Motivation, Rudeness, Human Drama

To find the root of rudeness, we often need look no further than our own syllabi.

Last month, Jeanette Norden's presentation on "Motivating Your Students" drew more people than any other event in TEP's history. This was not surprising. In recent years, motivating our students seems to have become increasingly difficult -- even to the point where department heads talk with concern about student "rudeness."

Let me say from the outset that "rudeness" is often in the eye of the beholder. However, I doknow the frustration of trying all quarter to reach a student who seems almost completely uninvested in my class, only to spend the last of my office hours haggling vigorously with that student over each point I did or did not assign their final project. I always wonder at the student's transformation. Where was all this energy in class?

As a faculty developer, it is my job to take seriously what might seem like casual complaints and lamentations, and two such woeful cries have recently caught my interest. On one hand, we lament, "All my students care about is their grades!" On the other hand, we then turn to our own struggles (graduate school, research efforts, job searches, etc.) and declare with frustration, "It's not what you know, it's who you know!"

Whether or not either of those statements is actually true, their popularity and possible connection interest me. I think the seeds of the former are embedded in the latter.

I wrote a few months ago about how the "customer service" metaphor is reshaping and commodifying higher education. One positive outcome of this trend is that students are becoming concerned with "value for their money," which leads to a greater institutional value placed on teaching. However, one negative outcome of this process is the emphasis now being placed on the exchange value of a degree, rather than the use value of an education. Used in this context by Lave and Wenger (1991), these terms can help us understand the difficulties we face in motivating some students.

In the "It's not what you know, it's who you know" ethic, skills and abilities become secondary to appearances and connections. In this post-modern age of surfaces, our students have grown up learning that what really counts is how you appear. Even in junior high and high school, many students join service organizations so that their college applications will look good, and their duties in these organizations are performed primarily as hoops through which they must jump, rather than as true service to others. The ultimate goal of this process is to get the name of a good school on their resume, so they will then look good to potential employers.

This mode of thinking inevitably transforms the students' perceptions of class time (whether or not that time is actually spent in the class room). Exchange-value thinking shifts the perception from that of growth from which everyone emerges both changed and equipped, to that of a hoop (or even a "sentence") that must simply be endured before they are released, resume in hand and ready to barter.

We may believe that the use value of what we teach is either implied or obvious to our students. It is neither. Even worse, our standard motivational tool -- the exam -- aggravates the problem because its motivational power is based on a rationale of "learn this because I told you to," which is ultimately traceable to exchange-value concerns such as good grades, diplomas, graduate school applications, etc. To find the root of the rudeness, we often need look no further than our own syllabi.

So what do we do?

A powerful answer is to re-emphasize the use value of what we teach. In addition to simply covering content, we must also help our students see how what they are learning connects their lives to those around them.

In her presentation on "Motivating Your Students," Norden outlined exactly how she goes about this. Her neuroscience classes combine three separate modes of teaching, each with a different goal in mind: transmission of didactic knowledge, contextual application of that knowledge, and the relevance of that application.

In the first phase, students memorize the basic tools they will need as medical neurologists. The second phase demands that they then prioritize and apply these tools by diagnosing neurological disorders from symptoms she describes, and then by developing methods to test among alternative hypotheses. Finally, during "Personal Hours," Norden's students learn how the intellectual tools they are acquiring will change the lives of others, by talking to people who have suffered from or triumphed in the face of these neurological diseases. "Personal Hours" are often very moving, and they imbue the class with a sense of meaning and purpose. It is in this final phase that the use value of what Norden teaches is often made painfully clear.

But what if you don't teach in medical school, and life-and-death drama is not involved in what you do?

It may not be as far-removed as you think:

Let me conclude by inviting you to spend some time reflecting on how and why your subject matter is important. Ask yourself where and when your concepts have played a crucial role in a particular human life. The magic is in the particularities. There is human drama to be found in every academic field, or we never would have begun exploring that field in the first place. When you find that drama, think about how you can most powerfully share it with your students, and then do it. When your students feel and understand the human stories behind what you teach, they will begin valuing their own abilities to participate in those stories, via the skills and concepts that you are there to help them learn.

Reference:
Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Lizard 36 Spring 96

 

    Address questions or comments about TEP or this site to:
Georgeanne Cooper, Program Director, 64 PLC
Phone: 541-346-2177 Fax: 541-346-2184
© Copyright 2000-2006 Teaching Effectiveness Program, University of Oregon.
Last Modified: 01/11/08