The Skillful Teacher

Assumption 3: The Most Important Knowledge
Skillful Teachers Need to Do Good Work Is a
Constant Awareness of How Students Are
Experiencing Their Learning and Perceiving
Teachers’ Actions
Having some insight into what students are thinking and feeling in
our classes is the foundational, first-order teaching knowledge we
need to do good work. Without this knowledge the choices we make
as teachers risk being haphazard, closer to guesswork than to
informed judgments. We may exhibit an admirable command of con-
tent, and possess a dazzling variety of pedagogic skills, but without
knowing what’s going on in our students’ heads that knowledge may
be presented and that skill exercised in a vacuum of misunderstand-
ing. Skillful teachers realize that most of their procedural decisions
(what content to teach next, what examples to use to illustrate a
complex idea, who to call on in discussion, how to frame an assign-
ment, the amount of time needed for small group break-outs, when
to depart from the plan for the day, and so on) should be guided by
an awareness of how students experience the classroom.
Getting inside students’ heads is enormously tricky. First, we
cannot just ask students how things are going and expect honest
responses, at least not if students are asked to speak these responses
publicly or put their name to written evaluations. The power we
have over students will ensure that any identifiable responses we get
from them will be filtered through students’ desire not to offend us
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and thereby arouse our ire. Students are understandably reluctant
to be too honest with us. They may have learned that giving honest
commentary on a teacher’s actions can backfire horribly. Teachers
who say they welcome criticism of their actions vary widely in how
they respond when it is actually expressed. Consequently, students
may be circumspect in describing how they see the teacher’s actions
affecting adversely what happens in class. Even under the cloak of
anonymity, it feels risky to point out oppressive aspects of a teacher’s
practice. Rarely will students publicly raise questions about how
teachers have unwittingly stifled free discussion, broken promises,
or treated certain kinds of students with more deference than others.
Given the egomania and power wielded by some academics, student
paranoia is sometimes justified.
So a cardinal principle of seeing ourselves through students’
eyes is that of ensuring the anonymity of students’ responses to any
questions we ask regarding their classroom experiences. When stu-
dents have decided that you have earned their trust, they may
choose to speak out publicly about negative aspects of your actions.
But early on in the history of your relationship with a class, you
will only get honest criticism if the anonymity of this is guaran-
teed. You have to make students feel safe. After students have seen
you, week in week out, inviting anonymous commentary on your
actions and then discussing this publicly, they start to believe that
you mean what you say about the value of critical reflection. But
saying you welcome critical commentary from students, and hav-
ing them actually believe you, are two quite distinct and separate
events. Between them lies a period of time during which you model
consistently a public, critical scrutiny of your actions. The Criti-
cal Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) described in the next chapter is
a classroom assessment instrument that has helped me enormously
in demonstrating to students what critical reflection looks like. It
has also provided invaluable information about the submerged
dynamics and tensions that are either inhibiting or enhancing
learning in my classes.
The Core Assumptions of Skillful Teaching
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30
T
HE
S
KILLFUL
T
EACHER
Another alternative exists for teachers who are trying to expe-
rience how their students feel as they approach new, and potentially
intimidating, learning. One of the hardest things for us to imagine
is the fear that students feel as they try to learn what we teach. If
we have been teaching in a particular discipline, content, or skill
area for a long period of time, we have most likely forgotten what
it feels like to come to this learning as an uncertain novice. More-
over, since most of us end up teaching what we like to learn, we prob-
ably never felt much anxiety about it in the first place. If we teach
what we’re good at and love, it is almost impossible for us to under-
stand, much less empathize with, students who find our subject bor-
ing or intimidating. The more we teach something, and the farther
we travel from our first experiences learning it, the easier it is to for-
get the fears and terrors new learning can provoke.
If, however, we find ourselves regularly in the situation of trying
to learn something new and difficult, we can use this experience to
gain an appreciation of what some of our own students are going
through. We are provided with an experiential analog of the terrors
and anxieties that new learning produces. As people used to orches-
trating others’ learning, we probably won’t enjoy feeling frightened,
embarrassed, and intimidated when we find ourselves in the role of
learner. But if we care about helping our own students learn, the
experience of struggling as learners ourselves is a kind of privilege. It
gives us a gift of empathy that helps us adjust what we’re doing to
take account of students’ blockages and anxieties.
When we try, and fail, to learn something as quickly and easily
as we would like, we experience all the public and private humili-
ation, the excruciating embarrassment, the fear, anxiety, and pain
that some of our own students are feeling. As we endure these feel-
ings and emotions, we can reflect on what it is that our own teach-
ers do that alleviates this pain for us, and what it is they do that
exacerbates or sharpens it. This will almost certainly give us some
valuable insights into actions we can take towards our own students
who are struggling with these feelings. How does our teacher make
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it easier, or harder, for us to ask for help? Are there actions she takes
that boost our confidence, and ones that kill us inside? We can also
observe how we deal with the experience of struggle on a personal
level. Do we try to keep our problems private? What supports and
resources do we turn to? Where do our fellow students come into
the picture and under what conditions are we more or less likely
to ask them for help?
Noticing the kinds of teaching methods, classroom arrange-
ments, and evaluative options that either make our struggles as
learners easier to bear, or bring us to the point of quitting altogether,
alerts us to the kinds of practices that should be a central feature of
our own work. We may know, intellectually, that a kind word, a cut-
ting remark, or a tension-breaking or inappropriate joke can make
all the difference to fearful students. But it is one thing to know this
rationally and quite another to feel we are the victims of a sarcas-
tic aside or the beneficiaries of a respectful acknowledgment. Being
on the receiving end of these utterances as learners reinforces our
appreciation of their significance.