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| Please make it more "Me-Centered!" |
Many of the teaching practices characterized as student-centered pedagogy increase student engagement in STEM introductory courses (Gasiewski, Eagan, Garcia, Hurtado, & Chang, 2012).Highlighting survey items that constitute the CIRP construct of student-centered pedagogy used in HERI studies of undergraduate education, Table 4 shows patterns of faculty behavior regarding student-centered pedagogy and general field of study by gender. First, it should be noted that faculty in all other fields outside of STEM use more student-centered teaching practices. Second, the gender differences in use of studentcentered pedagogy are greater for faculty teaching in STEM than in all other fields, with only three exceptions: using student evaluation of each others’ work, group projects, and student-selected topics for course content.
In terms of specific teaching practices, both men (69.7%) and women (50.4%) teaching in
STEM fields are more likely to use extensive lecturing in all or most of their classes compared to their male (43.7%) and female (27.8%) colleagues in all other fields. Use of extensive lecturing in class has been shown to negatively affect student outcomes, such as engagement and achievement (Astin, 1993). In addition to using this less student-centered approach, faculty in STEM are also more likely than their counterparts in all other fields to grade on a curve, which disguises the actual changes in learning and acquisition of skills of individual students.
" In addition to using this less student-centered approach, faculty in STEM are also more likely than their counterparts in all other fields to grade on a curve, which disguises the actual changes in learning
ReplyDeleteand acquisition of skills of individual students. "
Indeed it does. It's how many STEM profs keep the dropout rate *lower* than it should be.
American pre-college education is extremely heavily biased to non STEM fields. Kids can, and most do, get all the way to college taking only a small handful of classes that demand developing even the logical thought processes required to be successful in STEM fields, let alone starting to build the actual knowledge. That's "demand" as in "you won't get good grades if you don't". That is the source of the high drop-out rate. Increasing student-centered learning at college may or may not have a small impact, but it has zero chance of fixing this deep-rooted problem. (Anecdotally, I've tried and observed many different approaches over the years. Although the students' perception of the quality of the teaching varied wildly as the approach changed, the actual end results showed little variation.)
As Stew notes, by the time students get to college, it's a bit late to consider STEM classes "introductory." At what point do we get to acknowledge that success in science, technology, engineering and math IN COLLEGE requires the discipline (1) to have already mastered (at least) arithmetic and algebra and (2) to start memorizing some specialized vocabularies? These are the minimum, the "knowledge" base of Bloom's bloomin' taxonomy. Without these, the logical thought and problem solving are meaningless.
DeleteFor the record, I use ungraded group work, some peer evaluation, and 20-minute lectures punctuated by classroom assessment for my Introductory Basket Science and Hamster Science courses. But these are at a junior college with no entrance requirements and laughable prerequisites. Those who want a STEM career don't take my classes, but they will be voters and (I hope) members of their School Boards, so I work my Proffie Galore tail off to engage them and hope they adopt science as a valuable world view.
But would I like my physicians or air traffic control designers or highway bridge engineers to have been taught with lots of class discussions, personal journal-writing, and peer evaluation? Hell no!
So if women, as a group, are more likely to use teaching practices judged more effective, then why does the cover of the report show a *male* professor apparently interacting individually with 3 female students? Did the person who designed the PDF of the report actually read the report?
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the key to increasing graduation in STEM fields is to introduce more of the effective but labor-intensive (and hence expensive) teaching practices that are common in other fields into STEM classes. To do so affordably, they'll need to find more involuntary part-time faculty (love that terminology) to teach the classes, at a time when people with STEM training are in demand outside as well as inside the academy, and when faculty (full-timers, I think; I read quickly) are already citing personal finances and lack of personal/family time (and also job security) as sources of stress.
Hmm. . .I think there may be something wrong with the picture painted by the words and charts, too. At the very least, it suggests some challenges ahead.
"So if women, as a group, are more likely to use teaching practices judged more effective, then why does the cover of the report show a *male* professor apparently interacting individually with 3 female students? Did the person who designed the PDF of the report actually read the report?"
DeleteMy first response was "Hear, hear!"
Then I thought about the (first) Cosby Show, and, in fact, Bill Cosby's doctorate topic in education. When Claire Huxtable was made the first woman and first black partner in her law firm, the older white lawyer said it was entirely about her abilities and performance, and the only nod to any glass ceiling was its conspicuous absence. Of course, that wasn't, and still isn't, how it usually happens in the real world, but Cosby's work is all about prosocial modeling.
Show specific, relevant people behaving in a desirable way. Do this often enough, and your target audience will start behaving that way, too. It uses the same psychology as advertising, but with a goal of teaching how to put humane values into practice.
So. What is the main purpose of the report and its PDF cover? To describe reality, or to effect change? To describe reality, show a woman using "teaching practices judged more effective." To effect change, show a man modeling those teaching practices.
Of course, maybe it's just a stock photo and the designer didn't read the report.
Look at table 3. Forget about the racial differences here. Just look at the percentages for stress sources. Faculty meetings? Committee work? That's your fucking sources of stress? That's what's so bad about your job? I don't enjoy those things but I can't imagine how good my job would be if those were what made my job so bad. Likewise, I can't conceive of how bad a faculty meeting must be to compete with research and teaching morons.
ReplyDelete@Beaker Ben,
ReplyDeletesometimes one's colleagues are more noxious and toxic than the snowflakes or the administration. I'm sure many chairs suffer marked increases in blood pressure just trying to get next year's teaching schedule finalized.