Pedablogue, by Harvest Bird

teaching beyond tips and techniques

5 years

24 July 2004, 2:24 pm

One of the things I've come to expect with teaching, particularly with teaching international students, is that students will come up with unexpected questions on a regular basis. Sometimes these questions are unexpected because they reveal a lack of understanding of something I thought was understood, and sometimes the opposite is true; a chance remark reveals an insight I hadn't realised the student grasped. When the latter happens, it can even help me think in a different way about the particular problem or idea under study. (In my classroom practice I try and get students practising the critical thinking that will help them engage with the material in a way that both follows academic conventions and is at the same time unique to their own thinking processes and context.)

But the purpose of this entry is not to talk about such moments, but rather to comment on those occasions when a student says something that draws you to such a halt you simply have to leave alone, in the short term, what is raised. These situations don't happen very often, but when they do it's not a good feeling as a teacher. In the context of international students, it usually happens when a student reveals something arising out of their cultural context that I hadn't seen coming and which I know I'm going to have to think about carefully before dealing with. Sometimes it can't even be dealt with in the context of that particular group of students; I know it's something I'm simply going to have to leave alone and try later with future students.

In some ways, I felt that my recent attempt to steer students through the question of how and why we evaluate characters in a novel (specifically the character of Phuong in The Quiet American) was one such occasion. Another frequent occurrence is students from mainland China attempting to regulate any discussion in which Taiwan is even mentioned. Consistent across students from the mainland is the statement "Taiwan is part of China". This has obviously been learnt from a young age, and comes with an unwillingness to see that it is an idea with two perspectives, as much as the idea "Taiwan is not part of China" is. I have seen more than one student from the mainland take aside another student from Taiwan in order to educate them in the error of their political ways; likewise, in test questions in which students are asked to discuss the difference between fact and opinion, it can almost be guaranteed that more than one student will write, "Taiwan is part of China is a fact and Taiwan is not part of China is an opinion". It is a disconcerting process at times, to watch the ways in which students engage with the idea of allowing for the existence of different points of view (including those points of view with which one doesn't agree) on the one hand and yet remaining, on certain points, immovable, on the other. Sometimes it is the students who have been away from home the longest who are the most insistent.

But these thorny moments are little in comparison to something that was said in class much earlier this year, in response to which I feel I need to go away and think for five years about how best to respond to it, and that was the serious-faced remark from a south-east Asian student that the basis of Arab opposition to United States foreign policy was "because of the Jews". Assuming she meant the state of Israel (which was the answer I had in mind, as much as I try not to have answers in mind), I asked her to explain further.

"The Jews in America," she said. "They control everything."

This was my top student, a subtle and critical thinker in many matters. I was taken aback. I asked the rest of the class if this was something they agreed with. There was a unanimous nodding of heads.

I left it there, saying only that this was but one point of view, and although perhaps widely-held, itself subject to criticism. I'm still not happy with the fact that I left it, but considering how best to uncover the history of assumptions that must have gone into its making is something that's still occupying at least part of my mind and which I feel I may need to think about for five years before I come up with a solution of any workable kind.

Surveys

22 July 2004, 6:50 pm

I received the transcripts of the open-ended comments on the standard teaching survey of my prep lit course today. I feel pretty pleased with these, both as feedback and as fragile works of art in their own right. All additions are my own; there are no omissions and original spelling is retained.

How did the lecturer's teaching of this course assist your learning?

In many wierd and wonderful ways.
Good choice of questions for assignments. Course reader helpful!
The handouts.
Handouts with gaps to fill in.
She was well prepared for every class.
Good simplistic way of explaining. Made jokes (obviously enthusiastic) about the subject that always helps me to learn.
[She] is great at relating to students and communicating ideas especially the important ones. The handouts in class with gaps were really helpful at the start.
Used examples well. Essay questions were easier to follow than in other courses.
The way she relates to the students on a personal/social level.
By clearly explaining the key ideas in each topic to ensure a more comprehensive understanding.

What change(s) in this lecturer's teaching would assist your learning?

Less Simpson analogies!
Allan Cummon [Allen Curnow] boring.
More emphasis of important points.
Maybe better overheads--more points. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish which 'point' was being talked about.
Some lectures tended to be a bit boring. Only because they all seemed similar.
A bit of variety in lectures. Hard to take notes in.
Lectures being slightly more structured.

Language

17 July 2004, 3:06 pm

Many of the students that I teach come from East Asian countries. This brings two particular issues into the classroom, which work sometimes in tandem and sometimes separately.

The first is that students come from a different learning or classroom culture. Their expectations about how they are going to be taught and how they are going to learn are quite different from local students. The extent to which they feel receptive to a new classroom culture varies from student to student, but responses to the different style of teaching and learning we build our practice on here range from curious and receptive to resistant and hostile.

The second is that many students lack sufficient proficiency in English to begin their studies at a level conducive to preparing for university study in the amount of time we have (a twenty-eight week programme, with breaks of varying lengths depending on whether students start in February or June).

The Foundation Studies classroom thus becomes the site of a continual balancing act: attempting a smooth initiation into local teaching and learning styles, remediating students' language skills and, in subject electives, teaching the content presumed necessary for their future success.

In my most recent arts elective class, this has produced some interesting results. University regulations mean that the previous convention of requiring a higher IELTS test score to gain entry to this part of the programme (based on the fact that arts study is generally thought to be more language-rich than other areas) has had to be relaxed, so some of the students (who have been with me for six weeks thus far) have the lowish-level language skills shared by their commerce and science elective classmates.

A small class--only nine students--and the extent to which the students are already "outsiders" for pursuing arts rather than the more popular (and more culturally acceptable) commerce option has made the shift in learning styles relatively easy. But the question that has remained in my mind, and in the minds of interested staff from elsewhere in the programme, is whether these students with their basic English will be capable of the more sophisticated thought required for arts study? A number of my colleagues, I suspect, would assume that the answer would be no.

The answer is not no; rather, it is a qualified "yes". To my (pleased) surprise, students have demonstrated a willingness to pursue abstract lines of inquiry thus far. Two or three consecutive classes were recently given over to discussion arising out of one student's question, concerning a character in Graham Greene's The Quiet American, "Is Phuong a good girl or a bad girl?"

I must confess that when I heard this question, my heart sank, sensing the myriad of cultural assumptions that lay behind the student's asking (and of course behind the reaction it brought out in me) and wondering if we would be able to untangle many of the issues inherent in its answering. But, by a kind of bastardised version of the Socratic method, whereby I asked students question after question which they answered, leading to further questions and so on, we eventually arrived at this topic of debate: "To what extent does the reader need to make judgements about Phuong's sexual morality in order to understand the novel?"

Students were required to write their own answers to that question, then find someone with a position contrary to their own and share their ideas with them, then represent the contrary ideas on the whiteboard, with ideas placed on a continuum from "a lot" to "not at all" (in answer to the question). I was amazed both at the sophistication students showed in answering the question, and their ability to listen attentively and dispassionately to their classmates' responses. The ideas on the whiteboard would have made the tutor of a second-year paper (which was what I used of course to be) proud, and I only wished I had a camera to record 'em for posterity. (One student, when I remarked on this, suggested unscrewing the whiteboard from the wall and removing it to a secret location!)

Where things broke down was an attempt to translate that day's discussion and reflection into a written assignment the following day. When I presented the students with a short essay question for internal assessment, based on the discussion they had participated in with so much success, they were quite bewildered and unable to see the connections between the previous day's work and the task to hand. It was as if the previous class's informality (as they wrote on the whiteboard I told them tales of my own undergraduate experience studying arts, and later stayed behind to talk extensively with one student about employment options following arts study) and diversity (the range of possible answers to the philosophical question posed) meant that the work was sealed in a chamber marked "fun", which was inaccessible when assessment was presented to them. It took a further two classes to go over the question, and even then its connection to the work they had done didn't really seem apparent.

Another point of breakdown is in the students' present inability to translate the ideas forged in oral discussion and collaboration, to a written context. Their various grammars, rudimentary and idiosyncratic, combine with an ability, underdeveloped at present, to follow written instructions, to make their answers obtuse or indeterminate. This is where their language deficit creates a gap in their arsenal of academic skills.

What sticks in my mind following all of this is the thought that even students with limited academic English and limited critical vocabularies are hungry, in an arts context, for complex reflection and critical debate. Similarly, in a classroom setting where they feel comfortable and relaxed, they are capable of abstract thought of considerable subtlety. However, when it comes to translating this work into recognisable written forms, their ability to apply their understanding and to write it in recognisable English may let them down.

What I need to focus on now is finding ways to help students apply their considerable aptitude for arts study to the formal frameworks through which this aptitude must be channelled. It may be that, for a time, classes veer between the two poles of abstract debate and basic grammatical instruction. But this, if it enables confidence and attention to detail in the students, is likely an okay way to proceed.

Graduation

17 July 2004, 2:48 pm

Mid-week-before-last, my prep lit students graduated their programme, enabling them to enrol as undergraduates for the second semester. Of all the courses I've taught since I left the student stable myself and joined academia in a way that isn't remunerated by the hour, this literature paper has been the most dear to me. As I've said earlier, its small scale (twenty-five students) and relatively low status within the university (the courses were coded at 000 level and all teachers are employed as general, not academic staff) gave me a level of what could be called creative control that I wouldn't otherwise have had. This baby was mine from start (drafting a course proposal) to finish (marking exams) and it was a real joy to celebrate with those who had successfully completed the whole programme.

I am quite madly enthusiastic about the more general personal and intellectual benefits of studying literature, in that a well-designed and well-taught paper can, I believe, provide the kind of education in critical thinking and skeptical inquiry that a more vocational paper doesn't have time or space to do. That enthusiasm, however, I keep largely between me and the students--its a hat that I wear in the lecture theatre and tutorial room, as well as when I see students socially, but I certainly don't bring it to staff meetings, for example, where it tends to be seen as a kind of youthful naivety. (One of the drawbacks of teaching in a multi-discipline programme is that anti-arts or, conversely, anti-science prejudices tend to be worn on individual sleeves.)

Graduation, however, was a different story, since I was there to celebrate with my students. The many layers of management who machinate in the ether above my teacher's head caught a little of the way I usually conduct myself in the classroom, and, to my surprise, I received some very positive feedback about this. I enjoyed a long conversation with the pro-chancellor, who was presiding at the ceremony, about the importance of arts education and second-chance learning opportunities and all those slogans which can sound so empty when bandied about for commercial purposes but which, in a classroom context, have a weight of thought and feeling behind them.

Additionally, I was really humbled by the number of students who bowled up to the managers in whose hands my financial and professional fate rests more regularly than I'd like, to tell them that my paper was the one they had preferred and I their favourite lecturer.

This is one situation in which the teaching itself is its own reward, several times over, and to be thus feted from above and beside (that's the students I'm talking about--I refuse to use "below") was like icing on an already-satisfying cake.

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