I haven’t been writing for a while. A lot has been happening and maybe I’ll write about them later. But right now, I’m trying to get back to writing.
I was talking with some people lately about my climate survey. I talked about what surprising things we might learn from something like this (e.g., men don’t think women talk less than men in seminars but women think so) and someone asked me how one might go about address these issues. This makes me realize that, ironically, teachers are often not in the best position to explore effective teaching practices. This is because teachers very often only have access to what they themselves do in the classroom, and so they can’t compare with other teachers in an efficient way. So I thought it might be useful for me to write about practices I’ve heard or found beneficial as a student. Of course, nothing works for everybody all the time, but some of these might be worth experimenting. All credits belong to people who developed these tactics as well as who preached them to me, which is often not myself.
1. Classroom management
Since this was the topic that got me thinking about writing a post, I’ll start with this.
1.1 Discussions based on questions submitted prior to class (Holly Andersen)
In general, greater structure offers greater protection, so it’s generally a good idea to start with a lot of structure and dial it back as you get more comfortable with the group. The best discussion structure I’ve had was in Holly’s class as a master’s student. She has us submit discussion questions on Canvas the night before the class (for participation grade), and the list of questions forms the basis of the discussion. This way, students who are slow thinkers would have all the time they need to think. Since each discussion segment focuses on a question asked by a particular student, that student is naturally at the centre of that segment. And since Holly controls which questions we talk about, she also has some control over who talks.
1.2 Put up your hand if you don’t want to be called on (Will Stafford)
This is something my friend Will does when he teaches sections. He wants the ability to call on different people (so that it’s not always the ones who’re fastest get to talk) but he doesn’t want to call on people who don’t want to talk. What he does is say “put up your hand if you don’t know the answer” and call on people who don’t put their hands up. Of course, many of them don’t raise their hands because they haven’t been paying attention, at which point he’ll repeat the rule and just call on someone else. After a few classes, people get the hang of it. This way, there isn’t that awkward silence moment of not knowing how to proceed. If everyone puts their hand up, he knows it’s a really hard concept that he needs to explain more.
1.3 Shutting someone down
Fortunately, I haven’t encountered the problem of having 1-2 people dominating a class when I teach, but I very much have sat through those classes and know people who teach classes with this problem. It usually is a very uncomfortable situation and people differ vastly on how much they can handle conflict. I share some thoughts here.
First of all, I think that the burden is 100% on the instructor to try to address this, rather than on other students. Other students (especially more senior students) can help you if you need them but they can’t do anything if the instructor pretends that inaction is 1) going to make the problem go away, or 2) going to make them appear “fair” somehow. I have been in seminars where the instructor tries to play “the good cop” and muddle the waters when someone else tries to intervene and let me tell you it’s the fastest way to lose your standing amongst the most responsible group of students.
That said, it’s also true that confrontations are hard to deal with and something instructors are often not trained in. How to go about approaching it also depends on who the students are. When Will had a couple of (bright, first-year undergrad) students that dominated class, he talked to them after class somewhere along the lines of: you are clearly very dedicated and your contributions are often very valuable. But I’d like to give other students a chance to test out their ideas also. So, next time, it would be great if you can hold out for a little so I can hear what others say.
On the more confrontational end, Holly has said something like “I’ll cut you off there because that seems to be going on a tangent and so-and-so had something else to say”. I’ve also always preferred a more direct approach. For what it’s worth, I have personally found that women tend to be more confrontational about it, possibly because 1) we face this more often than men do and at some point, we’d realize that we don’t actually have time for this anymore, and 2) it tends to go less well for us to try to talk to someone privately in an understanding tone.
2. Talk/panel Q&A
Similar to class discussions, Q&A can be dominated by 1-2 people, too. One difference is that seminars tend to occur with the same group of people on a regular basis, and so there’s a lot of repeated interactions. While seminars can rely on reputation tracking and relationship building, Q&A requires something more direct and creative.
2.1 Not always calling on people in the order of them raising their hands (Sarita Rosenstock)
This is something my friend Sarita has raised. We know that men tend to be more confident than women and so would raise their hands more often and faster. When there’s a limited time for Q&A and a lot of Qs, one way to make sure women get to ask some questions too is to not strictly sticking to the exact order in which people have raised their hands. One can also do this for junior scholars.
2.2 Longer break between talk and Q&A
My experience has been that a longer break time allows people to (in addition to getting water and going to washrooms) think about their questions. For a predominantly student audience (such as departmental colloquia), one can also prompt this by saying “we’ll take a 15min break; feel free to spend that time to get water, go to the washroom, and think about what questions you’d like to ask.”
2.3 Prepared/submitted questions for panel Q&A (Jingyi Wu)
Q&A-centered panels can have the same problems as talk Q&As except those problems are more avoidable. Because the theme of the panel is often decided way in advance and the questions people have tend to be long-standing questions, there’s little reason to have people think up questions on the spot. What my friend Jingyi has done in the past is to email participants the day before and ask them to send in questions if they’d like. When we held the faculty panel at Wonder Philosophy, she also gave students the option to email their questions to her to read out anonymously in case they are uncomfortable speaking in front of a large group. Many students took that option. Jingyi also makes sure she alternates between raised hands and emailed-in questions so that it’s not the case that sent-in questions are always answered first.
3. Supervision
I’d also like to share some of the less-seen supervisory practices I’ve experienced and found helpful.
3.1 A topic search strategy (Sean Walsh)
When I first started working with Sean in the first year of my PhD, I didn’t have a clear research topic in mind. I was interested in “how do we know?” type questions but couldn’t quite narrow it down any further. He proposed the following plan: according to my description of my interest, he suggested 4 possible directions and some startup readings. We were to go through all of these directions in turn. Each week, I would read the startup readings of that week, as well as anything else I might find and have time to read. We’d meet on Friday and talk about it as if we’d decided that this was the topic. So: I’d give him a summary of what I’d read, along with my thoughts on these, my possible angle(s) of attack, what other things I’d need to read, what other technical stuff I’d need to learn, etc. In week 5, we’d review all directions and decide.
It was such a liberating process. It made me realize how inefficient it is when I explore a topic with a skepticism that it might not work out. When I think about something as if I’ve decided “this is it”, I’m a lot more creative and thoughtful. I also don’t need to worry about wasting time because the worst that can happen is “wasting” a month learning random topics related to my interest.
Obviously, it was a pretty hands-on approach. In my case, I’m pretty sure Sean read all those papers as well, which increased his workload, but I don’t think that’s necessary for this to work. In fact, for someone more academically senior and who’s self-disciplined enough, they can probably do this process alone.
3.2 Write something every week (Kent Johnson)
This can go very right or very wrong, so proceed with caution & constant monitoring.
When I first started working with Kent, he said that his only requirement was that I’d write something for him every week — it didn’t have to be long or coherent or on anything in particular (obviously it had to relate to the research). I managed to do this for the entire year, but it was excruciatingly painful. However, it was also one of the most valuable things I’ve done. For two reasons:
First, it completely trained any trace of writing phobia out of me. I still sometimes have trouble reading or thinking up ideas or making good arguments, but I don’t have trouble starting writing. I think one reason is just that I’ve practiced so much (and spent many Thursday nights freaking out in front of a blank document and forcing myself to put words on it). Another reason is that Kent never gave any evaluative feedback on my writing. Very often, I wrote random babbles, in which case our meetings wouldn’t reference my written piece at all. Sometimes I wrote something insightful, in which case he’d just talk about my insight in a positive way. Over time it became easier, because it felt like it didn’t matter if I wrote poorly. I think it served as a gradual desensitization process.
Second, it made me reflect on why it was so hard, which in turn made me reflect on how we are evaluated (by others and by ourselves) by the output of our labour, rather than the input. It was hard not because I didn’t do any work, but because I often felt like I didn’t have anything to show for my work. I’ve written about some of this dynamic before: if I read a few papers and found them not relevant, then I felt like I didn’t “get any work done”. Similarly, if I read papers and found them convincing & couldn’t think of any way to critically engage with them (because I was convinced), I also felt like I had nothing to say. Realizing this made me reflect on how I thought about work and progress. As a result, I’m a lot more understanding of myself and my students when it comes to showing effort vs achievement.
All that being said, it was still a pretty painful process. I had a great social support network and low diathesis for mental health issues, so I managed okay. But I can see how someone who’s more prone to imposter syndrome can be seriously stressed out by this. I’d advise making the intention clear and constantly remind the student that it’s not an ability test.
I hope some of these are helpful. I’d love to hear more suggestions also.
- It might happen after all - May 14, 2023
- Another job market data point - December 17, 2022
- Our place in the fediverse - November 30, 2022
I have also had success with students bringing in a written discussion question each week. They hold these as we discuss, so they have something concrete and already worked out ready to go. And they give them to me, and I write suggestions on them to make them more focused, clear, etc. In a few weeks everyone’s questions tend to get much better. It is a great way to practice things like asking a great question in a Q&A, effective and concise; and it helps students come to understand a group discussion as a collective skill that can be improved through practice, and which is a tool for diving into and dissecting a text that requires that kind of collaboration in a discussion context.