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Mar. 28th, 2009 06:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionPerhaps related:
Students hate being wrong, but they will accept being the least wrong in some group pre-designated as wrong (e.g. "students"). Getting them all to compete for that position is essential in a discussion-based class: any student feeling they're out of the running will take refuge in the excuse that they weren't trying - therefore will immediately stop trying so that this consoling theory is never disproved. So you praise what you can in any wrong answer (and you're always trying to ask them things they initially get mostly but not entirely wrong, so that you and they can take turns correcting it, thereby taking the class toward some goal while keeping it awake).
Actually, I'm not saying this is how one should teach, but it's how I'm trying to at the moment and how I've often seen it done. I have no clue if it works.
Students catching on to the fact that teaching proceeds this way come to realize that to not behave like the members of the group pre-designated as wrong behave is the best way to look right and take their place among the elect. One way to prove they're right is to answer questions without looking like they hate it when their answer is wrong - to answer often, and wrongly often, since that's what's being solicited. Looking happy that they're being set straight, happy that a truth is out there for them to find, happy to be tripping and flopping and spinning if each misstep is one more they will not make again and the treasure that much more assured. Note that it's just an appearance: they're still after an A or whatever. But get students to this point and they can learn a ridiculous amount, since leaping's the quickest way forward (and who of us has the guts to do it on our own, most days?). Thinking by leaps, in class or in papers, they'll get somewhere, and more importantly know that they got somewhere (a), can get somewhere (b), can get somewhere by leaping (c).
In my experience not even all graduate students, even those who themselves teach, are quite there. How do you reward the courage to be wrong in a way that can even compete with the natural high of being right, or at least more than offsets the natural low of being wrong?
It's a good thing you don't need to know how to teach to teach. For me, anyway.
Students hate being wrong, but they will accept being the least wrong in some group pre-designated as wrong (e.g. "students"). Getting them all to compete for that position is essential in a discussion-based class: any student feeling they're out of the running will take refuge in the excuse that they weren't trying - therefore will immediately stop trying so that this consoling theory is never disproved. So you praise what you can in any wrong answer (and you're always trying to ask them things they initially get mostly but not entirely wrong, so that you and they can take turns correcting it, thereby taking the class toward some goal while keeping it awake).
Actually, I'm not saying this is how one should teach, but it's how I'm trying to at the moment and how I've often seen it done. I have no clue if it works.
Students catching on to the fact that teaching proceeds this way come to realize that to not behave like the members of the group pre-designated as wrong behave is the best way to look right and take their place among the elect. One way to prove they're right is to answer questions without looking like they hate it when their answer is wrong - to answer often, and wrongly often, since that's what's being solicited. Looking happy that they're being set straight, happy that a truth is out there for them to find, happy to be tripping and flopping and spinning if each misstep is one more they will not make again and the treasure that much more assured. Note that it's just an appearance: they're still after an A or whatever. But get students to this point and they can learn a ridiculous amount, since leaping's the quickest way forward (and who of us has the guts to do it on our own, most days?). Thinking by leaps, in class or in papers, they'll get somewhere, and more importantly know that they got somewhere (a), can get somewhere (b), can get somewhere by leaping (c).
In my experience not even all graduate students, even those who themselves teach, are quite there. How do you reward the courage to be wrong in a way that can even compete with the natural high of being right, or at least more than offsets the natural low of being wrong?
It's a good thing you don't need to know how to teach to teach. For me, anyway.
