Last week, we looked at the role of learning objectives (both content-related and affective), and thought about what it means for students to have ‘learned’ in your course. This is valuable work, and I hope that it provides you with some insight into some of the non-content-related objectives you have for your students. This week, our focus will shift from our learning goals to asking who is doing the learning: who are your students, and who do we think they are? (And why does it matter?). While many of us identify as teachers of a particular subject, we don’t (only) teach our subject, we also teach our students (to paraphrase Linda Nilson in College Teaching at it Best).
We need to talk about ‘kids these days…’
For many of us, it may seem that ‘kids these days’ are unfocused (the phones!), unmotivated, un-this, and un-that. Our ideas of students are painted by negative experiences we may have had, but they’re also fed by a general sense that ‘kids these days’ are in some way lacking. In their 2019 article ‘Kids these days,’ Protzko and Schooler remind us that this sense of younger generations ‘lacking’ has been around for millennia. More specifically, they point to a values gap: often our judgment of students as lacking is based on negative comparison of something we value. I like to read, and kids seem to read less, so kids these days are now lacking in general. I think this value gap is an opportunity to acknowledge that the work of teaching involves an act of persuasion. We want to perpetuate the values and practices that matter to us (Good! This is how art stays alive!), but what we value is only part of the educational equation.
Further, this sense that students are lacking in some way is an of an all too common bias called the fundamental attribution error. (TL:DR when we are late, we can point to traffic, interruptions, etc., but when Bob is late, it’s because they’re lazy and/or uncommitted to the mission). With students, we may see different behaviors than we’re used to and jump to conclusions about who they are as people (or as a ‘generation’). Yet, this explanation ignores the broader context. In a great piece for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, ‘Some Assembly Still Required,’ Sarah Rose Cavanagh frames the conversation as less about ‘kids these days’ and more about their unique educational and social context. From a shift to No Child Left Behind and standardized testing, to the disruptions of pandemic era teaching, to a greater awareness and discourse around mental health, there are plenty of very real differences in our students’ experiences.
Teaching at the intersection of challenge and support
Do these differences mean that we should simply change our standards? I don’t think so, but I do think we can think about the balance between support and challenge. In her 2023 book, Mind over Monsters, Sarah Rose Cavanagh works within a framework of a similar potential paradox: ‘compassionate challenge:’ “Our thought leaders battling about whether students need more challenge or more care have it wrong – our young people need both” (Cavanagh, 2023, xv). Similarly David Yeager’s 10 to 25 focuses on what he calls the ‘mentor mindset,’ the sweet spot where challenge and support are in balance with each other.
Try another sentence stem: “Students in higher education ought to be able to…” You may find yourself articulating skills that are important to you, and yet you may never have had to reinforce these in the classroom. You have resources available to you, whether it’s academic support services for students or a center for teaching and learning. I’m happy to collaborate with you in thinking about how to balance reinforcing academic skills with the core content you teach.
But, who are my students, and why does it matter?
So, how do we find out who our students are? We ask them! We can turn this into surveys like the Who’s in class form? developed by inclusive pedagogy expert Dr. Tracie Addy, or it can simply be an index card we hand out on the first day of class. We can ask students to let us know anything they think it’s critical for us to know about them (and they feel comfortable sharing). Either way, the effort to be aware of our students’ lives outside of our classrooms is a positive step. As I’ve discussed previously on the blog, the work of relationship-building is itself evidence-based practice.
Again, we’ve talked about the gap between perceptions of who our students are (or ‘ought to be’) and who they actually are. An assets-driven view of students doesn’t mean ignoring what they need to learn, it means acknowledging that their assets are what they will draw on to do the work you want them to do. At the same time, our views of student success need to include students, too. In a wonderful piece entitled “The student in student success,” the author recounts an instance when a (very brave) student told a room full of administrators that “No one had asked me about my personal definition of success…” We have goals for our students, but they also have goals for themselves. Getting to know our students isn’t limited to knowing their favorite color or flavor of ice cream, it includes understanding their aspirations. While you may not be able to redesign your whole course around students’ goals, you can help foster more connections to the students’ intrinsic motivation.
How do we reconcile this idea of ‘some assembly still required’ with a strengths/assets-based view? That’s a great question, and it points to part 3 of our series on course design, which is focused on how we reconcile our goals with those of the people we work with, our students. Next week, I’ll share both practical strategies and healthy perspectives to thread this needle of challenge with support.