Resistance to Changing our Teaching Style

for Educom '97 in Minneapolis
Proposal accepted for Concurrent Session V, 10:00am, Friday, October 31

An evolving list of related online references and resources will be available.

Audience

Faculty who, though interested in shifting their teaching role from lecturer to learning coach, find themselves resisting this change; also technology trainers, faculty support personnel, and administrators interested in institutional change

Abstract (for printed program)

Although faculty (and trainers) on our campuses are often interested in using technology to make the learning experience more engaging and more effective for their students, they often resist the opportunities to modify their teaching style. What are these various resistances? Where do they come from? How can we begin to address them?

Of course we were free in decades past to rethink our approaches to learning, long before e-mail, the World-Wide Web, and other forms of interactivity arrived on the scene. But the many new learning technologies which are now flooding the universities are certainly pushing us to rethink our time-honored approaches to teaching. Faculty in all disciplines are increasingly interested in instructional design and other pedagogical issues. Many who are dedicated to teaching excellence are exploring new approaches to student-centered learning.

Despite our interest in moving off center-stage, we may find ourselves resisting practices that might put our students closer to the center of the learning enterprise. Our resistances arise for many reasons, among them:

lack of confidence in our ability to manage the new technologies
residual skepticism about the validity of giving students more control over their learning
a long-standing record of relative success and personal satisfaction in the teacher-centered mode; and
pressure from various institutional messages about the proper evaluation of teaching and learning.

This presentation will examine such resistances and seek to understand what underlies them. As a longtime teacher of college French and now a frequent Internet trainer in a faculty computing support center, I often wonder about what promotes (and what hinders) the shift in our roles as instructors. In many cases our resistances are not mere orneriness, but the manifestation of valid concerns that need to be articulated and addressed, by the individual instructor or by support structures within the discipline or the institution. Some resistances that seem only inward may need to be reframed as outward obstacles (e.g., lack of compelling models or discipline-specific materials for interactive learning).

Outline

I. The basic irony

We have an interest in, but also resistance to, changing our teaching styles.

II. Varieties of resistance

Diffidence

Can I really function as a list owner (e-mail/listservs)?
Can I publish a set of Web pages? Do I have the time to maintain them?
Can I serve as an effective facilitator if students get unruly on IRC or a MUD?

Skepticism

Will students lose sight of learning objectives if left to their own devices?
What is this role of floating mentor I'm supposed to assume?
Is there any hard evidence that students learn more effectively?

Satisfaction with status quo

I get good student evaluations for the lectures I give.
I enjoy being the center of attention.
I have years of lecture notes in my files that I'm reluctant to give up.

Pressure from institutional expectations

My colleagues think this student-centered stuff is ill-founded.
My dean does not support group work or portfolios from students.
Working with technology may earn negative points for my tenure file.

III. Reframing the challenges

Diffidence: need for more technology support staff, graded learning opportunities for faculty, discussion groups, and other forms of support
Skepticism: need for ongoing research, debate, exposure to successful projects and role models; for dissolving oversimplified or stereotyped views of student-centered learning
Satisfaction with status quo: need for an expanded sense of new satisfactions to be derived from a new learning environment; greater awareness of ineffectiveness of teacher-centered instruction (e.g., experience of Eric Mazur, Physics Professor at Harvard)
Institutional expectations: need for development of curricular materials from national discipline-based associations or other organizations; need for a shift in the whole academic culture

IV. Summary

What can we do to acknowledge, understand, and address our resistances to newer (often technologically based) pedagogical approaches?
Discussion from the floor

An evolving list of related online references and resources will be available.

Claire Carpenter
claire@pop.uky.edu
Internet Trainer, Seminar Coordinator, Technical Editor
Faculty Academic Computing and Technology Support (FACTS) Center
University of Kentucky Computing Center
Lexington, KY 40506-0045
Phone: 606-257-2274
Fax: 606-323-1978

First created June 6, 1997