I’ll post next week about my talk last night at Claremont on race and feminism.
This post at Inside Higher Ed about “educrats” continues to draw heat (visit the comments section).
Many of the education professionals (not to be confused with teachers) who responded point out the demonstrable deficiencies of the lecture method — a method I rely upon almost exclusively in my classes. (Remember, folks, I have 45-50 students per course, no teaching assistants, and I have seven classes.)
I agree completely that many students fail to learn from lectures. Sometimes the fault belongs to the student for failing to pay attention, but frequently the fault lies with the teacher. There’s nothing wrong with the method, but there’s something very wrong with the way in which many teachers put it into practice. The enemy of student learning is not lecturing — it’s poor lecturing.
I’ll repeat something I wrote a long time ago:
I am sick and tired of having folks with doctorates in education (Lord help us) tell me that “lecturing is an outdated teaching style.” Well, it’s still a damned effective teaching style if it’s done well. I put a lot of time and energy into crafting articulate, interesting, lectures, largely because I believe that for most students, it remains the most effective and memorable way to learn. I do invite discussion and debate in some of my classes, and I welcome questions — but I cling tenaciously to the old-school notion that my job is to be an interesting, compelling, and provocative deliverer of information.
Forget the seminars on “student learning outcomes”. If you want to spend some federal bucks on improving learning, here’s my suggestion: the number one thing that would improve college teaching immensely would be mandatory drama and speech classes for all new faculty. Forget the expensive technology. Teach professors how to use their voices, how to modulate their tones, how to string together an exciting narrative without notes. Teach them to make the passion that is surely inside them manifest in their words and in their movements. Teach them the forgotten art of the genuinely engaging lecture. Nearly fifteen years of college teaching (and over 150 classes taught in that time), as well as thousands upon thousands of student evaluations, have made it clear to me that students really prefer a professor who is willing to bring his passion and energy into the classroom.
Yes, I’m a performer. Yes, “I strut and fret my hour upon the stage” that is my classroom. But believe it or not, my primary purpose is not attention or ego validation — it is to capture students’ imagination, to bring about an enduring shift in how they see the past and the present. Good teaching, which for me is unapologetically synonymous with compelling lecturing, is about pouring every ounce of energy I have into helping students of widely varying ability learn. I don’t claim that mine is the only reliable method. But lecturing is a method that is honored by time and by tradition and, most importantly, by the students who come back years later saying that specific phrases have stuck with them long after they left the college.
Not everyone is called to teach as a performer. There are many different appropriate styles of teaching, and though lecture is the oldest and often the most successful, I readily concede it is not the only viable pedagogical strategy. If I were teaching much smaller sections, and didn’t have 350 final exams to grade by myself in the space of 72 hours at the end of each term, I’d be much more likely to use other methods. But given the constraints under which I operate, given my own background and temperament, and given the needs of my students, I remain convinced that energetic and articulate lecturing is far and away the best guarantor of student success there is.
By far, the most memorable seminar I’ve taken in 5 1/2 years of graduate coursework was Michael Loux’ Aristotle’s Metaphysics seminar. The seminar was almost exclusively lecture, and absolutely fascinating: Loux is a performer, energetic and loud, and, after teaching this class probably 10 times over the last 20 years, has mastered the narrative within which he presents Aristotle. (He’s incredibly loud. His office is next to mine, and with our doors and windows closed it’s easy to understand what he’s saying when he’s having a conversation next door.)
And, just for emphasis, I’m neither an Aristotle scholar nor a metaphysician. His seminar was the first time I had read either Aristotle or encountered the issues of contemporary metaphysics. I’m not especially interested in Aristotle, and I hate metaphysics. Philosophy graduate seminars are typically exclusively discussion-based, and this has been the format of every one of my numerous philosophy of math and philosophy of science seminars. This series of lectures was simply that amazing.
The last semester I was a TA for a math class, I had business calculus. Towards the end of the semester, the professor came and watched one of my discussion sections, and gave me notes later. He stressed that students come to their TAs and professors to see how we solve problems. By following our model, the students learn the habits and techniques we use. Much the same, I’ve come to realise, applies to teaching philosophy. In Intro to Philosophy, after all, we’re more interested in teaching students skills of analysis and argumentation than trying to get them to understand what the heck the Form of The Beautiful is.
This is relevant because, of course, the only way to model these skills to students is to do problems/analyse arguments on the board. That is, to lecture.
Hurrah for loud and vibrant lecturers! And Noumena, thanks for the excellent point about how lecturing is frequently the best way to model learning.
Hugo,
What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of the Socratic Method used mostly in Law schools?
In law schools where one presumes a basic knowledge of the material, the Socratic method can be an excellent tool. If I were teaching a small number of advanced students, I wouldn’t hesitate to employ it.
The Socratic method used in law school is excellent if used correctly. It is not simply a way to see if Person A read last night’s material. The questions the professor asks and the way he leads the student to a conclusion is like a back-and-forth lecture given by two people for the rest of the classroom to learn from. Students who think it’s safe to zone out just because they’re not the one being quizzed are missing out on a wealth of information.
The go-to guy for brilliant and unforgettable lectures on my campus was a professor named Ralph Williams. He gesticulated and bellowed and cooed, and I never had a lecturer quite like that again. So I 100% agree with you. Having the outline online is nice; having the overhead graphics or slides is great, but there is absolutely nothing like a lecturer that can truly blow your hair back.
bad lectures are worse than worthless. good lectures are wonderful and can be effective teaching tools. but, imo, they are nothing compared with discussion/small group learning settings where everyone is forced to engage.
now, i understand that that is simply not possible for a majority of classes taught today. and that bad teachers shouldn’t be allowed to teach, whatever their method. but i still think a majority of teaching should not be done in large settings where lecture is really the only viable choice.
but i still think a majority of teaching should not be done in large settings where lecture is really the only viable choice.
If you can get the average size of my classes down to, say, 15 from the current 45-50, I’d be delighted to experiment with other pedagogical methods. Given the limitations with which I operate, good lecturing is the best way I have at my disposal to meet my students’ needs.
One of the best lecture-based courses I’ve taken was American Immigration History (at my school, the Metropolitan State College of Denver). The professor (Dr. Monys Hagen - just in case she ever googles herself) was not some kind of exceptional orator - not funny or super charismatic or whatever. But her lectures had a way of being manifestly organized such that it was easy to hang on to the outline of what she was saying as well as the details.
We had a textbook, and we read other materials, but much of what I learned came from those lectures. I don’t think having discussion groups would have improved anything.
” i am sick and tired of having folks with doctorates in education (Lord help us)”
I am feeling you on this one! Just because they have a Ph.D. in Education does not mean they are qualified to revamp the system. The fact that you have ‘Doctorate in education’ in the same sentence, makes it so laughable! I mean really, who takes them seriously? Hugo, I hope you persistently differ with their teaching methods.