Some simple devices can giue professors surprising knowledge about how their students learn and about how to further their Learning.

Helping Faculty to Help Their Students Learn Joseph Katz

The first thing the chairperson should be aware of is that his or her departmental colleagues are not likely to know very much about how students learn. We have some sense of what our students do in our courses. We read their tests and exams. We administer evaluation forms toward the end of the semester. Students come to us and give us reactions about our teaching. Gossip provides more or less reliable feedback. Even if information from these sources were more reliable, however, it would tell us little about what we need to know most: the process of teaching and the ways in which our students learn.

How can we obtain that knowledge? I have found that some simple devices give teachers valuable and sometimes surprisingly sophisticated information. For instance, we can ask students a few times during the semester to spend about ten or fifteen minutes to write down what they are learning in the course and how they are learning it. Obtaining such feedback during the semester has a great advantage over end-of-semester evaluations, because what one learns can affect the course while i t is in progress. A colleague of mine asks his students at the end of the period to sum up what they have learned during the class hour. Instead of his summing up, as is the custom, he has the students do it as a means of having them actively reflect on what happened. By reading their

A. F. Lues (4.). The Dcpartment Chairperson’s Role in Enhancing College Teaching. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. no. 31. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Spring 1989 81

reports, he gains a picture of how the hour appeared to them, rather than to him. Another colleague gives carbon sheets to different students at different times and asks that they be put underneath the sheets on which they are taking notes, for collection at the end of class.

The most effective means I have discovered for obtaining knowl- edge about how students learn in our courses is a more elaborate procedure. It requires having two faculty members working with each other. One of them selects for study any course he or she is currently teaching. The other serves as an observer or coinquirer but does not coteach. The observer comes to class at regular intervals. Observations do not by themselves tell us very much, because they do not give us knowledge about what goes on in the minds of the students. Hence, both the teacher and the observer interview students on a regular basis. Each of them selects about three students whom they interview throughout the semester.

The interviews focus not on the teacher but on the students and their ways of learning. Questions are asked, such as why the students picked the course, what they expected and what they are getting, how they go about reading the assignments and preparing for class, how they prepare for tests and exams, and how they would describe the class process and the students’ and the teacher’s parts in it. These interviews, if conducted in an open-ended and inquiry-oriented way, yield detailed information about how the students conceive the subject matter of the course and about how they respond to and cope with it. Such data show us where students are heading in terms of their own motivation, as well as ways in which the materials of the course can be brought more in touch with what makes students curious. Environmental and psychological factors that keep students from using or developing their cognitive capacities can also be identified.

The teacher and the observing colleague meet for about an hour, preferably once a week, to discuss what they have learned from their interviews and observations of students. The reflections during these meetings almost immediately lead the teacher to make modifications in methods of interacting with the class and thus engender an ongoing experimentation, the results of which can be checked immediately in the observations and interviews.

Thus far it may seem as i f students are viewed primarily as objects for study. However, in recent years, learning as collaboration has become an acceptable model. In this view of learning, students are coinquirers with their teachers. The teacher is a mature guide who realizes that only what students learn on their own will become part of their mental equipment. Using such a model as a base, even testing and grading can take on a more collaborative nature. Interviews with students become occasions when, helped by the interviewer’s questions and encouraging

presence, students investigate how they are learning-knowledge that will be useful to them in guiding their own intellectual evolution.

Occasionally an entire class can be drawn into this process: Teachers may devote part or all of a class period to exploring with students how they are going about learning in the course. One can ask them such questions as what they think about the contents of the course and its epistemology or about how data are collected and reflected on in the subject under study. One can ask questions about the classroom process, the readings, the tests and papers, and what the students find helpful and not so helpful for their own learning. The observing colleague can be present, too, and can contribute to the exploration.

The interviews and the group sessions serve the purpose of what some people call metacognition. The students’ growing awareness of the ways in which they learn helps them to develop more effective ways of studying. Almost inevitably, this approach leads students and faculty toward a more inquiry-oriented approach, instead of one that relies on the transmission of facts. The latter mode is still the predominant one: lecturing is by far the method of choice in most classes, even in small classes. Even when teachers’ intent is to stress critical thinking, their actual procedures (as revealed, for instance, by their exam questions) often revert to the information-transmitting mode. It takes some learning on the part of teachers to shed the preconception that students learn when teachers talk and to move toward procedures that allow students to be actively involved.

An example from mathematics, a field thought to be particularly resistant to an inquiry approach, will provide an illustration. Professor Alvin White, in teaching his introductory course at Harvey Mudd College, has his students consult not one but several textbooks. He asks them to read at least two texts in any specific problem area.. These texts reveal different approaches to the same subject matter and hence require students to reflect on the discrepancies and identify problems as they view them. Professor White divides his class into two or three teams. Each is given or asked to pose two problems, one solvable and the other one unsolvable. The teams compete in a productive and playful manner with each other, sometimes discovering solutions to the unsolvable problem. Prizes or other recognition are occasionally given to the winning team.

Another of White’s practices is to have lunch with his students at regular intervals. The topics of conversation range all the way from gossip about mathematics and mathematicians to reflections on the philosophy of mathematics, thus mirroring the kinds of talk that professionals engage in at meetings of their professional associations and on other occasions. It makes clear to the students how human an enterprise mathematics is, and it makes it much less forbidding and more personal. Even more important, these lunches give the professor a sense

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of students’ perceptions, so that his interactions with them in the classroom can be more fully responsive to their ways and quirks of thinking and, at least in some fashion, to their personalities.

There are other ways in which students can be encouraged to approach their courses in an inquiry-oriented mode. Relating course- work to out-of-classroom data gathering (for example, obtaining oral histories) or to experiences in the field or inservice activities, using students’ job experiences as subjects of investigation, having students work on projects as teams, having students discuss one another’s papers or even exams-all these encourage the students to use and develop their own critical, imaginative, and theory-building skills. The classroom itself becomes an investigative laboratory. Even in large lecture classes, the teacher can divide the class into smaller groups and ask them to discuss the ideas and the texts of the course.

The practices described here are not prescriptive blueprints but rather examples to free our minds to larger possibilities of obtaining knowledge about how our students learn and how to further their learning. The department chairperson can be knowledgeable about these ideas and may want to put together a library for faculty in order to encourage active reflection about teaching.

One of the most important things that chairpersons can do is to make it possible for their departmental colleagues to experiment. My own studies have given me some indication that many more faculty are ready for educational experimentation than will openly admit it. Faculty fear that an experiment will lead to lower student evaluations or other negative reactions (as in fact may happen). It is important for chairper- sons to let department colleagues know that educational experimentation is valued, even though results may not be the anticipated or desired ones. Actually, the possibility of failure is often exaggerated.

Another way in which chairpersons can play a crucial role is in establishing a context for talking about teaching. Even in strongly teaching-oriented institutions, it is uncommon for faculty to engage in much talk about their teaching. One can only speculate about the causes of this reluctance. One of my suspicions is that because teaching is so important to so many of us, and because our sense of self depends so much on its success, we are reluctant to talk to others for fear of exhibiting weaknesses and, perhaps, fantasies that we do not care to expose to others. The cure for that reluctance is to talk about teaching on a regular and professional basis. Groups of faculty need to be encouraged to get together to submit teaching-or better, student learning-to sustained analysis. One might begin with descriptions (perhaps videotapes) of teaching in other institutions and move toward an examination of one’s own classrooms. Such group sessions may include only members of one department, but it will often be desirable to form

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such groups across departmental lines, with perhaps only one or two members of a department participating. This would get around reluctance engendered by closeness to one’s colleagues or by department politics. The chairpersons of several departments, working together, could play a productive role in facilitating such meetings.

It is desirable that chairpersons subject their own classes to scrutiny. They may choose the methods just described or others, but unless they gain a more vivid picture of how their students go about learning in their classes, they will be less able to guide their colleagues. Some chairpersons may prefer to seek colleagues in other departments and have them visit their classes and interview students.

Good educational thinking and planning require transcending departmental confines. To have our students achieve reasonable competencies by the time they graduate calls for the coordination of the curriculum and for collaboration among teachers. Chairpersons can play an important role in furthering such concerted planning. They can encourage a new spirit of pedagogical vitality. Periodic and articulate discussions and analyses of faculty’s work as teachers and their students’ ways of learning constitute one approach to revitalizing a department.

In addition, chairpersons can encourage faculty to move beyond their specialties. As disciplines have become more specialized, faculty have avoided teaching courses in areas in which they do not have expert knowledge; yet, most of our lives, we are challenged to use whatever knowledge we have, most of which is not expert. Such knowledge is called general education. Chairpersons might encourage faculty to teach courses outside their areas of expertise. It would not only extend their intellectual horizons but also might vivify their disciplinary knowledge from fresh perspectives. Faculty would be more like students when they inquired into areas in which they were not fully expert. They would become more knowledgeable coinquirers with their students, showing students how they go about learning, rather than dispensing familiar knowledge. I also can imagine some wonderful departmental discussions about the history and the epistemology of the discipline, subjecting the discipline to critical inquiry with regard to the questions it raises and how it goes about answering them. Our students, who sometimes ask “the emperor has no clothes” questions, are in a good position to help us.

To talk about teaching at the college level almost inevitably raises the question of the relationship of research to teaching. People often respond to this question in very general ways, ranging from the assertion that research vivifies teaching to the opposite one-that it makes teaching worse because of the overspecialization of the researcher. This question must be answered in much finer detail. Research valuable for a senior seminar may not be so valuable for an introductory course. Specialized research will not help faculty who need to teach the broader dimensions

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of their fields to undergraduates. Scholarly publication does not necessarily guarantee the ability to communicate with students.

At the same time, many faculty will want to do research-good research. Here, we too often leave them to lonely struggles. Chairpersons may think of ways in which faculty from within and outside their departments can affiliate with each other and form small groups working collaboratively. Such groups would function as think tanks: professors discussing their research questions with one another, offering critiques and suggestions. It would make research much less lonely. This collaboration would extend beyond the substance of research and into how to do it (including how to write). Like students, many faculty procrastinate and become obsessive in their research. Sometimes, rather than their own inclinations, they follow some mandate perceived in graduate school; hence, their research is rather sterile, because it does not express their own voice or inclinations. Chairpersons might seek means for faculty to receive help from one another (or from professionals) to deal with procrastination, obsession, and wrongly perceived mandates.

We might even raise the question of the utility of some or much of the research: How productive is it? How repetitive? We may raise the question of quantity versus quality. Increasingly, the number of publications is the criterion of success. Is it not possible to conceive that lower quantity may mean higher quality, with more of the right questions being asked (and at some leisure), leading to ripening and greater sophistication of ideas?

One of the particularly disconcerting problems that many chairpersons face is the presence of ineffective, alienated, or burned-out colleagues in their midst. It takes a long time for faculty to arrive at that state. We should think more about prevention than about the treatment of casualties. Nevertheless, there are many casualties in our midst. Each case is different; for effective action, one should develop a history and a diagnosis. For instance, there are teachers who are intent on prodding their students toward better performance, and they do so by making provocative remarks, which their students perceive as sarcastic or otherwise hurtful. Such teachers often are not aware of this perception. Over the years, a vicious cycle ensues. Students become more alienated, and the faculty member becomes more rejecting or withdrawn. Such teachers acquire bad reputations in the student grapevine. A bad reputation reaches colleagues and administrators, and such faculty are perceived as a burden. They are treated differently and are not subject to the usual rewards. The vicious cycle continues.

Experience has shown reversals of this pattern, if faculty classified as “dead wood” are given responsibilities that go counter to the reputations they have acquired. Such responsibilities can consist of important committee assignments or other tasks usually reserved for

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well-regarded faculty. A colleague of mine has recently worked with a highly unpopular fellow faculty member, providing him the opportunity to talk about his relations with the students in his classroom. In a series of interviews, my colleague was able gently to point out the difference between how the faculty member perceived what he was doing and how students perceived his actions and remarks. He became conscious of his sarcastic and belittling behavior, and, as he changed his ways, his students became responsive to him. In general, once faculty members experience approbation from their students, important changes in their feelings and behavior take place.

The procedure sketched earlier in this chapter, in which two faculty members collaborate with each other in observing a course, may be a device that chairpersons would want to use with faculty members who are perceived as not being very successful with their students. Such a faculty member could either be observed or be an observer. In either case, he or she would be able to increase sophisticated reflection about how one works with students. The relationship of the two faculty members would be an important ingredient in overcoming isolation.

It takes many years to arrive at the stage of being alienated and burned out. The faculty member’s original interest in a field may have waned, partly because of familiarity and partly because of failure in the kind of scholarship he or she thinks the field requires. A deadening effect may ensue from the fact that one teaches the subject to students who are forever at the elementary level. A new cycle begins with each new group of students, who may never reach the point of discourse at a level at which the professor would like to talk.

There are periods in many faculty lives when satisfaction with teaching is not very strong. The desire to teach may return, if conditions are right. Here is another challenge to the chairperson for prevention and treatment. Faculty may rekindle their excitement in subject matter if they have opportunities for cultivating their intellectual interests-for instance, by spending a semester or two at a research university or by participating in workshops of some duration in areas of present or potential interest. When a faculty member pursues a line of investigation, either within the original field or outside it, the ensuing vitality often spills over to engender a new liveliness in teaching.

Some faculty need time outside academia-sometimes for one or several summers, sometimes for longer periods. Helping faculty find positions in government, industry, or business can lead them to find new careers or to come back invigorated by the experience and incorporate it into their work in the classroom.

The chairperson can do much by devising opportunities for faculty members to meet with one another around areas of common interest-some intellectual, some social, or a combination of both-at

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monthly wine-and-cheese parties devoted to talking about teaching. It is amazing how apart from each other faculty can live, even faculty in small institutions. They may have rather stereotypical and even not so benign views of one another. By contrast, the energizing effect of faculty talking with each other cannot be overstated. Faculty, of course, do meet around administrative tasks, but these are often turf-minded occasions. The talking together I have in mind is sharing ideas and interests, which will help overcome the inhibitions of talking about teaching and one’s own classroom. The creation of such a community is one of the noblest and most practical of the chairperson’s tasks.

Josegh Katz is senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the editor of Teaching as Though Students Mattered (Jossey-Bass, 1985) and the author, wi th M . Henry, of Turning Professors into Teachers (Macmillan, 1988).