It’s Saturday morning, not yet 8:30 a.m. Eighty-three elementary and secondary education teachers are arriving for an eight hour class—part of a two-year masters degree program. Conversations buzz around the large auditorium style room. People meet, greet and move around the room. The background music is energetic. Pictures flash on the large screen at the front of the room. They show students completing a messy mask-making project. Then there’s snapshots taken at the recent marriage of a couple students in the class. These are followed by several pictures of new babies. By the time 8:30 arrives, noise rolls around the room. The four teachers responsible for the course mingle here and there, drinking coffee, answering questions, laughing and making small talk with students.

Frequently now, candidates for faculty positions are being asked to provide teaching philosophy statements. Bob Eierman reports that that request appears in 40 percent of the ads for chemistry positions that he looked at in a professional publication advertising positions in that field. Another 20 percent of the time the request is for a statement of teaching plans or interests.

In the May issue of The Teaching Professor, there’s a follow-up article that further explores the issue of control in the classroom and how much there needs to be to create the kind of environment learning demands. My colleague and good friend Mitch Zimmer came down pretty strongly on the side of control, citing as an example his use of seating charts.

We give students grades for two reasons. First, they fulfill our professional responsibility to certify mastery of material. That is, they measure how much and how well students have learned. But we also use grades to promote learning. Writing a paper or taking an exam forces students to confront content and in the process they learn the material, to varying degrees, of course. That benefit accrues before the work is graded.

Whatever the relative quality of a student’s response, faculty members can respond in ways that increase the likelihood of participation by students in the future or result in diminished participation through fewer responses and responses of lower quality.

“Students DO NOT COME TO SCHOOL TO LEARN … we come because a university education is deemed socially and economically necessary … We have been brain washed into a game, whereby we memorize vast amounts of material, regurgitate it onto paper in a crowded room, and then forget about it. The academic environment has trained us to perform … Revolutionize the system. Start now. And make society and academia a more productive and positive learning and living environment.”

I’m reading other blogs now that I’ve started writing this one. My favorite so far is one on knitting written by an expert knitter. It’s funny, very informative, and some days even a bit inspirational. But overall I have to confess that I’m mostly unimpressed, especially with blogs devoted to higher education topics ... maybe you can recommend some better ones.

The article referenced below suggests that we aren’t being as insightful about class participation as we should be. We don’t think carefully about why we’re using this strategy—as in what goals we hope it accomplishes. But more than that, we don’t look at the results our methods produce. Example: we cold call students (that’s the jargon for calling on students who aren’t volunteering) with the intent of making them accountable for assigned reading or homework. For students, it’s still a gamble—maybe you won’t be called on and if you are, there’s a good chance you won’t be called on immediately again. If cold calling is about who’s coming to class prepared, then the questions focus on information recall. Are these the kind of questions that make students think and foster engagement with content? It’s a great article that constructively challenges us to take stock of beliefs, actions and benchmarks with respect to participation.

“I believe that I should continuously improve my teaching skills and the content of my courses. This includes keeping the material current with the state of the art in the academic literature and in practice; finding new ways to make the material appeal to students’ curiosity; making efficient use of class time; and introducing new pedagogical tools that recognize diverse learning styles and enhance my ability to reach my students.”