TBers:

The posting below examines the very important but little discussed issue of
student resistance to faculty attempts to try new teaching approaches.   It
is by James Rhem, executive editor of the National Teaching and Learning
forum.  It is number 35 in a series of selected excerpts from the NT&LF
newsletter reproduced here as part of our "Shared Mission Partnership."
NT&LF has a wealth of information on all aspects of teaching and learning.
If you are not already a subscriber, you can check it out at
[http://www.ntlf.com/] The on-line edition of the Forum--like the printed
version - offers subscribers insight from colleagues eager to share new ways
of helping students reach the highest levels of learning. National Teaching
and Learning Forum Newsletter, Volume 15, Number 6, © Copyright 1996-2006.
Published by James Rhem & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reprinted with permission.


   The High Risks of Improving Teaching

James Rhem, Executive Editor

Very early in the life of this publication, I learned of a pharmacy
professor in an east coast school who'd wanted to improve his teaching and
had revamped one of his courses taking an active learning approach. Students
hated it. Some went to the dean and complained; the rest savaged the
professor in their student evaluations. Administration counseled him to
"rethink" what he was trying to do. The man gave up, demoralized. He sent me
a paper he'd written on the experience (which no one wanted to publish), and
when I interviewed him on the telephone, the scar tissue in his dry voice
wore down my own spirit and left me not knowing what to do. And so I did
nothing. I didn't write his story, preferring just not to think about it or
to ascribe it to his particular situation. But the ugly truth this man
experienced so sharply continues to haunt efforts to improve teaching:
student resistance presents one of the biggest obstacles to improving
teaching, followed closely by poor and certainly uneven support from
administration for pedagogical reform.

It's understandable that those committed to improving teaching (and I
include myself) feel reluctant to write about the problem, and yet
confronting the reality of it yields a few insights that may reduce the risk
to careers of faculty who undertake reforms, as well as increase the
likelihood of success with these efforts.

Along Comes Some Data

Part of the problem in talking about the problem of student resistance lies
in the fact that for the most part discussions have remained largely
anecdotal, but solid data has begun to emerge. Patti Marie Thorn's Ph.D.
research at the University of Texas at Austin sheds important light on the
ferocity and variety of student resistance. For her dissertation, Bridging
the Gap Between What Is Praised and What Is Practiced: Supporting the Work
of Change as Anatomy &Physiology Instructors Introduce Active Learning into
Their Undergraduate Classroom (2003), Thorn closely followed the work of
seven faculty members who, as her thesis title indicates, sought to move
from traditional teaching approaches to active learning classrooms.

"They were using [Chuck] Bonwell and [James] Eison stuff," says Thorn,
"tested, proven approaches that have been around for years." Sadly, five of
the seven faculty who embraced active learning approaches met with student
resistance and even administrative hostility to their reform efforts "big
time," Thorn reports.

Five Ugly Flavors

There were, she says, "five flavors" of student resistance:

* "In the first flavor I found, students don't know what's up. They are
grumbly and withdrawn and this discontent spreads: they catch it from each
other.

* "Flavor two moves right away into threats: 'Stop teaching this way or else
. . .' Students play into faculty fear." Faculty do have fear, Thorn says.
Some of it comes from trying something new, but some of it comes as well
from knowing how vulnerable student ratings and student complaints make
them.

* "The third flavor derives from the fact that faculty begin to feel they
are revealing too much of themselves in teaching this way. Students can
smell this fear and they jump on it. They make faculty feel dumb and
uninformed." And it's not just the aggressive, highly grade-oriented
students who join this "Lord of the Flies" type pack, Thorn says. Any
variety of student joins in once the class senses any uncertainty in
faculty. In them, that whiff of uncertainty bonds like a molecular compound
with their own uncertainty about the new approach to precipitate a storm of
aggressive rejection.

* "In the fourth flavor," Thorn continues, "students go to administration
and complain. Sometimes they do this as individuals; at other times they go
as a group.

* "And, of course, the final and fifth flavor of resistance comes in the
end-of- semester evaluations. Resisting students just cut the faculty to
nothing."

So is student resistance an important consideration in undertaking
pedagogical reform? "Yes, I would say resistance is a huge factor," Thorn
concludes.

Who's Got Your Back?

Students' response to the unfamiliar and fears about their grades are one
thing, but the lack of administrative understanding and support for
pedagogical reform can't be ignored either. In the case of one of Thorn's
research subjects involving the Dean of Science, the Vice President, and the
Dean of Nursing at a "research one" institution, a lecturer was called in by
her department chairperson. He told her he was acting on complaints from
students who said they "were not getting the information they were supposed
to from the professor." She was told to return immediately to a standard
lecture format. Moreover, a colleague counseled her directly to quickly make
the course as easy as possible so that student evaluations would suddenly
glow if she wanted to be rehired the next semester. That would put her
career back on track, he said. The student as customer, is, it seems, always
right. If students want an inferior product (less effective teaching) at the
same (tuition) price, the business logic of enrollment management and
retention seems to say, "give it to them."

Setting aside for the moment the options of complaining and denying, what
can be done about this little-discussed but all too common situation?

A Scaffold Of Empathy

Happily, Thorn had done a good bit of research on "student perspective"
before undertaking her research project and equally fortunately, her
dissertation director was Marilla Svinicki, a distinguished figure in
faculty development, having headed the Center for Teaching Effectiveness at
UT-Austin for many years, and a member of the Forum's editorial board.
Though Thorn wasn't doing "action research," she couldn't stay passive in
the face of these developments. Together with Svinicki, she worked out some
counseling strategies to offer faculty some help.

"One thing faculty do not do well," says Thorn. "They don't know who their
students are. Not really. So I tried to have them see the students' point of
view, have them understand the power of the expectations students had
carried over from their experience of traditional pedagogies and also the
other pressures students face these days. I wanted them to ask themselves:
'What must it be like for them?' At bottom, student resistance is tied to
student expectations."

Efforts to have faculty develop new levels of empathy in place of a
kaleidoscope of legitimate fears helped faculty step back and embrace the
need for more "scaffolding" in their teaching, scaffolding not just in
presenting the content in their courses, but also in educating the students
about the new pedagogy being used and its benefits.

Getting to know students rates very high in Thorn's list of practical steps
faculty can take to reduce student resistance. "I used and advocated what I
call the 'Marilla System,'" she says. "I take photos of the students [which
she can get from administration] and place them on index cards. Then I meet
privately with students and ask them one-to-one about their goals, what
motivates them, what they love, where do you see yourself being in twenty
years, who are your heroes? And, like Marilla, I carry these cards around
with me and review them while I'm waiting in the checkout line and so on.
Then I call on students by name in class. All of this builds community and
makes change and a new way of learning more possible."

Some feel that students simply prefer passive learning, but Thorn doesn't
agree. High level learning requires time-consuming work and reflection, she
believes, and "[students] don't have the time! They have to be selective
about where they choose to focus meaningful learning. Students learn to be
very strategic in their actions." We all do, if we're successful, says
Thorn: "We minimize the work we don't like, and focus on the stuff we do
like."

Is Thorn hopeful in the face of such grim findings? Yes and no. "Reform can
happen if faculty go into it with realistic expectations, by that I mean the
likelihood that their evaluations will, at first, decline." "They will have
to be good risk managers," she says, and administration will have to embrace
a risk management system that encourages and supports reform. "Students must
be made aware of what they're really there for, which is to become good
thinkers," she declares. "And there needs to be a change in what business
admits it really wants, and, also, administrations need to learn the
difference between student satisfaction and student learning outcomes."

Contact:
Patti M. Thorn, Ph.D.
Choice Insights, LLC
Phoenix, AZ 85226
Telephone: (480) 821-1123
E-mail: [log in to unmask]