"Therefore, one question we might ask is: "Do we always know
when we are teaching?" I do not think we do. The single most
important thing I
learned as an undergraduate may have been that I was capable of
graduate study. I learned this from a professor who had no idea
he taught it to me. Brief remarks that seem innocuous to us may
have a lasting impact on our students."
Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#575 TEACHING AND LEARNING WHEN WE LEAST
EXPECT IT: THE ROLE OF CRITICAL MOMENTS IN STUDENT DEVELOPMENT
Folks:
The posting below looks at the importance of informal moments in
the education of students. It is by Peter J. Giordano currently
chair and professor of psychology at Belmont University. The article
was originally published in the E-xellence in Teaching series on
the PsychTeacher list sponsored by the Society for the Teaching
of Psychology. PsychTeacher is a moderated discussion list for teachers
of psychology owned by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology
and hosted by Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw GA. All messages
for the list should be emailed to <psychteacher@list.kennesaw.edu>.
Reprinted with permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List
Update
Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning
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TEACHING AND LEARNING WHEN WE LEAST EXPECT IT: THE ROLE OF CRITICAL
MOMENTS IN STUDENT DEVELOPMENT
Peter J. Giordano giordanop@mail.belmont.edu
The old-time teaching tradition places teachers at the front of
the class disseminating their knowledge to students who later, with
delight, restate the same knowledge to demonstrate their understanding.
I picture Wilhelm Wundt flexing his intellectual muscles in this
way, though I may be wrong. Ideas of how teachers should behave,
however, have been altered by our contemporary understanding of
how people learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). We should
give Professor Wundt his due respect, but then fast forward to the
21st century.
Along with changing our behavior as teachers, our current conceptions
of teaching and learning have modified the metaphors we use to describe
our craft. We now see students as actively constructing their own
knowledge, rather than passively receiving ours (Baxter Magolda,
1992, 2001). Instead of picturing teachers as giant mainframes who
download their knowledge, we now envision teachers as midwives helping
students give birth to their understanding (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger,
& Tarule, 1997). The midwife metaphor emphasizes the centrality
of dialogue, communication, connection, and relationship in the
learning process.
I have always liked the midwife metaphor, but it still neglects
important dimensions of the learning process. We know, for example,
that important learning takes place outside the classroom when students
talk to each other in residence halls, the cafeteria, or the local
pub (Light, 2001). By speaking to each other, engaging in friendly
or heated debates, students construct and reconstruct what they
know, and the "teacher" is nowhere in sight. Significant
learning takes place in these out-of- classroom contexts and we
should not underestimate their importance. Thus, the midwife metaphor,
though good, is still incomplete.
In fact, no metaphor can fully capture the range of what we do
as teachers. The computer mainframe metaphor is applicable, for
example, to one dimension of teaching-lecturing. Thus far, I have
implied that lecturing is not an effective teaching approach and,
in so doing, I have been guilty of oversimplification. To be fair,
considerable research has examined the efficacy of lecture-based
instruction (Lowman, 1995), and it would be silly to dismiss the
lecture as an unsound pedagogical practice. Wundt may have done
a fair share of lecturing, and it didn't seem to harm students like
G. Stanley Hall. Similarly, many of us were lectured to a good deal
during our educational experiences, and we were not ruined for life.
When carefully organized and used in moderation, lectures can present
up-to-date content not in the text; help students organize complex
material; motivate students to seek more information; and model
problem solving, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and
enthusiasm (McKeachie, 2002). At the same time, lectures alone are
not adequate to facilitate deep understanding (Halpern & Hakel,
2003). We still need a healthy dose of midwifery. Taken together,
both metaphors-mainframe and midwife-convey the complexity of teaching
and learning.
Taking into account these teaching metaphors and the research on
effective teaching, I am still perplexed, however. Here's why: When
I pause and reflect on my most profound educational experiences,
I don't recall riveting lectures, spellbinding group work, or exhilarating
discussions in my dorm. As an undergraduate student, I recall instances
like these:
1. Dr. Donald Searing, a political science professor, encouraged
me to consider a graduate program at Yale University. Whether I
could have actually gained admission to this program is certifiably
debatable. The point is that he (a superhero in my view) thought
I should consider it. That remark stuck with me and altered how
I saw myself as a student. Neither of my parents completed a 4-year
college, and one of my brothers had flunked out by the time I got
there. So when I arrived on campus, I was intimidated by the academic
game. When Dr. Searing made this comment, it caught my attention
in a big way.
2. Dr. Edward Johnson, my cognitive psychology professor, shared
with the class a story of how Koko, the famous gorilla who used
American Sign Language in inter-species communication, lied when
asked whether she broke something. Koko broke it, but blamed it
on someone else. This story powerfully affected me and made me re-think
how I understood myself as a human and my place among other animals.
3. The moment I clearly understood the logic of hypothesis testing
and p- values in my undergraduate statistics course is another such
experience. I don't remember her name, but I am eternally indebted
to the graduate teaching assistant in quantitative psychology who
was my midwife during that difficult labor.
I have come to call experiences like these "critical moments
in learning" (Giordano, 2003a). They are specific, identifiable
moments that typically are transformative. These moments tend to
possess one or more of the following characteristics: (a) they are
rare (in the sense that people report few), (b) they are related
to personal issues, (c) they have an emotional dimension, (d) it
takes time for the student to realize the significance of the moment,
(e) they are difficult to predict, and (f) teachers likely do not
know when they occur.
I am particularly intrigued by this last characteristic. It is
humbling (and perhaps troubling) to think this characteristic may
be true, but the more I hear teaching colleagues share their experiences,
the more convinced I am that it is. Consider the following example,
which a colleague at another university shared with me. Several
years after graduation, a former student who had gone on to earn
his MBA came by to visit her. During the conversation, he said to
her, "I owe it all to you. I was going to stop school after
the BA and just get a job. But when you-a PhD and a professor-told
me you thought I was bright, I began to rethink everything about
myself." My colleague's response: "I barely recalled the
incident, and it amazed me that a 5-second remark would change a
life." I have heard other, similar stories from colleagues.
The connection between this story and the personal account I shared
about Professor Searing is obvious. Let me make the stories even
more similar. About 4 years after I completed my undergraduate degree,
I enrolled in graduate school at the same institution. During my
second year, I saw Dr. Searing at a local restaurant and decided
to walk over and tell him the impact his remark had on me. I wanted
to thank him and tell him that this one statement had an important
influence on my confidence to pursue graduate studies. As I talked
to him, it was clear that he did not recall the remark. It was also
obvious that he probably didn't remember me either. Gracious and
kind, he pretended he did, but I was not convinced.
As it turns out, these types of experiences-these critical moments-are
reported by many people. I have been collecting data, narratives
that students have been independently coding, that reflect the frequency
of these experiences in a sample of psychology professors from a
variety of universities, and from alumni at my university (Giordano,
2003b). A detailed summary of these findings is not appropriate
here, but the narratives have been revealing. Consider, for example,
that the stories I have shared in this essay have all been positive.
As you might suspect, however, not all those who have written narratives
tell positive stories- the majority do, but not all of them. Some
have related quite unpleasant experiences. The typical scenario
is one in which a professor made a careless negative remark that
reverberated in the person's memory for many years. Sometimes the
negative comment motivated the person into an "I'llshow you"
reaction, which culminated in a positive outcome; other times, the
outcome remained negative.
Taken together, the narratives have some important implications.
The most significant one is that our students' beliefs about themselves
and about their academic disciplines have an impact on their learning
(Halpern & Hakel, 2003). If a student believes she is not capable
of meeting the demands of graduate study, she may never even apply.
In a different vein, the sense of accomplishment from a cognitive
breakthrough might suddenly give a student the self-efficacy to
set goals even higher. Or, the intellectual reorientation that results
from learning something profoundly novel (e.g., Koko telling a fib)
might shift a student's academic focus to a new area that he has
never considered. Interestingly, most of the narratives have focused
on personal learning (i.e., a change in self- perception) rather
than on cognitive learning (i.e., a change in intellectual understanding).
Therefore, one question we might ask is: "Do we always know
when we are teaching?" I do not think we do. The single most
important thing I learned as an undergraduate may have been that
I was capable of graduate study. I learned this from a professor
who had no idea he taught it to me. Brief remarks that seem innocuous
to us may have a lasting impact on our students. Hopefully, the
influence is positive. I do not mean to give us more importance
or power as teachers than we actually possess. However, a different
but equally significant error may be to ignore the potential impact
we can have at moments when we are least aware of what we are saying.
Let's return to teaching metaphors. Lately, I've enjoyed an image
offered by Baxter Magolda (2002). She believes that to be effective
teachers and mentors, we need to be "good company" to
our students. Good company means that we are supportive of our students,
guiding but not micro-managing them in their development of more
complex intellectual abilities and in their growing confidence in
directing their own lives. If we are good company, then we challenge
students personally and intellectually, all the while supporting
them as they navigate the complexities and ambiguities of deep learning.
By being judicious with our critical remarks and appropriately generous
(but not overindulgent) with our praise, we may maximize the likelihood
of positive critical moments in the lives of our students. Such
moments are evidence of being good company.
After reading these narratives during the last year or so, I pay
much more attention to my idle words with students. For sure, I
pay more attention to the quiet students who seem awkward in navigating
the academic waters. I do not know all their personal stories and
will likely know very little about most of them when they exit my
classroom at the end of the semester. But now when I am grading
a paper or an exam, I more frequently comment when their writing
is compelling or their thinking lucid. I don't know if I am actually
teaching at those moments. I hope that I am.
References
Baxter Magolda, M. B. (1992). Knowing and reasoning in college:
Gender- related patterns in students' intellectual development.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2001). Making their own way: Narratives
for transforming higher education to promote self-development. Sterling,
VA: Stylus.
Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2002, January-February). Helping students
make their way to adulthood: Good company for the journey. About
Campus, 2-9.
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. V., Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule,
J. M. (1997). Women's ways of knowing (10th anniversary ed.). New
York: BasicBooks.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.) (1999).
How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington,
DC: National Academy Press.
Giordano, P. J. (2003a). Critical moments in learning: Do we know
when we are teaching? W. Harold Moon Invited Address, 15th Southeastern
Conference on the Teaching of Psychology, Kennesaw State University,
Marietta, GA.
Giordano, P. J. ( 2003b). Critical moments in learning: Student,
faculty, and alumni experiences. Workshop presented at the annual
meeting of the National Lilly Conference on College Teaching, Miami
University, Oxford, OH.
Halpern, D. F., & Hakel, M. D. (2003). Applying the science
of learning to the university and beyond. Change (July/August),
pp. 36-41.
Light, R. J. (2001). Making the most of college: Students speak
their minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lowman, J. (1995). Mastering the techniques of teaching (2nd ed.).
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
McKeachie, W. J. (2002). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and
theory for college and university teachers (11th ed.). Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.
About the Author
Peter J. Giordano has been on the faculty at Belmont University
since 1989 and is currently Chair and Professor of Psychology. He
received his BA, MA, and PhD (Clinical) from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. If he could snap his fingers and make a
childhood dream come true, he would play basketball for UNC-CH.
He is a past National President of Psi Chi and served as the Methods
and Techniques Editor for Teaching of Psychology. Most importantly,
he is the husband of Jan and the father of two fine sons, Nicholas
(age 17) and Michael (13), who are growing up way too fast. He would
like to thank the following students who have helped his thinking
in this area and have assisted in data collection and coding: Kelly
Voss, Emily Sheffer, Kristen Moore, Angela Strahan, and Marcie Schroeder.
Finally, he would also like to thank his teaching friends who have
shared their stories with him in conversation or e-mail.
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