“One reason that teachers lecture is that it is ground that they totally control. It may be why the practice has held on for so long in the face of overwhelming evidence ... that it does not work very well to promote student learning of either the subject matter or larger general education goals like understanding others or participating in community activities. As soon as you open your classroom to serious dialogue that recognizes the legitimacy of ideas worked up by students, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Students may raise questions you never thought of. They may disagree with you, causing you to defend your point of view and, heaven forbid, even revise future lectures.”

I’ve always maintained that teachers have a right to bottom lines. If you can’t teach when students are eating or if you think that eating prevents others from learning, prohibit the eating. But now I’m wondering.

A recent analysis of the teaching vs. research debate highlighted in the March issue of The Teaching Professor was a welcome find. The argument just seems to go on an on, even though everybody involved recognizes that teaching and research require very different skill sets. As authors Prince, Felder and Brent (all notables in the field of engineering education) point out, “The primary goals of research is to advance knowledge, while that of teaching is to develop and enhance abilities.” To accomplish those goals, “excellent researchers must be observant, objective, skilled at drawing inferences and tolerant of ambiguity, and excellent teachers must be skilled communicators, familiar with the conditions that promote learning and expert at establishing them, and approachable and empathetic.” (p. 283)

I’m reading such an interesting book about teaching: Michael Newman’s Teaching Defiance: Stories and Strategies for Activist Educators. I already did a piece about it in a recent issue of the newsletter, but I’m interviewing Michael for a Magna Online Seminar in April (for information, see www.magnapubs.com/calendar/194.html), and for that I need to do a careful, thoughtful read of the book.

I asked a high school friend why he likes video games so much. “It’s fun because at the level you’re on you can do some things but not others. You really want to learn how to do those things you can’t so you can move on to the next level. And you feel like you’re so close … you just keep trying and trying and then you get it.”

Are you one of those faculty members (truly we are legion) who has trouble talking too much in classroom discussions? I know, everything we have to say is so wonderful and so needs to be said. But we all know that the more we talk, the less we hear from students (and that applies both literally and figuratively). Short of duct tape, how do we get ourselves talking less?

One of the embarrassing parts of doing The Teaching Professor newsletter is discovering how much good material I miss even though it seems as though I’m always reading. Just yesterday I was reading a book for which I’ve agreed to write a foreword, and there was a reference to an article I should not have missed. It’s in a journal I regularly read, but apparently I was asleep at the wheel or reading with very dirty glasses.

There’s a lot of stress associated with academic positions. At least faculty report that they are stressed. In a 2003 survey of 782 British academics 70 percent reported that they found their jobs stressful, and 75 percent said those levels of stress had increased across the past five years. (These percentages are a bit higher than surveys done of U.S. academics.)

I’m preparing for a Magna online seminar interview that I’m doing in March with a very well respected adult educator who’s an expert on something called transformational learning. Actually, the label isn’t all that jargonesque—this is the kind of learning that transforms, changes who you are and how you live. It does that by encouraging learners to question what they have assumed and taken for granted. They might question beliefs, values, or perspectives. Through that critical questioning they may arrive at a different set of beliefs, but the process itself makes learners more open and permeable.