University of Venus

The Missing Link in Teaching

In Afshan's Posts on 2012/01/26 at 08:18

Afshan Jafar, writing from New London, Connecticut in the US.

When I was a graduate student and was assigned to teach (and design) a course, the first thing I did was order the textbooks for that particular topic. It seemed to me then, that everything would fall into place once I had accomplished the major task of choosing a textbook and figuring out the readings. In contrast, now, when I am about to design a new course, the specific readings sometimes end up being one of the last things I choose.

I have sat through a few teaching seminars now (as a graduate student and as a young faculty) and I know that a lot of people attend these kinds of seminars to learn how to deal with the “nuts and bolts” of teaching: how many pages of reading to assign, what kind of a system/scale to use for grading, what to include in a syllabus, how much feedback to give on written assignments etc. These questions are, of course, not unimportant and should be addressed as part of teacher training seminars. But what I want to focus on here is one aspect of teacher training that is far less concrete and very often overlooked in teacher training programs: epistemology and how that relates to pedagogy. That is, how does and should your conception of knowledge (and more specifically our disciplinary knowledge) relate to your teaching style and methods.

How can your conception of your disciplinary knowledge (or knowledge more generally) impact how you design a course? Let’s start with knowledge. Is your view of knowledge that it is a concrete set of Truths that must be passed on? Or do you believe knowledge is shaped by perspective and location? Does it exist like “nuggets of gold” – solid, unchanging, and needing safe-guarding? While most academics have answered these questions about their disciplines at some point, what is often missing is the linking of our abstract conception of knowledge to the very real practice of teaching. That the two should be in harmony is often ignored by those teaching us how to teach!

Once you make this relationship between epistemology and pedagogy central to your teaching and course design, everything else—the kinds of assignments you use, whether you use a textbook or not, whether you allow revisions, whether you do in-class exams or take-home papers/essays—follows from this relationship. Let’s take assignments as an example. If I am a firm believer that knowledge is often malleable, changing and context dependent, then my methods of assessing my students should reflect that view. Does it seem fair or even logical to test my students with multiple-choice questions if I hold the view above? Does it not make more sense, to assess students’ knowledge in a way that is congruent with my beliefs regarding knowledge? In the case above, it means assigning papers, and written assignments, allowing for students to interpret the information I provide, instead of asking them to regurgitate dates, definitions, or names in the format of a multiple choice exam or True and False with only one correct answer.

Thinking about the relationship between teaching and my own conception of knowledge is what has led me to shun textbooks. The format of a textbook: the bold and italicized definitions, reliance on summaries of original research instead of the actual research, test-banks for teachers for instance, all reinforce a knowledge-as-nuggets-of-gold approach to teaching and learning. If I don’t hold that view as a researcher, why should I hold that view as a teacher?

So instead of turning to textbooks, here are the questions I ask myself before developing a course. For me, the fact that my answers to these questions have to be consistent with my conception of knowledge makes this part much easier than before:

What do I want students to take away from this course? And I don’t mean regurgitating our jargon-filled “course objectives” here with all the buzz-words: I mean: What are the central ideas/themes that drive this course. What is the most important thing that I want students to learn from this course?
How can I best get these central ideas across? Will it be a lecture? A seminar with student leaders for each section? A class discussion?
Given my own conception of knowledge, and what I believe the central themes of this course are, how will I assess the students?

I realize that sometimes when faced with large enrollments, we may not have the luxury to stick to our ideals. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed .

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Higher Education, Networking

Networking aka Getting Outside the Comfort Zone

In Liana's Posts on 2012/01/25 at 01:15

Liana Silva, writing from Kansas City, Kansas in the US.

This semester I signed up for the University of Venus Networking Challenge. The challenge asked readers to reach outside of their departments and meet people in other disciplines, in other institutions, and/or in other countries. Because of my current employment position, I find myself getting in touch with a lot of people from other departments. Thus, I thought it would be unfair to count that as part of the challenge. However, the U Venus challenge prompted me to think about my interactions with faculty and staff from other schools and offices differently.

As a teaching assistant and a graduate student, I met people mostly through classes or meetings. If we were taking a class together or worked for the same professor, chances are that we would eventually get to know each other. However, unless your department is an interdisciplinary one, or unless you work outside of the department or have connections with people outside of campus, it is possible that your experience as a graduate student is limited to the footprint of the school—and perhaps only to your department floor. In my case, I knew few people outside of campus until I met my significant other.

Once I was done with coursework, my interactions with my peers were even more limited. Field exams required me to immerse myself in reading, and the dissertation research was no different. Every new semester brought new students while old friends moved away. If I went to a department function I knew few of the students, and without the commonalities of sharing an office or taking classes together, we had little to go by—it got to the point where I had trouble remembering classes when new students would ask me about a professor. Hence, I retreated into my academic shell.

Adjunct teaching was no different; we all taught at different times and had different obligations that kept us away from the office. During that year I was an adjunct, I got to know well two other adjuncts in addition to two faculty members, and the only reason this happened was because we all spent so much time in the office. I would prep for my classes, then I would work on my dissertation, then I would pick up my daughter and drive home. However, this was not the case for most adjuncts.
These stories are not uncommon. We have been warned that our disciplines have become silos, and even with Twitter we might run the risk of listening only to the voices that sound like us or that think like us. It’s easy to follow someone on twitter, but how often do we follow someone from a different discipline or from a different career path?

In my new home town I have felt the urge to reach out and meet other fellow academics in part because I needed the scholarly interaction; the dissertation can become a black hole where you hear only yourself and forget what other voices sound like. In reaching out I have met some wonderful people from different universities (fortunately I live in a city that contains over a dozen universities and colleges within an hour of the city center), and this even helped me find my current job.

As part of the UVenus Challenge, I resolved not just to reach out to other academics but to keep alive the connections I already had. I made lunch appointments, I attended the TEDXWomen live streaming event in Kansas City, heard Gloria Steinem speak at UMKC—a highlight of my semester—and handed out my business card. (To think, I had to remind myself to hand out business cards! Something I had never done before.) But in the spirit of the challenge I pulled my gutsiest move yet: I contacted a Latino/Latina studies scholar whose work I admired and and who teaches where I work. We met for coffee in her office and talked about graduate school, my work, and academic writing. As I sat there, talking about my research and about the process of academic writing in general, I felt like I was shedding my graduate student shell.

As graduate students we immerse ourselves in our departments, and the deeper we go into our research, the less likely we are to connect with others. Making friends as an adult is hard enough without adding the layer of academia. It was not until I moved away from my school to a big city where I knew no one that I really reached out to people across departments and outside of my university. It gave me a real appreciation for the work others do at the same time that I developed new friendships and connections.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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Alt-Ac, Higher Education

When Worlds Collide

In Elizabeth's Posts on 2012/01/24 at 09:40

Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, writing from Evanston, Illinois in the US.

In the days preceding my wedding in a Cambridge College chapel, my brother would perform a spot-on imitation of George Costanza from Seinfeld and shriek, “Worlds Collide !” each time the English and American in-laws to be or my husband’s Oxonian undergrad buddies and our shared Cantabrigian graduate cohort threatened to run amok.

Academics seem particularly prone to such celestial crises. University towns the world over make neighbors of colleagues in a manner my husband has never experienced in his post-modern/post company town, private sector career. When you see your supervisors at the block party you experience both your relationship with them and with the rest of your neighbors differently. Warmer more personable connections not only fuel workplace camaraderie, but also mean you are never entirely unguarded. Friends and neighbors who work in far-flung professional roles can gripe over a beer about their annoying colleagues. No such indiscretion can creep into the fully integrated work-life community.

The flip-side of integration besets those like the University of Iowa professor who besmirched his non-academic neighbors in print and may find himself pilloried at his neighborhood park. Valparaiso University Professor Mark Schwehn described the dislocation from elite and urbane graduate institutions to colleges surrounded by cornfields year ago in his Exiles from Eden. Such exiles also dance among the dangers of collided worlds, but they are profoundly different. Everyone can easily spot those who despise their surroundings. They need not unveil themselves publicly in the pages of The Atlantic. Their disdain seeps from their pores, poisons any positive aspects of their experience, and deepens the gulf between them and their enforced community.

This contempt is a tragic by-product of the need to take a tenure-line job – any tenure-line job – no-matter how miserable it makes you. A lucky few land upon the tenure track at their dream institution whether ethereal coastline colleges or research universities with convenient commutes to city centers. Schwehn found his perfectly integrated calling at his Lutheran university. Others, like me, opt for life off-the tenure track but within worlds we encourage to collide. It is a huge and scary leap (and one I continue to question) to opt for my culture of choice over tenure’s “brass ring.” I don’t know if anyone has studied how many of us make this active choice. I suspect more women are willing to sacrifice prestige on paper in order to balance to dual-careers and child-rearing in a metropolitan area over the sparse professional options of rural college towns.

I have been both a culturally dislocated faculty member and observed those relocated to my beloved alma mater against their will. Disaffection fails to serve anyone well. It’s one thing to be a swinging single scholar on the move. Singletons dig in and either grow roots or sow scholarly oats (aka articles and books) that allow them to move to their definition of a more desirable location. Those of us who enter the job market with partners and progeny in tow experience any culture shock in exponential form. The weeping wife, the harried husband, the crying child simultaneously detracts from our own integration into the new institution and limits our access to any means of escape. Suppressed, silent misery causes less offense than forthright rants, but just as surely sucks the pleasure from life and power from pedagogy.

All this returns me to my marvelously collided worlds. I’ll gladly stick to one margarita at the block party and bite my tongue about university politics on play-dates in order to live where my entire family feels at home. When I self-edit, I do so to maintain the intermingled communities I love, not to hide my misery and protect a paycheck.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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