A discussion about disadvantaged and unprepared students over on Scatterplot helped me clarify some of my recent thoughts about my own weaknesses as an educator. I know sociology (at least my specialty areas). I can’t say the same for knowing how to teach. Oh sure, I have learned from watching others (those who do it well and those who don’t). I have gained a few tricks and improved through trial and error. Oh, sure I know about varied learning styles and to limit the number of points I try to make and typical attention spans and all that. However, I have never been formally trained in how to teach people the basics (e.g., how to formulate a question, how to write coherently, how think logically and critically).
Taken together, what does this mean for my ability to teach? On one hand, the things I know and the experience I have amassed allow me to fairly easily teach well-prepared and motivated students new things. However, my lack of training to teach means that I am ill prepared to help those who are ill prepared for learning at the university level.
This became painfully obvious during the semester that has just ended. I taught research methods or at least I tried to but I started with a flawed assumption. I assumed that students would know how to find articles and to write a literature review (the thing that is often called a research paper in high school). My plan was to teach them how to start from that point to explore ways of producing new knowledge. To say that I was stunned by what the students didn’t know would be an understatement.
Part of my winter break is going to be spent trying to learn how to teach these more basic skills. I wish that had been a part of my graduate training not something to do on my own. Step one is finding good resources for educating myself without spending a fortune on Amazon on information that isn’t helpful. I wonder if (A) I could find a summer workshop that would help and (B) I could get the administration to pay for said workshop.
I can try to help students acquire skills that, in an ideal world, they would have brought with them to campus. Unfortunately this creates more work for me that is unrewarded in the tenure process.
December 19, 2007 at 6:34 pm |
Does your library offer any tutorials for students? The social sciences librarian did a great presentation for my students this semester. I also re-skimmed (I’d read it in grad school and will have my graduate methods class read it next semester) The Craft of Research (Booth et al 2003) and gave my undergrads pointers from there to help with writing their final papers. I think it would even be an acceptable (and worthwhile) required book in an undergrad methods course.
December 20, 2007 at 2:02 pm |
Thanks jessica. I had forgotten about that book. I’ll check to see if the library has it. As for the library, well let’s just say it is an embarrassing aspect of campus. Thank goodness for use books and Amazon prime.
December 23, 2007 at 4:32 pm |
I teach soc theory and have students write a review of lit — done it for 20 years and while I am never completely satisfied with their products and how I help them to get there — I have some ideas I’d be happy to share privately with you! I enjoy talking about how to help students learn these skills.