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[mountainguy]

As the OP, I'm finding the discussion on this thread to be quite interesting. I tend to agree with Lizzy that we can't *make* students want to learn, although I do believe we can try to persuade them. I also agree with Educator1's point that externally-imposed sanctions do not increase intrinsic motivation. I'm guilty of having used such strategies as an instructor, and they backfired horribly.

[polly_mer]

One way to do that is by putting the responsibility on the students for establishing relevance and identifying applications. One of the things that struck me about Polly_mer's account is that Polly, you found the coolest applications and you showed them the coolest things you could think of to do with magnets. What if, a couple of weeks before that topic, you gave students the assignment to find the coolest applications they could and the coolest things to do with magnets and turn those in to you? Either the whole class, or just you, could then choose which to use in the lesson. Better yet, if you have a discussion board for the class, students can post their findings, share their reasoning and vote on what to use as examples, post questions, etc. If they choose inappropriate examples, you can veto and explain why, and if they're unhappy about the veto they can explain their reasoning, etc. You may get through a little less material, but students may learn it more deeply and retain it longer if they have more responsibility for the content.

Great idea, Outlier.  Now, tell me what I do with the students who tell me that they have no curiosity whatsoever in any of the topics that I have presented to them.  I gave the magnetism as a recent example, but I have examples from exactly what you have mentioned in allowing students to take responsibility for their learning.

Earlier in the semester I had students write three questions that interested them about science, any science at all, share the questions with their group, and then choose one question to research and bring back to the class the next week.  Yes, many of the students got excited and did something good.  However, a non-negligible fraction of my students told me to my face that they had zero interest in any science anywhere including the questions of their classmates and any that I threw out from other sections.  They preferred to take a zero rather than even take one of their classmate's questions and spend five minutes with Google.


I have given students a topic on which we had been reading and instructions of "Make a lesson plan on anything related to this topic.  Discuss possibilities with your group during class today, do some internet research, and turn in your lesson plan and related materials on X date".  Again, while some students get excited, other students refuse to do it, preferring the zero to doing work that is harder than merely listening to a lecture and regurgitating the main points.


All of my students have portfolios due at the end of the semester that they chose from the broad categories presented in class that must include demonstrations and field trips that they research and select as interesting to them.  Again, some of the students have gotten excited about the possibilities and brought in cool things to show me and their classmates, even though the portfolios are not due until December.  However, other students, even when given class time to work on those portfolios have looked me in the eye and said, "Why do I have to do this?  I don't care about any of these things.  I will never use this in my life."   Keep in mind that these are prospective elementary schoolteachers who should be using the opportunity to get a couple lesson plans in place on topics that they will be teaching.  I don't believe that any elementary school teacher anywhere doesn't include at least one science lesson during the whole year, particularly after I pointed out multiple times how various topics fit into the state curriculum for a variety of grades.

So, yes, great ideas, Outlier.  Now, what do I do with my students who refuse to engage with the material even when they get to choose what aspects of the material are most interesting to them?

[outlier]

So, yes, great ideas, Outlier.  Now, what do I do with my students who refuse to engage with the material even when they get to choose what aspects of the material are most interesting to them?

You give them an F. When you said you found the coolest things you could find, it struck me that it was your idea of cool, not theirs, but even as I suggested having them come up with the ideas, I could imagine that wouldn't work for that one student you used as an example. I think the instructor's role is to create the conditions that support learning to the best of his or her ability, and to keep improving on that ability over the years, and that includes learning how to put more responsibility on students (which I can see you are doing from this description) and guiding them as they learn. But it's not the instructor's role to make the student learn; if the student refuses that responsibility, I think the next step is an F, with or without Spork's suggestions of alternate career paths. You have all the evidence of good teaching to support you if there's any concern about complaints or bad evalautions.

It just occurred to me I'd consider giving them an assignment to come up with a new curriculum for the course and explain both the relevance of the topics they're including and the reasoning behind anything that they took out. If they're qualified to tell you with certainty that something you've included shouldn't be taught because they'll never need it, then they should feel qualified to anticipate what they will need and design that course so that they learn it! Or maybe, and this sounds like a distinct possibility from your description, they think they'll never need to know anything about science at all?

Someone has the tag line, quoted from someone else, "I can explain it again, but I can't understand it for you" and when you've explained, shown, given them the opportunity to learn, do, explain to someone else, etc. with only hostility as a response, well, the student's not "meeting the intended learning outcomes." And the result is  a failing grade.

Another poster, in Europe, mentioned that his or her future teachers showed the same lack of curiosity. Is this a trend among some segment of future teachers?

[notaprof]

So, yes, great ideas, Outlier.  Now, what do I do with my students who refuse to engage with the material even when they get to choose what aspects of the material are most interesting to them?

You said they were future elementary school teachers, right?  You should do us all a favor and flunk them now - surely weeks full of zeroes on their assignments will make that easy - and you thereby save future generations from being infected with snowflakitis, a serious and debilitating disease. 

[summers_off]

Perhaps (and I'm just thinking out loud here) the problem is the audience for these lesson plans.  They can't seem to find the motivation because they are writing the plans for themselves or for you.  It is simply an "academic" exercise to them.

I have been having some luck with service learning:  having students do topic-related projects for nonprofit organizations that they choose.   Since they have an external audience, they seem to get a bit more enthused.  (Still not all the students, but certainly more students than is typical for the fundemental topic I am teaching.)  Perhaps you could find a local school to partner with & have the students write plans for the teachers there? 

Another thought:  I have read recently that some teachers are selling their lesson plans online.  Maybe one way to help motivate your students would be to set up a class contest to see who could sell the most copies of their plans?   

[wild_rose]

I make the first weeks of this class, up until the drop deadline, an intellectual bootcamp.

Are you tenured, litdawg? Because the rest of us, especially those of us who are on one or two year contracts, are resentfully dependent on those damned evaluations that say nothing about how much the students learn in class and everything about how easy they find the class to be.

I will probably be unemployed after my contract runs out because I've stuck to my principles and refused to dumb down my gen-ed classes. Maybe that's a bad idea. Maybe I should just give in, as so many of my colleagues have admitted to doing, and just teach to the evals. If you expect nothing, then you'll never be disappointed. And you might even get tenure for being such a "good" teacher.

And I had to dumb-down an upper division class because they simply refused to do the work. And this is a methods class. I could not simply fail everyone because that would have come back to bite me.

Motivation? Getting the best grade possible while doing the least amount of work seems to be the motivation here. I can't be that bad a teacher since at least a few of my students are earning high As, and quite a few are earning Bs (and several have told me after class how interesting the material is), but I also have the slackers and whiners who are failing, the ones who sit in class with their arms folded across their chest, glaring at me, or sit there and sleep, or worse, make rude and racist comments.

I'm still trying to figure this out, but it's hard when you're jumping schools every year or so. Where I am right now, the "give up and give in" principle seems to have been widely—though not universally—adopted.

[mountainguy]

Polly, at least you have some students who are excited about the assignment. I would focus my energies on helping those students achieve their full potential in your class, since they've shown an interest in the material. The ones who haven't can take their bad grades and move on. Like the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink.

Wild_Rose, I feel your pain about general education classes. In my experience, institutional culture also functions as a variable with such classes. If students aren't being asked to do certain types of assignments in their other classes, they're going to fight instructors who ask them to do that type of work. As a case in point, few instructors at PepsiU give low-stakes writing assignments. When I give such assignments, I'm accused on evaluations of giving "busy work." The key is to help students see how the assignments fulfills course objectives, which can be tricky.

[polly_mer]

So, yes, great ideas, Outlier.  Now, what do I do with my students who refuse to engage with the material even when they get to choose what aspects of the material are most interesting to them?

You give them an F. When you said you found the coolest things you could find, it struck me that it was your idea of cool, not theirs, but even as I suggested having them come up with the ideas, I could imagine that wouldn't work for that one student you used as an example. I think the instructor's role is to create the conditions that support learning to the best of his or her ability, and to keep improving on that ability over the years, and that includes learning how to put more responsibility on students (which I can see you are doing from this description) and guiding them as they learn. But it's not the instructor's role to make the student learn; if the student refuses that responsibility, I think the next step is an F, with or without Spork's suggestions of alternate career paths. You have all the evidence of good teaching to support you if there's any concern about complaints or bad evalautions.

I don't have a problem with failing people who refuse to try.  I was sincerely seeking suggestions for other things that I could try to see if I could reach more people, like Summers_off idea of lesson plans that are more than yet another academic exercise.  This class is notorious for being difficult to teach to people who have little interest in the topics, little of the necessary background necessary to learn the topics in the traditional lecture delivery, no perspective of what they will need after graduation, and a huge aversion to anything other than rote memorization to get their A's. 

As a side note, I found myself sitting next to the associate provost at a recent teaching workshop.  When she found out I had been hired to teach three sections of this particular class, her main comment was, "Don't give in to their pleas to spoonfeed them.  What they need are those hands-on, minds-on activities including the math that they hate.  Hold your ground and fail them if you have to because we should not graduate people who cannot think."

Or maybe, and this sounds like a distinct possibility from your description, they think they'll never need to know anything about science at all?

This is one of the biggest problems.  They simply cannot believe that they will need to know the science and supporting math later in life.  After all, why would you need to know the material you intend to teach if you can get a lesson plan off the internet and the book has the answers in the back?  Isn't that enough to get you through if anyone is foolish enough to insist on having things taught that no one uses in real life?  After all, if these topics were really that important, why didn't these students' own elementary education cover them so that the students know the topics instead of having to take this class?  The students who need the lesson the most are the ones who refuse to believe that they were shortchanged in their K-12 education and so I have an uphill battle to convince them that many of these topics are, indeed, being presented at an elementary school level suitable for use in future elementary school classrooms.

Another poster, in Europe, mentioned that his or her future teachers showed the same lack of curiosity. Is this a trend among some segment of future teachers?

I don't think it's a trend so much as that many people major in education for reasons unrelated to an interest in school, teaching, or learning as ends in themselves.  During discussions, it has become obvious that many of these people are only in college because that's what people their age are expected to do.  They have no interest in being here and only picked education as a major because of foolish reasons like their guidance counselor suggested it as a straightforward path that leads to a job in their hometowns or where ever they would like to live.  Many of them don't particularly want to be teachers, but figuring out what they want to do involves much more risk than going through the motions of the school game for a few years to get a job credential that will please their parents, paramours, and society.

I'm firmly convinced that's why statistics often show that half of all K-12 teachers leave the profession within 5 years of their first teaching job.  Most of those people didn't really want to be teachers, but with lack of anything better to do and a knack at playing the school game to an acceptable level, they only quit when it becomes obvious that daily life as a teacher is bad enough that facing the music and figuring out what they would really like to be doing.  With fewer people wanting to gamble on the job market, majoring in a field that has a straightforward career path with openings everywhere feels like a safe bet to many people.

[spork]

I don't think it's a trend so much as that many people major in education for reasons unrelated to an interest in school, teaching, or learning as ends in themselves.  During discussions, it has become obvious that many of these people are only in college because that's what people their age are expected to do.  They have no interest in being here and only picked education as a major because of foolish reasons like their guidance counselor suggested it as a straightforward path that leads to a job in their hometowns or where ever they would like to live.  Many of them don't particularly want to be teachers, but figuring out what they want to do involves much more risk than going through the motions of the school game for a few years to get a job credential that will please their parents, paramours, and society.

I'm firmly convinced that's why statistics often show that half of all K-12 teachers leave the profession within 5 years of their first teaching job.  Most of those people didn't really want to be teachers, but with lack of anything better to do and a knack at playing the school game to an acceptable level, they only quit when it becomes obvious that daily life as a teacher is bad enough that facing the music and figuring out what they would really like to be doing.  With fewer people wanting to gamble on the job market, majoring in a field that has a straightforward career path with openings everywhere feels like a safe bet to many people.

You just reminded me of the paper written  by an education major that I graded yesterday -- 4 pages instead of 6, 1.5 pages of which were pasted images, without any theoretical or analytical content whatsoever, despite my explicit directions to the contrary.  F.

And yes, I'm willing to play with your magnets anytime.

[wild_rose]

As a side note, I found myself sitting next to the associate provost at a recent teaching workshop.  When she found out I had been hired to teach three sections of this particular class, her main comment was, "Don't give in to their pleas to spoonfeed them.  What they need are those hands-on, minds-on activities including the math that they hate.  Hold your ground and fail them if you have to because we should not graduate people who cannot think."

Words of wisdom. I think I'll print this out and hang it next to my computer.

Wild_Rose, I feel your pain about general education classes. In my experience, institutional culture also functions as a variable with such classes. If students aren't being asked to do certain types of assignments in their other classes, they're going to fight instructors who ask them to do that type of work. As a case in point, few instructors at PepsiU give low-stakes writing assignments. When I give such assignments, I'm accused on evaluations of giving "busy work." The key is to help students see how the assignments fulfills course objectives, which can be tricky.

This is exactly what happened to me in J-Ville. They had one brief, written assignment each week that required reading the textbook. The students resisted both the reading and writing strongly enough to actually complain to the dean about me.

"She doesn't respect us!"
"She gives us busy work!"
"This class is supposed to be easy!" *


*I already teach it at a high school level. Actual question from a multiple choice exam: "What is anthropology?" Far too many got it wrong.

When I taught a class called "Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective" -- the actual title from the catalog -- I had a student ask me on the second day of class, "Will we be talking about this stuff for the entire semester?" "What 'stuff'?" I asked.
"Gender," he replied.

The student sitting next to him smacked him upside the head.

[present_mirth]

Another poster, in Europe, mentioned that his or her future teachers showed the same lack of curiosity. Is this a trend among some segment of future teachers?

I don't know, but I've noticed the same thing at my institution:  there are a handful of very bright, motivated ed majors who would make terrific teachers, and a huge number of very weak ones.  My guess is that the weakest students often think they want to be teachers because of sheer lack of imagination (they see teachers every day, while people in other professional jobs are off in their cubicles all day, and therefore invisible), and they're also among the few students who can bear the thought of spending all that time in education classes.  (The super-motivated kids with a passion for education can also cope with the ed requirements, of course, but if you've got an intellectual passion for a different subject, why would you sign on for a whole slew of required courses in a field you don't care as much about when you could be learning something that you really, really want to learn?)

[cc_alan]

What bothers me about some of Polly's students is their apparent inability to model behavior. C'mon, do these numbskulls really think that everything their future students will need to do in the classroom do will be "the greatest thing since sliced bread"? Do they want their future students to act towards them in the same the way they've acted towards Polly?

I guess they are modeling behavior but not in the way I would expect future teachers to do it!

On the first day of class, I show a clip from Third Rock From the Sun. John Lithgow's character has just been introduced to a box of facial tissue and he has this wonderful look on his face as he pulls out tissue after tissue and another one "appears". His final statement is, "This is brilliant!".

I'm not going to suggest that everything we do in my classes is as exciting as a box of facial tissue, but once we start a topic and I explain the reasons for learning it, then STFU and do it. Stop wasting so much energy on fighting the instructor and just do it.

Again, have these future teachers considered how they want *their* students to act in class?

<engage dream sequence>

I have an idea, Polly. Have your students work in groups to develop some interactive teaching demo and bring some of the other faculty in to act as students. And for the groups that have these numbskulls in them, model their carpy behavior while they attempt to engage you in the material

<disengage dream sequence>

Alan

[msmicrobe]

I want in on that dream sequence. I agree we should try to make the material as interesting as we can.
Up to a point.
Sometimes, though, this "campaign to make meaningful" and "engage the studnets" is hogwash.
This is a partnership. I do my very best to put out a buffet of varied and rich dishes of information. If they choose not to eat, it's not my fault they starve to death. I have not failed them. They failed to show up and do their part in this partnership.

I think there is too much of a movement afoot to put the responsibly of student involvement on our shoulders when it belongs on their shoulders, too. 

[outlier]

Wild_rose, I'm so sorry you're experiencing pressure to dumb down and lack of support for high expectations.

Polly_mer, thanks for the reply. I'm glad summers_off replied too, and I can't believe I didn't even think of putting in something about service learning or some other experiential learning. The notion's kind of embedded in the "projects" idea, but I got stuck on classroom stuff. On further reflection, a couple of ideas, which may or may not work in your context, with your students, and may be outside your individual purview:

Do they already do some field experience? I was an English Education major as an undergrad (for all the same stupid reasons some of your students are, including being a first generation college student and not having gotten any advising from anyone, but much of that probably belongs on another thread), and we had to spend a day a week in a local school every semester. I spent time in junior highs and high schools, suburban and urban, and it was a very good experience. If they don't already spend time in the schools, they should!

Another possibility is to place them with adult literacy volunteer organizations. It takes more guided reflection for them to get the "lessons" out of this type of experience, but they may see what happens when schooling is not successful and hear some of the stories of why people don't finish school. They may also come to understand the possible home environments some students come from. They may come to see why students really need teachers who know how to teach, nurture, and instill a love of learning in children.

Could they survey or interview teachers about what they need to know or wish they'd learned before they started teaching? My students (in Ethics and College Success-type classes) loved constructing surveys with surveymonkey. Yours might be able to post the survey on a teacher discussion board or email it to teachers or principals, or they could print it out and have teachers fill it in by hand. It's much more engaging for the students to see the responses come in online, where they can have the site analyze the data at a very basic level.

My current working knowledge of the nature of proficiency in a field is that it involves discipline-specific, or content-specific knowledge, procedural knowledge/skills (know how), and metacognitive skills, and that these are organized within a big picture or mental model of the domain (for example, teaching). So whether they need any specific content or not, any time they learn anything, they're potentially developing both "know how" and metacognitive skills as well as the content knowledge, so there is no such thing as wasted time learning anything.

3 new replies have been posted while I was typing, and I agree with all three. Furthermore, I think it would be a very good learning experience for the students to turn cc_alan's dream into a reality.

[litdawg]

I make the first weeks of this class, up until the drop deadline, an intellectual bootcamp.

Are you tenured, litdawg? Because the rest of us, especially those of us who are on one or two year contracts, are resentfully dependent on those damned evaluations that say nothing about how much the students learn in class and everything about how easy they find the class to be.

I will probably be unemployed after my contract runs out because I've stuck to my principles and refused to dumb down my gen-ed classes. Maybe that's a bad idea. Maybe I should just give in, as so many of my colleagues have admitted to doing, and just teach to the evals. If you expect nothing, then you'll never be disappointed. And you might even get tenure for being such a "good" teacher.

WildRose--I am untenured and the averages of my teaching evals are 1 SD higher than my department's averages for first year courses. It may be that the serial eval slammers are dropping my class and hence I get a larger percentage of good, "intrinsically motivated" students as a result. The context of my approach is important--the students have to have other options-- in order for me to do what I do.

I'm sorry to hear that your commitment to excellence in teaching may cost you your job. That is wrong, and students should not be given such power. A longitudinal study of student success is a far more rational way of measuring the quality of teaching, although that might only tell us about the learning aptitudes of the students admitted to the university rather than the quality of the teaching.