What the Best College Teachers Read?

I wanted to like Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do.

But I got tripped up by the circular logic evident in the first few chapters, and I never quite untripped myself.

To say that there were methodological flaws in the study would be unjust--I didn't really glean enough information about the details of the study from the book.  Bain spoke in generalities, broad brush-strokes throughout.  It seems possible, though, that the selection critera pre-determined the findings of the study.  From the first few chapters, I got the sneaking suspicion that they selected professors that used language about learning that they liked, and then discovered that those professors . . . used language about learning they liked.

That suspicion tainted, somewhat, the rest of my reading.

But somewhere in the middle of it, I stopped thinking of it as a study of college-level pedagogy, and started thinking of it as an apologia for liberal arts education.  In the end, it was a collection of (modestly) inspiring ideas about education as something more than degree-granting and -getting, more than job training and income boosting, more than gate-keeping and hoop-jumping.

It was, in short, a reminder that education is about forming adults, a project that is only partially complete if we content ourselves with transmitting knowledge (even important knowledge).  That's why I got into teaching--to change lives, not to administer entrance and exit exams.

One of the things I found myself doing as I read was jotting down and sorting through pedagogical ideas that I had already come up with but hadn't yet put to paper, or hadn't yet figured out how to build into course design.  There weren't too terribly many good, specific tactics or tools described in the book itself (again, too many generalities and big-picture thinking), but I did feel encouraged in some observations I've made over the last few years.  Often, that encouragement came in spite of what Bain was actually encouraging rather than as a result of it.

For example, in the midst of my annoyance at his encomiums to activities I've always found somewhat trendy or childish ("think-pair-square-share" and "the McEvoy minute") and often unsuccessful, I began to realize that he had put words to a genuine problem I'd been noticing in my classes: passive learning early in a course or a class period becomes habitual.  It has been my practice to try to give students something to discuss, and then ask them to discuss it.  I build this pattern into individual class periods and into course structures as a whole.  My starting point has always been that my students really don't know anything, and most of them don't care that they don't know anything.  And so I have to introduce thoughts for them to think so that they can start learning how to think. 

But they've been conditioned by a lifetime (to them) of passivity and edutainment, and they don't know how to contribute to their own education.  This is not how I approached my theological studies.  I would have four days of brilliant lecture classes, and by Friday, when all the TAs held discussion groups, I was bursting with things to talk about.  This is not how my undergrads experience their own education.  I've been starting to realize that I have to get them talking early, if I ever want them to talk at all.  Early in the course, early in the class period, early in our relationship, early in any office visit--they have to get used to talking so that they can do it.

I'm not sure Bain's book really gave me workable strategies to do that, but he has strengthened my resolve to look for ways that will work for me.

Or with regard to motivation, I found his language about "giving students a choice" and "refusing to exercise control over the students' learning" disingenuous.  He made the observation that grades represent both feedback to the student and "objective" evaluation to society-at-large (those who want to know whether or not the nursing student learned anatomy, for example), but then followed it with the idea that the latter should be all but dropped.  That seems problematic at best, at the college level.  (I wish I could absolutely require such an approach at the elementary school level, and I think secondary schools could certainly move more in that direction.)

Still, I found myself brainstorming ways to build some kind of choice or ownership over the material, particularly in upper-level courses.  Might ethics students choose a "focal" issue to return to over and over during the course of the semester?  Could some of the readings in a Bible class be selected by students?

Finally, his language of "authenticity" profoundly annoyed me.  By this he meant that coursework should look like "real life," that projects should be constructed along "real world" lines wherever possible, and that connections with how the student might use the course's skills and content in "the real world" should be prevalent.  I found myself kicking against all but the last point. 

I kept mentally returning to sports and music metaphors: there's nothing "authentic" about scales and practice drills.  Scales and etudes and fingering drills and breathing drills are not musical.  But musicianship absolutely requires them.  Fartleks and shark-fin drills and suicide drills look nothing like race-day running or swimming or like a basketball game.  But you won't be successful during the match/meet/game unless you've done the artificial drills.  The drills produce transferable skills.

But it's true that students sometimes need help with the transfer process.  So musicians have student recitals before they have performances at the Met.  And the varsity basketball team plays scrimmages against the JV team before their matches, and high school basketball (still, so far) comes before a career in the NBA.

It's been fairly easy for me to make connections between my area of study and "the real world," and I do drop these connections into my everyday contact with students. 
"Hey, some day, the town you're living in is going to pass some idiot regulation, and you're going to want to be able to make a persuasive speech to the town council why it's unjust or imprudent." 
"Hey, some day, some issue that's important to you will hit the newspapers (if we still have such things), and you're going to want your voice to be heard, and you're going to want to be able to write a letter to the editor (or a HuffPo blog post) that gets accepted and that makes people think."
"Hey, some day, one of your friends is going to ask you to drive him to a bank, and he's going to come running out, waving a gun and shouting 'DRIVE, DRIVE, DRIVE!!!!' and you're going to want to have some practice at saying no, so that's why you should never say yes when your friend asks to copy your homework."

But I haven't done much work at building those connections into my assignments.  I've been all scales and etudes and no recitals.  Instead of telling them that they should master this or that material or technique so that some day they could write a good letter to the editor, why don't I assign a letter to the editor?

So, I was inspired and encouraged by this book, even when I found myself disagreeing with it or annoyed by its trendy, jargony tone.  It fed my own brainstorming about pedagogy, even when its few specific suggestions were unpalatable or inapplicable to me.

I do recommend it, even if I didn't really love it.  Because I do really love teaching, and a conversation with someone who feels the same is always worthwhile.

Tar and Feather with the Same Black Kettle

Whatever mixaphors you want to come up with, it seems worth describing this article as, at the very least, problematic:

Male Humanities Professors Are Only In It For The Adulation

I should admit, I appreciate hearing some of the stories about professors', administrators', or colleagues' misdeeds.  Because, quite frankly, of all the Forewarned-Forearmed scenarios I've contemplated, having a colleague "accidentally" play porn at me just hadn't made the list.

And now I know.

Now I have an exit strategy for just that scenario.

But the rest of the article didn't seem terribly helpful to me.  Aside from the ludicrously attention-seeking over-reach in the article's title (which I'm willing to set aside only for the sake of all my journalist friends who insist that the writer never chooses the title), the conclusions don't seem warranted from the evidence, and the whole thing seems an exercise in scorn.

Overrepresenting the number of assholes in academia really doesn't do anyone any good.

Generalizing the behavior of idiots to all members of a group to which some idiots belong doesn't do anyone any good.

Suspecting the motives of people who have chosen a rather modest career path--one oriented towards helping others--doesn't do anyone any good.

I got into teaching in general, and teaching theology in particular, to do people some good.

I'm willing to believe that men, in general, are biologically programmed to put themselves a bit more on display when potential mates walk in the room.  I'm willing to believe that happily married (or securely celibate) men, in general, are not entirely free of this biological imperative and may quite unconsciously "display" a little more when a pretty girl shows an interest.

But "getting attention from pretty co-eds" really doesn't make the list of reasons to choose academia.  You could be a bartender to do that, and you'd probably make more money.

Why You Should Care, or Project Plagiarism Matters

I keep forgetting to show my students stories of why and how academic citation matters "in the real world."

I'm going to start collecting them here, so that I have somewhere easy to point to.

I've spoken before about why I think plagiarism--or, rather, the habits of academic honesty that plagiarism violates--is a big moral deal.

It certainly is a big deal in academia, and the big deal that it is can properly be called a moral deal because the procedural standards are oriented toward properly moral goals--honesty, diligence, courtesy, etc.

Whether it is a big deal, moral or otherwise, outside the academy is worth pondering.  I don't believe that my students believe my insistence on proper attribution does them any good outside of the classroom or has any goal not restricted to the "academic" part of academic integrity.

I came across several examples this week that might be useful for Project Plagiarism Matters.  Just one will have to suffice for this post, however.

I wouldn't have noticed this one but for my colleague at Huntingdon, Dr. Jeremy Lewis, who reminded me that students are protected, as well as imperiled, by proper citation.

When College Students Plagiarize You, You Must Have Said Something Worth Saying

Yes, it's the college student who got in trouble here, but the person whom he plagiarized is a writer, who has a stake in having her work acknowledged.  She also has a stake in having her work benefit herself, rather than some privileged white dude.  ("Lord, prosper the work of our hands!")

It seems worth reminding students that they might some day write for a living--incidentally to whatever employment they find or as a substantial part of their careers.  They learn proper citation now as part of a system of proper attribution that protects writers from having their work stolen for others' benefit.

This system is especially important for those of us in the essentially charitable enterprise of education.  We accept a modest salary in exchange for bettering the lives of others by passing along ideas that we have learned from others.  There are only a few concrete ways we can augment that modest salary, and almost all of them have to do with generating ideas worth sharing and publishing them in income-producing ways.

But even for those of us outside academia, the protection of our intellectual and artistic work--enacted legally by copyright protection, but morally by accusations of plagiarism--still matters.  My students might not go on to be researchers or authors, but they might go on to be bloggers.  Many of them are already users of content-sharing social media--instagram and such.  They might go on to be technical writers of some kind.  They might be speech writers or website designers or nurse-educators or anybody else who would create something with words.

They might like to know that some fussy old fuddy-duddy of a professor like me is training those who come after them not to plagiarize them.

Female = Feminist?

A friend of mine currently blogging over at Theology PhD Mom is in the midst of an interesting and helpful series of posts on the academic job market.

She raises a very interesting point in this post about the not-entirely-realistic expectation that female theologians are conversant with feminist theology.

I know the important names, the basic thrust of their work, and the kinds of concerns that may be common to those who label themselves feminists, but I have far less expertise in feminist theology than I do in, say, philosophical ethics, scripture, systematics, Thomism, or Wesleyan theology.

Of course, in some sense, I do feminist theology, whether or not I do it in concert with explicitly feminist theologians, simply by dint of being a woman. In a more significant sense, I do feminist theology because some of the issues, approaches, and convictions that tend to be of particular concern to women are part of my intellectual landscape. (That is, I am more likely than my male colleagues, on the whole, to notice, theorize, or write about some of the sorts topics that feminists tend to notice, theorize, and write about.)

But I have never identified myself as a feminist theologian.

Despite never having identified myself as a feminist, or even admitted to being conversant in feminist theology, I have been asked by colleagues to "present the feminist perspective," to give a lecture on feminist theology, or in other ways to speak for or about feminists in academic settings.

I have finally stopped graciously apologizing for my lack of knowledge and interest. The last time a (male) colleague asked me to give a presentation on feminism, I answered, "Hey, you know what would be awesome? Let's do something really wild. Why don't you present on feminism, and I'll present on masculinity."

He didn't take me up on it.

Sentences You Should Fear

I have become quite an expert at catching instances of academic dishonesty.

In fact, I've caught more plagiarists without the help of my school's detection program (SafeAssign, Turnitin, etc.) than with.

I say this not to brag, but to preface the following list: those sentences I'm mostly likely to say right before I catch you. I put this list in order of ascending frequency.

"Gee, that's not how the book put it." When a student, even a good student, knows more about the topic than the author he's supposed to be summarizing, analyzing, or assessing, I tend to assume that student has done a little outside "research." So I start doing a little "research" of my own.

"Gosh, this would have been a great paper for the other class this student is taking/took last semester/would have taken as a freshman." I do know what classes are being offered elsewhere in the school, you know. And sometimes, your other professors and I chat about, like, what we're teaching. Recycling paper is good and will lead to a cleaner and better future for all; recycling papers can only lead to your downfall.

"That's . . . not . . . what I assigned." Sometimes, an essay that doesn't address the assignment but is in other ways a sound effort is just a bad essay. Other times, it's a bad deal--that purchased essay didn't exactly do it's job. And the funny thing? About two sentences into our conversation about your paper (and we will have one), I can tell which of these it is.

"This is a rather astounding improvement over the last paper." This sentence almost never, in itself, provokes The Conversation. I've actually had students who work on their writing and improve it over the course of the semester. (No, really! Some people do that. Have you considered that as an alternative to . . . no? Well, it was worth a try.) But it almost always provokes a little one-on-one time with the search engine.

"Wow, this is a grammatically correct sentence." You know who you are and why this makes me start googling. This corollary to the previous (both falling under the "There's no way that student produced this paper" category heading) is distinguished primarily by the suspect sentence's isolation from its surroundings. That pearl of great price--grammar--shines all the brighter when it appears in the midst of the compost bin that is your usual writing. I always google the pearl. And I usually find that it has an original owner that is not you.

"Darn that thesaurus function on Word." This one is kind of fun, actually. When I reconstruct the sentence that would have existed before your thesaurus use rendered it nonsensical, I can figure out whether you're 1) a bad writer or 2) a bad writer and a plagiarist. If the probable ur-sentence of the tortured sentence is itself confused and mangled, that's a sure sign that it actually originated with you. (I never attempt to reconstruct the mental pattern that produced such a sentence. I prefer to live in a land of logic and reason.) If the reconstructed sentence is logical, grammatical, and germane to the essay, I go a-hunting.

And, the final and most frequent precursor to your visit with the academic dean:

"Oh, look! Wiki!" Nowadays, I read the relevant Wiki page(s) right before I start grading. It just makes the whole process faster.

Perhaps this list will make you reconsider your attempt to skirt the requirements of your course. Or perhaps it will simply make you a better plagiarizer. Either way, I will consider it a success. The former is better for your soul, which is, of course, more important than your intellect. But the latter is not lacking in a kind of scholarly merit--the skills of a successful (as opposed to lucky) plagiarist are genuinely intellectual skills that may serve you later in life.

A Good Introduction

This entry is a review of Catholic and Christian: An Explanation of Commonly Misunderstood Catholic Beliefs, by Alan Schreck

Written with a frankly apologetic aim that is laudable for its consistency, honesty, and gentleness, this primer on Catholic belief and practice is readable, friendly, and well-organized. Schreck has an eye on Protestant critiques of Catholicism and answers those critiques in an ecumenical and conciliatory manner—sometimes correcting misapprehensions, sometimes explaining in language that might be appealing to Protestants, yet never apologizing for Catholic distinctives. He is careful, for example, to appeal to scripture to argue against sola scriptura and for the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in directing the Church.

At times, this ecumenical spirit (as well as, no doubt, his attention to accessibility) leads him to make claims that are less than intellectually satisfying. When he insists in the section on prayer to the saints, for example, that “All Christian prayer . . . is directed to the Father through Jesus Christ, who is the ‘one mediator between God and man’ (1 Tm 2:5)” (158-159), one desperately longs for the “ultimately” that one knows should be in there. It is patently true that prayers and petitions are addressed to the saints and to Mary, and to say that “all prayer” is “directed to the Father” cannot satisfy the Protestant who knows that he objects to the practice nor the Catholic who makes petitions to her beloved patron saint. Similarly, the affirmation that Mary was saved from sin through no merit of her own, just like all humans must be, with the only exceptional part being that her salvation was wrought before her birth, will not cause Protestants to recoil any less from the declaration that Jesus was not the only human to have lived a sinless life.

(The only time I was myself a bit . . . snarly . . . was when he denied the existence of Junia and trivialized "deaconesses" with the distance quotes.)

But Schreck’s project is not to bring all Protestants to full communion with the Catholic Church—it is but to explain Roman Catholic belief and practice accurately and appealingly, and this he does very well.

As an ethicist, I cannot fail to be disappointed in the absence of a chapter dealing with Catholic ethics. While the attentive reader can collect scattered references to the sources, aims, and logic of Catholic moral theology into a reasonable understanding of how it works, there are few references to specific teachings, principles, or emphases. It should not be difficult to construct such a chapter, and John Paul II’s ethical writings would be a crucial resource for this project, given his ability to balance authority and accessibility in his writing.

This was a required text for the class I am teaching this semester (that is, I was required to require it), but I am quite happy with it nonetheless. It is accessible and sound, and I would recommend it outside the classroom to anyone (Catholic or Protestant) who is not well-versed in the Catholic faith but wants to be.

Overheard

An actual in-class exchange:

"These prophets are pictured as giving counsel, advice, or correction to the king. So, you have Nathan rebuking David over the affair with Uriah, Elijah pronouncing judgment on Ahab for . . . everything, and Huldah counseling Josiah when-- Anybody notice the prophetess in our reading for today? Huldah, the prophetess, one of the instigators of Josiah's reform?"

"I noticed her, Mrs. Sours."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I read it and noticed that you always make us read the stories that have women in them."

"Sneaky, aren't I?"

A College Instructor's Advice To Parents of Middle and High Schoolers

Reading.

Reading.

Reading.

That's the one thing my kids just don't do. (My college kids. Not MY kids. I punish MY kids by taking away their books. And it, like, works.) Undergrads just don't read.

And it's the one thing that covers over a multitude of intellectual gaps.

They may hate history, but if they read historical novels, they'll pick up a little of it. They may hate Shakespeare, but if they read history, they can get a sense of who he was and how he was important. They may hate philosophy or ethics, but if they read Sci-Fi, they'll get a little taste of political and social theory. They may hate grammar, but if they read, they'll see it in action and they'll absorb some of it. They may hate doing science experiments, but if they read about science, they'll at least keep up with scientific advances and they'll know what a scientific argument sounds like.

Reading, reading, reading.

Are you worried about preparing your kids for college? What classes they take matters, yes. Extra-curricular activities aren't a bad idea. Test prep matters more than it should. But the most effective preparation is reading.

Let them read. Make them read. Pay them to read. (I'm serious. It appears to work.) Fiction. History. Sci Fi. The newspaper. Time, or the Economist. Just. read. something.

Thinking about what they read is the other thing my students don't do. They don't know how, because they don't even know how to summarize what they've read. And summarizing is the first step to analyzing. Having to organize your thoughts enough to tell someone else about it (verbally or in writing) is the first step to thinking, really thinking, about it.

So make your kids write about what they read. Pay them for their reading, only after they've written for you a basic summary of the book. Have them start a blog expressly for writing about their reading. Or have a family blog where you all talk about what you read!

Teach them the difference between formal and informal writing, if you have time. The blog format is good for that, too. You can make them use correct grammar, even in an informal style. And then whenever they're writing a formal assignment, you can say, "Well, that would be perfect on your blog, but in formal writing, you should . . . "

Honestly, if you do those two things, reading and writing, you are setting them up for permanent, lifelong success, no matter what your scope and sequence look like, no matter what high school they go to, no matter what their test scores are.

They will not fail to get into a good college if they are widely read and if they can construct sentences with basic grammar and if they can chain sentences together into coherent thoughts.

And even if they don't go to college, they'll be better at EVERYTHING they do than people who don't read. They'll read their mortgage contracts with more intelligence. They'll recognize specious political arguments (unless all they read is specious political theory). They'll persuade their bosses and co-workers more effectively. They'll sound more intelligent in interviews.

They won't be able NOT to.

Trust me. I'm seeing what your kids do when they leave your house.

I can tell the readers. I really can.

(I can also tell the ones that had to do chores when they were growing up. But that's a matter for another blog entry.)