teaching
Teaching is art, craft, science and service, where creativity, hard work and empathy can yield great personal rewards, like these:
"... a teacher must walk a thin line,
destroying complacency without destroying confidence."
Jeremy Dink. Every Good Boy Does Fine.
The New Yorker April 8, 2013, pg 44.
There is a thought-provoking concept in economics called “rational ignorance.”
The idea is that it is often rational to not go to all the bother to learn about things
when the information is unlikely to prove useful in the future.
Useful information can critically inform important decisions
or impress people with how knowledgeable and clever you are.
This is a fundamental idea in evolution (and economics),
that the value of information is determined by
the extent to which it can increase fitness (or utility).
I think about this every time I design a lesson or lecture.
I assume that the students approach the topic with an attitude of rational ignorance.
Why is this stuff more important than texting a friend?
Your first challenge is to convince yourself that this really is interesting and useful for them to know.
The second challenge is to convince them.
“It will be on the exam” is insufficient and ineffective.
After the students have decided that they really do want to know this stuff,
then you can focus on how to deliver it effectively.
Start with “why it matters,” then figure out “how to do it.”
Here’s why you need to convince yourself first:
One way students judge whether information matters is by reading the teacher:
do you really think this is important and exciting?
If you don’t why should they?
One way your excitement, attitude and effort, as well as your competence, will have an impact
is through a kind of educational placebo effect called the Hawthorne or Pygmalion effect.
People perform better when they think they are involved in an important, meaningful activity
that is being observed and will have an impact.
There is a nice critical analysis of this phenomenon at at web site maintained by Stephen W. Draper: http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/hawth.html .
If you haven’t read about the early work of N. Ambaty and R. Rosenthal
(Half a Minute: Predicting Teacher Evaluations From Thin Slices of Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 64, No. 3. (1993), pp. 431-441.),
I highly recommend it.
This line of research and its implications are presented quite artfully by Malcolm Gladwell
in an article in the New Yorker (May 29, 2000): The New-Boy Network ,
and in his book Blink.
Gladwell juxtaposes teaching and job interviews:
If you don’t think what you have to offer is terrific, why should they?
Now that you have convinced yourself that what you have to offer is important and exciting,
you can focus on how to get the job done.
Of course, part of the answer is that you have to tell a good story that engages the minds of students.
E.O. Wilson (my ‘academic grandfather’) emphasizes this in his essay The Power of Story.
An interesting introduction to cognitive research on The Privileged Status of Narrative is provided by D.T. Willingham.
These ideas are reinforced in an opinion piece by DeSteno et al (2017), entitled The Secret to a Good Robot Teacher.
They use experimental data to argue that to be effective, not only do we need to tell a good story,
we need to do it expressively, with "the give-and-take that defines true social interaction,
where the verbal and nonverbal cues of one party are dynamically responsive to those of the other.”
The idea is that it is often rational to not go to all the bother to learn about things
when the information is unlikely to prove useful in the future.
Useful information can critically inform important decisions
or impress people with how knowledgeable and clever you are.
This is a fundamental idea in evolution (and economics),
that the value of information is determined by
the extent to which it can increase fitness (or utility).
I think about this every time I design a lesson or lecture.
I assume that the students approach the topic with an attitude of rational ignorance.
Why is this stuff more important than texting a friend?
Your first challenge is to convince yourself that this really is interesting and useful for them to know.
The second challenge is to convince them.
“It will be on the exam” is insufficient and ineffective.
After the students have decided that they really do want to know this stuff,
then you can focus on how to deliver it effectively.
Start with “why it matters,” then figure out “how to do it.”
Here’s why you need to convince yourself first:
One way students judge whether information matters is by reading the teacher:
do you really think this is important and exciting?
If you don’t why should they?
One way your excitement, attitude and effort, as well as your competence, will have an impact
is through a kind of educational placebo effect called the Hawthorne or Pygmalion effect.
People perform better when they think they are involved in an important, meaningful activity
that is being observed and will have an impact.
There is a nice critical analysis of this phenomenon at at web site maintained by Stephen W. Draper: http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/hawth.html .
If you haven’t read about the early work of N. Ambaty and R. Rosenthal
(Half a Minute: Predicting Teacher Evaluations From Thin Slices of Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 64, No. 3. (1993), pp. 431-441.),
I highly recommend it.
This line of research and its implications are presented quite artfully by Malcolm Gladwell
in an article in the New Yorker (May 29, 2000): The New-Boy Network ,
and in his book Blink.
Gladwell juxtaposes teaching and job interviews:
If you don’t think what you have to offer is terrific, why should they?
Now that you have convinced yourself that what you have to offer is important and exciting,
you can focus on how to get the job done.
Of course, part of the answer is that you have to tell a good story that engages the minds of students.
E.O. Wilson (my ‘academic grandfather’) emphasizes this in his essay The Power of Story.
An interesting introduction to cognitive research on The Privileged Status of Narrative is provided by D.T. Willingham.
These ideas are reinforced in an opinion piece by DeSteno et al (2017), entitled The Secret to a Good Robot Teacher.
They use experimental data to argue that to be effective, not only do we need to tell a good story,
we need to do it expressively, with "the give-and-take that defines true social interaction,
where the verbal and nonverbal cues of one party are dynamically responsive to those of the other.”