Saturday, September 19, 2015

Expanding Our Role Model Role


The idea that as professors we should be good role models for our students is certainly not anything new or surprising.  We all take care to speak professionally, proofread our handouts carefully, demonstrate our scholarly integrity by citing sources for ideas we use, show up on time--and prepared--for class. etc.  An article by David Googlar in The Chronicle of Higher Education, though, did make me rethink that role model issue.   
Among other suggestions, Googlar advises that rather than just modeling expertise, we should also “model stupidity”—showing students that not knowing an  answer is an acceptable and important part of being a scholar and then showing them the thinking processes we use to try to find a reasonable answer.
“Almost everything we do in the classroom -- the way we speak, how we make use of technologies, what we demand of our students -- provides a model for them in some way,” Googlar argues.
Do you agree?  In what ways do you see yourself as a role model in the classroom? What are the actions/attributes/awarenesses that you consciously try to model as you teach?


5 comments:

  1. I agree with David Googlar. Not that we should make stupidity our goal or aim; but make stupidity, even ours, a teachable moment. I agree that “Almost everything we do in the classroom -- the way we speak, how we make use of technologies, what we demand of our students -- provides a model for them in some way.”

    Safro Kwame

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  2. But in your last comment last week you wrote, "but not all teachers are psychologists or motivational speakers or even role models." I would certainly agree with the first two "nots" but maybe the last one should have been "are not good role models" (or "conscious role models"). Not that I would dream of contradicting a philosopher :)

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  3. Linda, you are right; and so am I. "Role model" admits of a multiplicity of meanings, including a descriptive use and a prescriptive one. Hence, there is an "is-ought" distinction to be observed. This is captured in the following definition "a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, esp. by younger people" from Random House Unabridged Dictionary, or basketball player Charles Barkley's claim that he is not a role model though people consider him (to be) one.

    A prescriptive definition is offered by WordNet as "someone worthy of imitation" (e.g. "Every child needs a role model") or by Macmillan Dictionary as "someone whose behavior is considered to be a good example for other people to copy." A descriptive definition is offered by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus as "a ​person who someone ​admires and whose ​behaviour they ​try to ​copy: (e.g. "Sports ​stars are ​role ​models for thousands of ​youngsters.") or by Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary as "someone who another person admires and tries to be like" or "a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others."

    Safro Kwame

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  4. I agree with Professor Googlar , and also the references that he suggests for best practice such as Julie Glass'."Turn your classroom documents into scholarly documents. Syllabi, lecture handouts, and assignments can all be products of the same methods we want students to adopt in producing their own class documents."

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  5. Like it or not, we probably do serve as role models to some of our students. I suspect that for other students we can be an annoyance. I find the use of the term "model stupidity" less than satisfactory for what I imagine David Goolar intended. My observations lead me to understand stupidity as a pejorative term linking behaviors to some personal trait or characteristic that makes the person inferior to others. In several decades of teaching in various places and with a wide range of students, I've heard some version of, "I can't do this; I'm just too stupid." I would never want to model that or suggest it to be true about another. Stupidity as not intelligent, is far from what I'd encourage in any learning situation. One might reasonably ask how I might reframe what I believe the intent of David Goolar's premise. I would prefer something similar to this: It's important to note that teachers are often seen as models of correctness. As such, modeling a desire to learn, and ability to make mistakes and correct them, and the use of discipline in one's learning are essential. As a teacher, one is in a position to facilitate such learning by recognizing that he or she is not perfect, openly acknowledging this, and modeling how life-long learning is precisely that - life-long, even for teachers.

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