I'd be remiss in my academic-blogging duties if I failed to point out this Inside Higher Ed piece on teaching core courses. Like many articles published in academic magazines, it's aimed directly at English composition, but the main points can be extended to intro classes in other disciplines. In particular:
10. Don't compare students' attitudes to your own. A colleague of mine who taught business at a private university constantly made scathing comments about his students' seeming lack of effort. "I can't believe you guys don't know this stuff!" he would shout at them. Time and time again, he referred to his own college days -- how he went above and beyond what was expected by his professor, excelled in his subject, and earned stellar grades. The dean finally called him into his office and confronted him, saying, "These students are not you. You majored in this subject; of course you were interested in it. They are taking this as a requirement. Lighten up." As my colleague sat there speechless, the dean continued, "And anyway, don't you ever remember taking courses you didn't like? Try to think back to when you were 20." This is not to say that we can't expect students to achieve the goals we set out for them. But it helps to recognize that there are sometimes years -- or even decades of difference in context and values between us and our students.
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Not just majored in, but went on to complete a Doctorate in and become faculty... Hardly representitive of the average student.
That said, the best teachers are the ones who hae very high expectations of their students, and constantly push them to do a little more than the students think they can do.
A good article, but it should be noted that this advice needs to scale with the class. Students in senior seminars in our fields should have attitudes that more closely parallel our own than in the intro classes.
The article in question is specifically talking about the teaching of introductory classes. You're absolutely right that the approach has to change for higher-level classes.
Of course, you can go too far in the opposite direction.
In my introductory astronomy class, I don't come close to expecting the students to be able to do what even first-year Physics majors do. Yet, they still think I'm asking too much. There is this pervasive attitude that a general-ed course outside their major should be *easy*, that they should be able to just show up and get a B or an A.
They should have to expect to do some work in any college class. They should expect to have to think and work and learn astronomy in an astronomy class, even if they aren't physics or astronomy majors.
The "I'm just getting a requirement out of the way" attitude is a bit of a problem at a liberal arts college. Even though it's regrettably true in many cases, it would be much nicer if the students came in with the attitude of wanting to learn a little something about a subject that isn't their main focus.
-Rob
This was always my biggest problem with teaching. I expected students to put a bit of effort into learning the material taught in Intro Physics, even if they were not physical science majors. It wasn't just because *I* put effort into intro physics, back in the day. It's because I put effort into *all* my classes, back in the day: political philosophy as well as physics and math, because I *wanted* to learn the material. I was always frustrated by kids who didn't want to learn; it always seemed like such a waste