerations.

Air Time and Pause Time 

     Perhaps since the days of radio, the idea of “air time” - time spent speaking – has become a generally understood construct in US culture; the idea of “pause time” however, is less well-renowned.  Pause time refers to the pauses between conversational turns.  Pause times vary across families, regions,  and cultures and this is sometimes referred to as “pacing and pausing”  (Tannen, 1984).  Differences in pause time among conversational partners may be responsible for many communication problems including negative assumptions made about one another and an eventual unwillingness to continue communication efforts (Aaronson, 1973; Greenbaum, 1985; Shigemitsu, 2005).  In a 2009 interview Tannen described how communication style can impact discussion flow (Retrieved 8/30/10 http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=1305):

“If you talk to somebody who has a different sense of timing (pacing and pausing), then whoever is expecting the longer pause will find that they can’t get the floor. And whoever is expecting the shorter pause will find themselves doing all the talking… if you tell someone, “Be aware of conversational style differences,” then you stand to solve the problem.”

     Differences in pace-pause styles may represent additional cultural communication-style variations.  For example, in some Indigenous (Tafoya, 1989) and Asian cultures (Shigemitsu, 2005), conversational pause times are longer than majority/dominant US culture pause times; moreover, the majority/dominant culture expectations for discussion participation described by Davis (2009, p. 107) sit in nearly direct opposition to culturally-appropriate practices in several Asian cultures (Shigemitsu, 2005) and to norms identified as culturally-appropriate by various Indigenous peoples (Retrieved 8/30/10 (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/education/lpsc_wksp_2007/resources/heit_report.pdf). 

     Thus, a principle of discussion would be to purposefully create group norms that, to paraphrase a Peggy McIntosh quote regarding ethnic/racial diversity, allow discussants to “become comfortable being uncomfortable” with silence.  One concrete example might be to establish a practice of 2- 5 second pause times between speakers.

References

Aaronson, D. (1973). A refreshing monograph on the pause that refreshes: Rhythms of dialogue. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2(4), 369-374.
Greenbaum, P. E. (1985). Nonverbal Differences in Communication Style Between American Indian and Anglo Elementary Classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 22(1), 101-115.
Shigemitsu, Y. (2005). Different interpretations of pauses, Japanese, Chinese, and Americans: Discoursal Problems in Cross-Cultural Conversations. Paper presented at the 9th International Pragmatics Conference, Riva del Garda, Italy.
Tafoya, T. (1989). Circles and Cedar -- Native Americans and Family Therapy. Journal of Psychotherapy & The Family, 6(1), 71 - 98.
Tannen, D. (1984). The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Communication. Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 189-195.