As for the kind of questions, students ask, “they are normally shallow, short-answer questions that address the content and interpretation of explicit material; they are rarely high-level questions that involve inferences, multistep reasoning, the application of an idea to a new domain of knowledge, the synthesis of a new idea from multiple information sources, or the critical evaluation of a claim.”

Some of you will note that I’m referencing a study published in 1994. Maybe students are asking more questions now than they were then. They could be—it does depend on the class, as well as the teacher. The research has current value if it prompts you to consider how many student questions are being asked in your class and what kind of questions are they.

I know that in my classes most of the student questions were ones that fit the description given above: “Do you want us to staple our papers?” “How many multiple-choice questions will be on the exam?” “How well do we need to know the material in the book?” “Can we form our own groups?”

After politely responding to several of these questions one day, I told the class that although they may consider these important questions, they were not what I would call “good” questions. A good question wonders about an idea, it might ask about a connection between two concepts, it might ask for evidence, or it might even challenge a conclusion given in the text or by the teacher.

To encourage these types of questions, I said, “Next time I hear one of those questions, I’m giving that person three bonus points.”

I came up with this more or less on the spot and afterward I chastised myself for once again using points to motivate students. Of course it worked—you can get some students to do almost anything for a point. But once I got two or three of “good” questions and explicitly compared them with the other kinds of questions (which I assured students I would continue to answer), I think students saw the difference and the value of the second kind of questions. I know for sure that at least one student saw the light: “I have a question and I don’t want any points for asking it.” For a moment there I thought I’d I died and gone to instructional heaven.

Reference: Graesser, A. C. and Person, N. K. “Questions Asking during Tutoring.” American Education Research Journal, 1994, 31 (1), 104-137.

• I believe in the teachability of teaching. … [G]ood teachers are made, not born. We can observe, analyze, and communicate the artistry of [teaching] to other practitioners. Effective teachers both practice and constantly search and research their own activities; their classrooms are both instructional arenas and laboratories.

• I believe that what my students become is as important as what they learn. The endpoint of teaching is as much human as intellectual growth. Where qualities of person are as central as qualities of mind … we must engage the whole being of students so that they become open and receptive to multiple levels of understanding. And we must engage our whole selves as well. I not only teach what I know, but what I am.

• I believe that the teacher’s challenge in evaluating students is less to separate the gifted from the ordinary than to find the gifts of the ordinary. And I believe we must communicate our evaluations in a manner that helps students understand their competence, or lack thereof, without destroying their confidence. … At best, grades are imprecise measures even of academic achievement. They do not weigh the worth of a student as a person, now or in the future.

Reference: Christensen, C. R. “Every Student Teaches and Every Teacher Learns,” in C. R. Christensen, D. A. Garvin, and A. Sweet, eds., Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1991. Find Christensen’s statement of beliefs on pp. 116-119.

The issue is the poor students who need to be there but aren’t. At the beginning of this course, students were asked if they intended to participate in the three help sessions, and 88 percent said that they did. Only 41 percent actually showed up. And in the two help sessions after the first exam, only 5 percent to 13 percent of the attendees were students in the D and F category. So those who most needed to be at the help sessions were not.

I suspect that Stuart Karabenick, who has devoted a significant amount of his career to studying the help-seeking behavior of students, would say that part of the problem here results from labeling these review sessions “help” sessions. If you aren’t doing well in a course, do you want everyone to know that you need help? If you are doing well in the course, then it’s fine to go to a help session. You know you don’t need help. But as we all know, admitting that you need help—to yourself and then to others—is a very hard first step.

And then there’s the matter of how these help sessions were structured. TAs (who knew biology but had no knowledge of the test) conducted the sessions. They did not lecture, but they answered questions. Can you ask questions when you are struggling with course content? I think you can ask for help in very broad, generic ways—“I don’t understand mitosis.” It may be that the worry that you might ask a “stupid” question will prevent you from asking any questions.

The way review sessions are designed makes a difference. In this case, faculty offered good students another chance to review the material and improve their understanding of it. They did not offer struggling students help in a format that responded to their more serious learning needs.

Reference: Jensen, P. A. and Moore, R. (2009). What do help sesssions accomplish in introductory science courses? Journal of College Science Teaching, (May/June), 60-64.

For a collection of articles on academic help seeking, see: Karabenick, S. A., and Newman, R. S., eds. Help Seeking in Academic Settings. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associations, 2006.

Christensen says the tree has two main branches, each with several limbs. He can continue the teacher-student interaction, either with that student or another, or he can shift to student-to-student dialogue.

If he opts to continue with the same student, he identifies three main ways to respond to what has been said. He can explore the ideas the student has shared. This might mean clarifying assumptions; it might mean checking the quality of the analysis or testing the reasonableness of the conclusions. Secondly, he can respond by working to extend what the student has said. This might mean trying to add breadth and depth to the comments. It might mean getting the student to relate his or her comments to what has been said previously in the discussion. Finally, the instructor can challenge what the student has said. This might mean citing other, conflicting evidence. It might mean offering an interpretation or asking the student to defend the conclusion.

Opting to shift to student-to-student dialogue can also be directed in several different (and I would add rarely used) ways. One option, according to Christensen, is to simply step back and turn the discussion over to the class. Let them respond to what the student has said. Or, he might repeat the question or ask a related question in the interest of generating a larger pool of possible answers. Finally, sometimes he defers to the class asking for two different views on the primary issues and then a discussion of those.

In another chapter Christensen writes that “finding time to reflect on the discussion as it unfolded in class was … like trying to meditate on a speeding fire engine.” (p. 103) He’s right, but somewhere he has found the time to do the kind of thoughtful reflection about discussion that allows him to dissect what happens in great detail and with careful precision. Reading his description generates respect for the complexity involved in these dynamic interactions.

Reference: Christensen, C. R. “The Discussion Teacher in Action.” In C. R. Christensen, D. A. Garvin, and A. Sweet, eds. Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1991.

Barbara loved learning and that love filled her final decades with richness and reward. She matched her broad and eclectic interests with a fierce commitment to mastering new ideas and skills. At 94, when she could barely operate her TV remote and was just about to move into assisted living, she begged me to help her pick out a computer.

In her 80s she took Tai Chi lessons and practiced religiously—“really helps my balance.” She lived in a retirement community surrounded by trees, and in her 80s she undertook to identify all the different species on the property. Once she thought she had them correctly identified, she hired an arborist—“just to see how many I got right.” She missed only one. She had labels made for the trees, listing both their Latin and common names. Then she decided to photograph the identifying charactertistics of the trees and capture them in the different seasons. Using these photos she created a lovely book so that the other residents could learn more about the Trees of Knollwood.

For one of her later 80s birthdays, someone sent her an orchid. She loved it and bought herself a second, followed by a book on growing orchids, followed by more orchids, fertilizer, lights, pots and bark. Before long she had orchids blooming in various locations around the facility and was giving talks on the history and lore surrounding orchids.

She learned to play pool and took a class in line dancing. She wrote articles “on topics of substance” for the local newsletter. She memorized and recited a long Robert Burns poem at a local event. The last place she could find on her own was the in-house library.

These various interests would consume her. She would read up on them and talk about them, happily sharing what she’d learned. Her interests brought her such pleasure—she celebrated them.

Photography occupied her for many years—she took classes, went on trips, acquired bags full of equipment and took impressive pictures. Once while visiting her, she announced that we were going to take pictures of the moon through the trees—hopefully there would be a few clouds. Close to midnight we headed out, me carrying bags of cameras, tripods, light meters and lenses. Barbara carried the champagne and glasses. After lots of pictures and most of the champagne, we laid flat on the cool grass. Barbara talked about Ansel Adams and composition, the special challenges of black-and-white photography and how much natural beauty filled the world. I remember feeling wonderfully alive.

The love of learning sustained Barbara—it brought her joy and made getting old more an adventure and less an affliction. In her honor, please join me and take a moment to appreciate how much the gift of learning can give us and those we teach.

It’s a quote that succinctly captures how what students believe about themselves as learners affects how they approach learning. A mastery orientation means that students believe that they have some control over factors related to learning. They believe that they can learn, that hard work and efforts pays off, and that they have or can acquire strategies that will help them learn. They don’t give up easily when a learning task challenges them. Those with performance orientations see learning as something beyond their control. Generally they equate it with ability and after several failed attempts to learn something, they decide they can’t do it—that no matter what they do, they won’t be able to learn math, learn to write, learn to paint, learn to ski, you name the skill. They just don’t have what it takes.

In light of Tuesday’s post about the error of finding convenient groupings and then putting all students in them, most students are exclusively mastery or performance oriented. They fall somewhere on the continuum between the two extremes, although most researchers would say that few fall precisely in the middle.

I think a lot of beginning students who aren’t among the top cohort of college students put more stock in ability than effort. How they talk about their performance is revealing. Those who do well are not likely to tell a group of peers, “I studied my tail off for this test.” Some research found that when students fail an exam, a lot are not motivated to study harder for the next exam. No, they see their unsatisfactory performance as proof of their incompetence. Do our universities reinforce that conclusion by graciously giving them opportunities to drop the course? If they decide to stay, they do so with fingers crossed that they’ll get lucky on the next exam.

As teachers we want to think about how well we balance mastery and performance goals. Students must perform in our classes, but we can emphasize how the activities and assignments we evaluate offer students an opportunity to master the material. Equally important is how we demonstrate that effort does make a difference. We can tell students that, but it is much more effective to design activities through which they discover what they can do once their put their minds to it.

Here’s the reference for the opening quote: Schraw, G. (1998). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional Science, 26, 113-125.

Once the label gets used in a conversation (even during exchanges between teachers who care about students and are committed to learning), faculty launch into all sorts of stories about these Millenial students—they want their emails answered in the middle of the night; they can’t make decisions without consulting their parents; they expect detailed, explicit instructions for every assignment; and they willingly share personal issues most professors would prefer not to hear.

“The willingness of … professors to accept generational stereotypes stands in stark contrast to their sensitivity when it comes to gender and ethnic stereotypes,” Mano writes. He describes a session he attended at a teaching conference where incivility in the classroom was addressed. There was some suggestion that student behaviors are incivil depending on their culture and examples used to illustrate. “There was immediate pushback from professors that such generalizations are not valid—and are in fact harmful, because they prevent us from seeing the individuality in students.” Interestingly, Mano notes, generalizations about the Millennials went unchallenged in the session.

“Why are we in academe so accepting of media-driven constructs like the ever-multiplying generation labels?” Mano asks. He sees a paradox in our acceptance of the labels. We want to help those students who now come to college with many problems. If we can categorize, label, and otherwise conveniently group their problems, in this case under some generational label, we think we understand and can better deal with the issues. “But generational stereotypes are of no value for professors … . Students are diverse and have always been diverse.” Generational stereotypes rob students of their individuality. It makes us think we know them and don’t need to bother to get to really know them.

Since then I’ve realized that this is not just a problem for the two of us. So much of the pedagogical literature is full of definitive, advice-giving pronouncements. “Give regular quizzes to keep students up to date on their reading and to encourage them to come to class,” I read recently. Yes, that’s one goal that can be accomplished with quizzes. It’s a rather punitive one—not one likely to make students see the value of assigned reading. But it’s not the only (or in my opinion best—could that be a pronouncement?) goal quizzes can accomplish. They can be used to teach reading skills or to develop study strategies or to help students deal with test taking anxiety. They can be used to stimulate interest in material that will be dealt with in class today or to follow up with material discussed last class.

Why are we so prone to pedagogical pontification—to make the advice we offer (and receive) sound so definitive, so singular? Is it that we’re so busy that we don’t have time for anything more than the bottom line? Does it grow out of the tendency to think about teaching and learning only in terms of strategies and techniques? Do we just want the simple answers, the easy solutions, the quick fixes? Do we really believe everything about teaching and learning can be reduced to Twitter-sized messages?

I don’t think so. I wonder if it isn’t related to something else I was reading recently—how we don’t yet have a well-developed language with which to talk about teaching and learning. Language expresses what we know and understand. If our knowledge is limited and our understanding incomplete, that might explain why we don’t notice or object when somebody makes a pronouncement. What they tell us might well be true—it’s just not the whole truth.

In the study referenced below, the researchers were interested in how the presence of compulsive communicators in a class affected other students. Of the 530 students involved in the study, 191 were enrolled in sections of a basic communication course with no compulsive communicators. For those enrolled in sections with compulsive communicators, 181 were in sections with one overparticipator, 118 were in classes with two and 40 were in sections where they were three.

To assess how these overparticipators affected their peers, researchers had students complete a Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC), which measures how competent students feel in small group, interpersonal, interviewing, and public speaking settings. It’s an instrument that has been used extensively in communication research. In this study students completed the survey at the beginning and the end of the course.

“Results of the analysis of covariance show that students in sections without compulsively communicative peers reported great increases in self-perceived communication competence at the end of the course than students in sections with compulsively communicative peers.” (p. 361)

So the problems caused by students who overparticipate go beyond the dampening affect they have on the willingness of other students to participate. In this study their presence compromised the perceived development of those communication skills associated with communication competence. That makes the problem something more than teachers and students getting tired of always hearing from the same people. Overparticipators somehow make other students think they are developing less competence as communicators. Research like this provides even more reason for teachers to deal with those students who volunteer whenever the invitation to participate is extended.

Reference: Fortney, S. D., Johnson, D. I., and Long, K. M. (2001). The impact of compulsive communicators on the self-perceived competence of classroom peers: An investigation and test of instructional strategies. Communication Education, 50 (4), 357-373.

“A kid should be able to say what he’s learned in college, don’t you think?” my neighbor asked. I agreed. “Now he did talk a lot about his chemistry professor and how that teacher constantly gives examples of how things in the news involve chemistry. I pointed out he was learning that chemistry is relevant and he did agree.”

This conversation has made me think that we should be asking the learning question more often, like when we meet the students we had last semester. If there’s time for something more than, “How’s it going?” we ought to ask them what courses they’re taking and what they’re learning in one of those. Rather than just asking advisees how they’re doing in their courses, we should be asking them to tell us three important things they’ve learned so far this semester.

And I think we ought to be asking learning questions in our very own classes. Next time you pass back a set of papers and provide the sort of general feedback that helps students put their individual feedback in context, give students a couple of minutes to write on the front of their paper something they learned from this writing experience that they would like to remember the next time they’re assigned a paper. Or maybe it’s just a quick discussion about what students learned about how groups function after having worked on a group project.

Perhaps the new college student was confused by the question. Students in college learn content, but they are also learning about learning. Maybe he didn’t know which my neighbor was referring to. I’d like to think that, but I really believe what students are learning about content and process is not as front and center in their thinking as it ought to be. We can help them with that problem.