Academe historically hasn’t paid much attention to preparing graduate assistants for the complexities of managing a classroom of undergraduates. That was the case for John C. Keller, now dean of the graduate college at the University of Iowa.
“When I was a graduate student,” Mr. Keller says, “my introduction to teaching undergraduates was, ‘Here are the slides and handouts. I’m going to be out of town this week. Give the lecture.’ If they had teacher-preparation activities back then, I sure didn’t know about them.”
Doctoral training hasn’t traditionally been concerned with whether future faculty members are good teachers. New programs are meant to change that.
Colleges have come a long way since 1982, when Mr. Keller earned his doctorate from Northwestern University. Iowa, for example, plans to soon start offering graduate students a new workshop on how to facilitate difficult conversations in the classroom. Mr. Keller says that while graduate students of all generations could have benefited from such a workshop, today’s minefield of political and social issues requires even the most experienced educators to step carefully.
The workshop on difficult conversations will be part of a new series of workshops for graduate teaching assistants, created partly because a survey showed that TAs received lower student-satisfaction scores than faculty members. Also, Iowa’s president, J. Bruce Herrald, a business-minded leader who has been controversial among faculty members, wanted teaching assistants to have more training. (Speaking at a Staff Council meeting in 2015, Mr. Herrald said that any professor who went into class unprepared “should be shot.” He later apologized, calling it an “unfortunate off-the-cuff remark.”)
Christina Bohannan, an Iowa law professor who teaches a similar workshop for faculty members, is helping develop the graduate-student version. She spoke to The Chronicle’s Vimal Patel; the interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Can you give me an example of something you want to teach in these workshops?
A. I first talk about the First Amendment. I’m a law professor. At a state institution, faculty need to know they are governed by the First Amendment. Students do have a right to express their views, even if they are controversial. They don’t get to yell or disrupt the class, but if it’s germane to the subject and someone has a contrary view, they can express that. That is sometimes unclear to people because they want to be sensitive to all the diverse groups in the class.
Q. So your goal seems to be to allow students to express a view, however controversial, if it’s relevant, while trying to make everyone in the class feel welcome. How do you do that?
A. Exactly. That’s really what this is all about. I first talk about the material. You need to include a variety of viewpoints in your material. Students are typically much more likely to engage if they see their viewpoint already represented or if they see someone like them has been represented. If you’re a conservative student feeling like everyone around you is liberal, you’d feel more comfortable about expressing your viewpoint if the instructor includes your viewpoint in the readings. In my own classes, I’ve come in and expressed a controversial view that swims in the opposite direction of most. And I’ll say, What do you think about that? It’s amazing the response I get.
You have to be almost relentless and think, every day, did I do enough to get them to talk?
Q. What was a time you did that?
A. I was teaching torts. We were talking about sexual assault, and consent. I raised the issue of affirmative consent, and showed them the university’s policy on affirmative consent. [The policy states, in part, that sexual consent occurs only when both partners agree to have sex and that “consent is never implied and cannot be assumed, even in the context of a relationship.”] I asked the students, Does this go too far? Is it realistic of what actually happens in real life? Nobody wanted to talk. After class, a male student came up to me and said a lot of men probably had thoughts but likely didn’t feel comfortable saying them in class.
So the next day I brought up the same issue again. I said, “Nobody talked about this yesterday, but I think there’s a lot more here than the conversation we had.” Then I read part of an article from a female professor [Laura Kipnis, “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe”], who argued that we’ve kind of gone way off the deep end and we treat women too much like victims. After that, I had 40 hands up. Everyone wanted to talk. It was a really interesting conversation. You have to be almost relentless and think, every day, did I do enough to get them to talk?
Q. Is there a line, and how do you know when a student has crossed it? And what do you do if they have?
A. That’s hard. The first question is, nave they crossed the line? When they clearly have, I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s easier because you know you have to say and do something. But sometimes it’s hard to know if a line has been crossed. First, you’re making these decisions in real time. That’s the hardest part. The key is to take more of the decisions out of real time. In other words, plan more so you’re not making so many decisions in that heated moment.
For instance, the stuff I was saying about the diverse viewpoints. If students feel represented in the materials, they’re less likely to get their backs up about something. Also, frame the discussion at the beginning of class. You start by saying, ‘Look, we’re going to cover some difficult topics in class. We need to be able to do that civilly and be respectful of views you find controversial.’ And then when it happens people aren’t so shocked by it, and if I have to I can remind everyone of the ground rules. And then maybe come back to the subject in a slightly softer way. Also, part of taking it outside of the class means that you follow up with students afterward if there is a difficult moment in class.
Q. The academy in general is clearly paying more attention to pedagogy and other classroom skills than it did a generation ago. But I still hear from graduate students who say they receive little or no training before they start to teach. Why is such training still hit or miss?
A. When I started teaching, I think they just assumed that I was smart and I had seen good teaching before and I would figure it out. The truth is, most of the time you do. It might take a while, and you might have some bumps along the way, but I think over time you do. But we can do a lot more to train new faculty and especially graduate students, who are just evolving from students to teachers themselves. It’s especially important now in this politically charged environment.
It’s hard enough to get the material together, but the piece that’s been missing is the classroom-management piece. You’re often managing a class with more than 100 or 200 students at a time. And any one of them can say or do anything at any moment. Managing that can be hard, and that’s where we need to focus.
Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com.
