Why I am what I am

I went to a decent high school.  Not fancy, not lousy.  Science labs were OK but we weren't putting out national science fair competitors.  Most kids weren't poor but most weren't upper-middle-class either.  Not particularly disadvantaged but not a lot of affluent kids either.  Pretty much in the middle.  Which is fine.  We had college-prep classes but we also had a lot of vocational classes.  It was a decent school in the middle of the class hierarchy.  I was more privileged than a lot of the US but less privileged than a lot of the people I later met in college.

One thing that was repeatedly driven home to me by my teachers was that we would be on our own in college, and that there would be no hand-holding.  It was repeatedly said that we would have to figure it out, that they wouldn't patiently explain to us how much we should be reading and reminding us to study and reminding us to do our homework and turn it in on time.  It would be hard and we would be on our own.  This was repeatedly said to me and my middle-class friends.

And, to a large extent, that was true.  College was a bit more structured and supportive than my high school teachers made it sound, but only a bit.  Ultimately, it was on me.  I accepted that from day one, and it felt utterly unsurprising to me that I was doing well because I studied all the time.  It felt utterly unsurprising when friends and dorm-mates who studied less didn't do as well.  It's the natural order of the world.  Likewise, in grad school I felt a bit more burned out, a bit more interested in my own life, and I didn't do as well as I did in college.  I still got through, but I was not on top, and that was no surprise to me because I didn't put as much in.  Then I became a professor and buckled down more and published more and got decent student evaluations because I put in a ton of prep and none of this seemed at all surprising to me.

So you can imagine how strange it seems to me when people keep saying that we need to do more for students who don't know how to study, how to take notes, how to manage their time, etc.  It baffles me that we are supposed to be responsible for their success.  Why would we be?  Why would it be my problem that people who never put much effort into mastering freshman material are now doing poorly with advanced material?  Why is it my duty to fix this?  It's not like I could actually do anything about it (you only get the benefit of years of effort by putting in years of effort--there are no secret tricks), so why is it my responsibility?

Likewise, it seems strange to me when people say that it's so unfair that we attach weight to grades and test scores.  I got into a college with people who were way above me in the class hierarchy, people whose parents had more money and more degrees, people who had attended prep schools and magnet schools.  I was there because I had done at least as well as they had done on the SAT (among other things).  I got better grades than them in college.  I out-studied them, out-performed them in the academic arena, and moved ahead academically.  Isn't that how it's supposed to be?

I've spent more than two years reading and blogging about the cultural currents that underlie the notions that seem so strange to me, but I'll be honest:  To this day there's still a part of me that thinks "Well, duh, I studied my ass off because my teachers all told me that that's what I'd have to do to succeed in college.  What else were you expecting?"

Sticking point

I am currently reading Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel. It's a book that, on one level, I ought to dislike: Heavy use of anecdotes (as illustration rather than an attempt at proof, I hasten to add), the mood that shows through is often more optimistic than critical, and it says nice things about Eric Mazur.  It's a light read, one that I often find myself skimming rather than deeply digesting.  Despite that, I like it.  Not as much as I like some of the other books that I've blogged here, and I won't have as much to say about it as some of the other books, but I nonetheless consider it a welcome addition to the genre.  Why?

First, whatever flaws it has in common with so many other books in its genre, it has them in far lesser degree.  It does not preach nearly as heavily.  It is optimistic but not breathless.  It uses anecdotes to illustrate but does not shy away from citing data and studies.  When it cites studies, it doesn't just cite the handful of famous studies that every good, decent academic has heard of if they've ever attended even one pedagogy seminar.  It is an easy read (at least for one accustomed to the conventions of this genre) but not a fluffy read.  I see a powerful case for recommending this book to brand new faculty* so that they can be socialized into what they will soon inevitably encounter in interactions with well-meaning (and sometimes not-so-well-meaning) faculty and presenters, but get it in a far better-reasoned form, from authors who (as far as I can tell) aren't selling anything besides this one book that you already bought.

However, Make It Stick is more than just "one of the good ones." There are key ways in which this book differs from the genre of books about teaching (or, at least, the higher ed sub-genre). It's a book that is adamant about the importance of frequent testing, frequent practice, and frequent (well-constructed) assignments. (Indeed, I am reading it specifically because one of the authors was recently interviewed about the importance of tests in The Chronicle.) The authors' strong endorsement of constant practice and testing is, admittedly, consistent with the embrace of popular things like clickers (though that's not necessarily bad; I use clickers in some classes), and also with some of the surface features of "flipped classes" (the topic of an excellent post today by my friend Xykademiqz), but there's none of the "Now, now, you have to understand, you're doing it wrong and need to be more progressive..." tone that usually comes from flipped class discussions and drives me and Xykademiqz and others up the wall.  (Indeed, the term "flipped class" appears nowhere in the index.)  I can think of at least one person who has gone on the public record to argue that progressive educational methods eliminate the need for reading or other substantive work or study outside of class time, and it is only my thin (though fading) residue of semi-civility that keep me from linking to this person's published statements on the matter.  The authors of this book would not be nodding along with that person.

Interestingly, Make It Stick is also a book that cautiously declines to join in casting stones at standardized tests as a category, an inclination that I equivocally share, and an inclination so outside the norms of polite academic tropes that seeing it in a book automatically warms my contrarian heart.  

I am about 2/3 of the way through this book, and I intend to finish it.  It is a worthy addition to the conversation.  I would love to live in a world where the most populated portion of the spectrum of pedagogical discourse stretched from historically literate curmudgeons like Hofstadter on one side to psychologists like Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel on the other side.

*This mention of recommended reading for new faculty brings something to mind:  In 2006, before I was about to begin my second adjunct gig, I read Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do.  I don't know how I'd react to it now, after 9 years of encounters with edu-fads and their promoters, but at the time it struck me as non-preachy, non-ideological, and consistent with the instincts of a concerned teacher.  Perhaps Bain's book, Make it Stick, and Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life would make a nice trio of gifts for new faculty...

Testing 1-2-3

I haven't forgotten this blog.  I've been busy, but I haven't forgotten.  I will start blogging another book soon.  In the meantime, a few notes on an article in the Chronicle: The basic point of the article is that students learn more if they are tested frequently.  Given that constant practice and review and effort seem to be essential for success in any endeavor, I find this unsurprising and uncontroversial.  Although I don't give a large number of tests in my classes, I do give assignments before almost every class, so that students are always reviewing something or thinking about something or preparing something, and so that I always know how they are doing.  I think this practice is more or less in keeping with the point in the article.

In the physics community, one doesn't see a lot of attention to frequent tests in presentations on pedagogy.  It is, admittedly, generally noted that frequent practice is good, and regular "reading quizzes" are often specifically named as a good practice.  However, frequent testing doesn't get a lot of attention.  To the extent that something similar gets attention, it's generally called "Just In Time Teaching", which has the virtues of calling to mind a business buzzword (always important if your goal is to sell instructional materials and consulting services) and lending itself to an easy acronym (JITT).  The basic idea of JITT is to give online quizzes before class, so that you know coming into class what the students are getting and what they are struggling with, and can adjust accordingly.  It's an inoffensive, sensible concept.  It is not, however, as trendy as flipped classes, peer instruction (which is promoted by a famous guy who has his picture on the cover of a book), etc.

My hypothesis is that frequent testing and practice, while recognized as sound practices, get less discussion and attention for three reasons:
1) You can't make much money off of telling professors to give more tests and quizzes and homework assignments.  There's no manual to sell, no workshop to give.  We already write tests and quizzes and assignments, and we can write more.

2) Giving more tests and quizzes is more work for us (work that many but not all of us are willing to do) and more work for students (who will complain).  Admittedly, some of the more conscientious students will actually thrive with more frequent feedback and critique, but those who fall behind will stay behind.  The results will probably be more bifurcated, and sharply bifurcated results make it harder to justify the "Gentleman's C's" upon which the continuance of the system depends.

3) More tests and assignments may be a sound practice, but they don't inspire fervent discussion because they don't hit the same cultural resonances as questions of interactions and the role of the expert.  We can get passionate in debates about the role of the expert, but we don't have the same passionate views on frequent quizzes and homework assignments.  Admittedly, high stakes standardized tests arouse passions, but those tests are administered by outsiders, come with financial stakes, and visibly intersect with disparities that are rooted in thorny social problems .  That's very different from giving a weekly quiz in your freshman course. 

And thus we come back to some of the major themes of this blog.