From research conducted in BYUs faculty center, it is apparent that students learn best when they have a good relationship with their professor. The relationship between professor and student needs much more attention, but current research seems to show that it centers on love. Christ commanded, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” We live this law in our families and try to apply it in our church and social circles. However, it often is very difficult to apply within the confines of a classroom with a transient, large number of strangers. Nevertheless, it is one of the most frequently repeated factors students judge when gauging how “spiritually inspiring” their teachers are. Accordingly, it is wise to ask, “How can we show our love more fully?” From researching students, they feel loved when you:
1. Know and call them by name. This shows you took time and care about them individually.
2. Give concrete feedback on their work. This shows students you cared enough to read and evaluate their work that they invested in.
3. Establish high expectations. This reveals your trust in their potential and feels empowering.
4. Make time to visit with them after class. When talking with them after class or in your office, ask them about things outside of school (family, work, interests).
5. Respond to their questions respectfully.
6. Share yourself.
This sharing of yourself can be in occur in various ways.
From previous research, it appears that students learn more when they have a good relationship with their instructor. From qualitative responses, this relationship seems to be centered on love. Essentially, students learn more when they feel loved. My obvious gut questions would be: how to increase the love, and then how to increase the behavioral cues of that love. However, there are several variations of this question that may capture better my interest in this subject. Virtually no one is writing or researching this issue and therefore, the last “final question” would not be the first question I’d need to answer. Rather, it simply is the most accurate description of my interest regarding this issue.
ReplyDeleteThis question isn’t terribly complex and I doubt I will therefore narrow it. However, this question is rather vague and so this process may actually serve to specify and give researchable context to it. If this process were graphed, I suppose that it would look more like a upward helix and less like an upside-down triangle.
1. How can professors love more fully?
2. How can professors show love more fully? (in addition to the above examples)
3. How can students show love more fully? Does how much a student loves a faculty influence how much he/she can discern a faculty’s love in return?
4. How can professors develop love more fully?
5. Can this love be ‘faked’ or at least mostly supplanted by simple pedagogic training? Which behavioral attributes associated with showing love can be faked?
6. When can showing love be misinterpreted? What hurdles are there to developing love more fully? Can someone love someone, quickly—even within a semester?
7. Does the subject matter of the class matter? Does it matter to differently to different classes of students. (younger, single, gender, subject ect)
8. What are those signs/indicators of love that are common to all students (won’t help some while distracting others?)
9. Are there pedagogic strategies (assumes that it can be taught (see q#5) that can reveal an instructor’s love for students that will increase learning?
10. What are those strategies? Which ones are most efficient (ease of training teachers, is most effective in relying the ‘love’ message to the student body (most bang for buck).
11. What are the most efficient pedagogic strategies, relevant to showing love ,that will lead to the greatest increased student learning.
Having just completed this exercise, I think I may have another question that I’ll have to rapidly move towards. Perhaps one of the nature of an effective moral education curriculum. Of course this connection isn’t readily obvious to the reader of the above post; it is hardly clear myself. Before stepping in that direction, I’ll allow the above question (#11) to sit as is for a few days.