Statement of Teaching and Learning

            Teaching is not about providing the information, it's about asking the right questions.  I'm a big fan of the Socratic Method.  The challenge arises in applying that to a large class rather than to a few individuals.  Because I'm such a big fan of the question method, and because I mostly teach science, I've chosen to frame my teaching statement as answers to three questions.  These three pivotal questions were asked in the sci-fi epic series Babylon 5.  On the show, a character's response to these questions told much more about them than what was said, and I think it's the same thing here.

What do you want?

            My goal is for students to learn science, and I don't care how it happens.  My job is to facilitate the most learning by the greatest number of students.  I want my students (and I include the general public in that category) to not only learn something about the sky, I want them to like it.  I want them to love it.  I want them to keep learning about it after I go away.  I want them to lobby their congresspersons and demand that they put more money into space exploration.  I want astronomy to be important to them.  Fortunately, my job is already half-done in that respect.  People are naturally inclined to like space.  To quote Douglas Adams, “Space is big.  Really big.  You won't believe just how vastly hugely big it is.”  People are intrinsically impressed with things that are bigger than them, and it doesn't get any bigger than the universe.  Folks are just awed by the sheer immensity of it all and want to know more about it.  They think it's cool.  That's why science fiction is so popular these days.  Sure, sci-fi often gets things wrong, but that's not the point.  The point is to get people thinking about it.  You have to win their hearts before you can win their minds. 

            Once students are interested in the subject, they actually care what you have to say on the matter.  But that's not enough.  The student has to not only listen to what you say, he or she must understand what you have to say.  For that, you have to explain the concept in a way that makes sense to that individual.  And everyone is different.  Teaching each student separately is not very efficient in terms of time or energy.  We need to teach classes of up to several hundred students at once.  What's needed are ways to teach concepts to many people at once, and my technique needs many teachers.   The obvious and oft-overlook solution is for the students to teach each other.  I want the students to explain the concepts to each other.  They'll usually do so in terms I'd never thought of.  Students are also more willing to question each other, since they are usually similar in age, education, and experience.  If I explain it, they'll just accept it whether or not they understand it.   I don't want them to accept the material, I want them to demand that it make sense.  I want them to ask “Why?  How do we know that?”  I don't want them to take what I say for granted.   I want them to be interested enough in astronomy to actually make that effort.

Who are you?

             My first real experience with teaching science goes back to my high school days.  I was in 11^th grade and my sister was in 8^th.  I'd had high school chemistry the year before, but she was taking physical science.  I've always been good at math and science subjects.  I just “got” them naturally.  My sister was not that way.  Don't get me wrong, she learned the material, her grades were often better than mine, but she had to work harder for it.  One evening, I heard my sister proclaim “If I go to the airport with three suitcases, I'm leaving with three suitcases!”   She'd been trying to work out how two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule could make two water molecules.  What happened to the third?  I got out the Legos.  Once she could see the “atoms”, she had a much better time visualizing them, and “got” it.  Then I had her explain to me what was going on.

 
            That incident defined who I became as a teacher.  To this day, I'm most effective when I work with a student one-on-one rather than in front of a group at a time.  This enables me to identify the specific concept troubling that student, to devise a way to explain it using references that matter to that person, and to ask questions that lead them to understanding the concept, so that when they explain it to me they explain it to themselves.  The downside to this technique is, of course, that I can only work with one student at a time.  I can't do that with an entire class because no two people learn exactly the same way.  So while my individual explanations may be effective, they are not efficient.  I see myself as a facilitator of student learning, rather than as a conveyor of information.  If there's one thing I've learned from my teaching experience in graduate school, it's that I'm not very good at the latter.

Why are you here?

             I am an explainer, not a presenter.  My first real experience with teaching science was explaining concepts to an individual, not lecturing in front of a class, and that's still the technique I'm best at.  I'm here to explain things to many people.  I'm here to make sure that students with all types of learning styles are able to learn about the same thing.  And there's no reason they can't.  It just means using multiple techniques, switching from one side of the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory to the other.

             Lecture is a useful method for conveying background information (especially to students who will not do the assigned reading), but I don't know how much students learn from it.  Lecture is very much geared toward the Reflective Observation area of the Kolb.  I find, however that even students with very high RO scores (such as myself) don't learn that much from listening to me talk.  To better ascertain how well students understand the concepts, I prefer to have the students explain the concepts to each other.  Often, the ones who understand it will explain it to the others in ways I'd never considered.  They may have overcome a difficulty that I never had and therefore didn't deal with.  This gives the students some Concrete Experience, in which they teach each other.  Once the concepts are firmly grasped, lecture can again be used to teach the mathematical techniques necessary to apply the concepts towards real or hypothetical situations.  The students are then given an opportunity to use these tools both in class and at home, a form of Active Experimentation.  The results of their efforts will reinforce the concepts, once they've applied them to get some tangible results.  Abstract Conceptualization is not done in class.  This is something that requires more time than is available in a class period, and requires individual effort from the student, and is effected by reading and homework assignments.  Reading the book, reflecting on what we did in class, attempting to use this learning to solve problems, and just taking some time to cogitate, helps the students to assemble everything into a coherent framework.  The cycle repeats.  This framework is tested by having the student explain concepts, and then built upon.

             My role as the teacher is to force this to happen.  I do this by asking the right questions to the right people.  I'm not a big fan of asking questions to the whole class.  Folks are reluctant to answer, and typically its the same students that respond.  Usually its the students who are doing fine who speak up.  The others are shy, because they're afraid of being wrong.  That's understandable, but it doesn't help me gauge if that the majority of the class is learning anything.  One solution is to use the Hyper-Interactive Technology Transmitters (clicker sticks), so that every student can answer questions anonymously.  In some cases this is a great idea.  However, the nature of this technology limits the format to multiple-choice, which isn't always ideal.  I believe that what's necessary is to remove the fear of being wrong.  I'll ask a question, then use a random number generator to pick a student and call on them.  They have to answer.  If they're right, they have to explain why that's the right answer.  If they're wrong, or can't even guess, I'll ask more leading questions to help them get to the answer.  This process also helps the rest of the class understand why the correct answer is correct.  During discussions, I'll circulate and listen in on what people are saying.  I'll ask leading questions to guide the discussion in the right direction.  Then, on the final exam, I'll ask questions to see how much they actually learned in the class, and I hope they continue to ask questions about the universe for as long as it's still around.