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February 2005

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From:
Jim Greenberg <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Teaching Breakfast List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:28:38 -0500
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Tbers,

The posting below, by Pat Hutchings, vice president of the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching looks at how give students more
guidance in their evaluations of faculty teaching. It is #13 in the monthly
series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives. These short commentaries
exploring various educational issues are produced by the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching <http://www.carnegiefoundation.org>.  The
Foundation invites your response at:
[log in to unmask] Reprinted with permission


  BUILDING PEDAGOGICAL INTELLIGENCE

By Pat Hutchings
January, 2005

It's hard to find a campus today that doesn't collect student evaluations of
teaching. Not everyone, it's true, puts full stock in the results, but it's
hard to argue with the idea that students have important perspectives to
contribute. On the other hand, it strikes me that listening to students is a
good idea that doesn't go far enough. With student ratings of teaching
almost ubiquitous, why not take the process up a notch by giving students
some guidance about what to look for?

Some years back, I heard about a promising step in this direction that has
stuck with me ever since. In the late 1970s, Carleton College implemented
something called the Student Observer Program. Any Carleton faculty member
could (and still can) ask for a student observer to sit in on her or his
classes, usually for the entire term. Students not only receive training
about what to look for in an effective classroom, they also have a powerful
opportunity to reflect on the process of teaching and learning. And we know
that learners who are self-conscious about that process tend to be more
successful.

A different approach has emerged at Western Washington University (WWU).
Wanting to involve students in a campus initiative on the scholarship of
teaching and learning, WWU developed a course in which students study the
learning process and the conditions under which learning-their own, that
is-is most likely to occur. Some 200 students have now taken the course
(which has evolved over the several quarters it has been offered), becoming,
as a consequence, much more active contributors to campus discussion about
how to improve the educational experience.

Some may worry that giving students a bigger voice adds fuel to the fire of
consumerism. Students may know what they want, the argument goes, but
faculty members know what they need, and have, after all, a responsibility
to maintain the integrity of the educational process. But that's just the
point. Part of a faculty's responsibility should be to let students in on
the tricks and truths of the learning trade. Thanks to several decades of
educational innovation and research, much more is now known about how
learning occurs and what works in the classroom. It's time to start sharing
that knowledge with students. Doing so-as at Carleton and Western
Washington-would make students better contributors to the improvement of
teaching by raising the quality of the feedback they can offer.

More important, having a voice in matters pedagogical would make students
better learners. It's easy for those of us in "the business" to forget that
getting educated isn't easy. Just jumping through the hoops is not enough.
Students need to be able to make connections between what is learned in very
different, and typically unconnected, settings. And to do this they need to
be able to step back and see what their efforts add up to, to take stock
both of what they have learned and what it will take to get to a next level
of understanding. In a word, they need to be agents of their own learning.

As a faculty member for many years, I saw first hand how difficult it is for
students to reflect on and assess their own experiences as learners, to get
past the idea of learning as something that happens to them (or not), to see
their education as something they can create and control. But when teachers
continue to create opportunities for such self-assessment, students get
better at identifying and seeking out what they need to advance their
knowledge and abilities. In short, we can help students get smarter about
what it takes to get smarter.

The notion of multiple intelligences has had wide play for more than a
decade. Howard Gardner postulates a whole set of them: linguistic, musical,
logical-mathematical, spatial, body-kinesthetic, and personal intelligences.
Daniel Goleman has popularized the idea of an emotional intelligence. The
word "intelligence" invites some misunderstandings since it seems to suggest
traits that are inherited and static. But the idea that multiple capacities
and dispositions are both possible and, indeed, necessary to function
effectively in the world is a right one, and I would propose that we need
yet another as well. Let us call it a "pedagogical intelligence"-an
understanding about how learning happens, and a disposition and capacity to
shape one's own learning. Whatever the term, it is something that is
increasingly needed today as the world becomes more complicated, as
boundaries of all kinds shift, and as change becomes a constant expectation.

This is not to suggest that Econ 101 or 19th Century American Lit be turned
into occasions to obsess about the learning process. But the disposition to
be thoughtful about one's own learning, to be an active agent of learning,
to find and even to design experiences in which learning is advanced-these
are goals that should be central to undergraduate education. And the good
news is that once students get a taste for these goals, there's no going
back. "I had a class where we studied how we learn," says Erik Skogsberg, a
student in the course at Western Washington University. "It flipped a
switch, and once it's flipped it can't be turned off."

There is more than one way to induce a disposition to be reflective about
how learning occurs. A great place to start-one just begging to be used more
effectively-is with the questions students are asked to address on course
evaluation forms. A handful of provocative questions, and the discussions
that can be had around them, just might be the beginning of a "pedagogical
intelligence" that deepens learning through college and beyond.

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