What is the work of a professor?

There's been a debate going on in the comments at Dr. Crazy's recent post about students who want to join classes after the semester's started, and this, combined with some experiences of my own recently, have got me thinking about what exactly a professor's work is - or maybe, more accurately, how do we get across what a professor's work is.

I think way back around Christmas-time ianqui (or Cheeky? one of the two) wrote a "letter" that they wanted to send to relatives to demonstrate what it is they actually do with their time. Sometimes I think it's necessary to explain this kind of thing to our students, as well. I know that when I was in college, it didn't really occur to me, automatically, that professors actually had to study and learn the material that they were teaching us. I kind of assumed that they knew this stuff automatically (this is kind of like the elementary-school idea that your teachers live at the school, and your shock at learning that they have actual lives of their own). I remember having a conversation with one of my history professors my sophomore year, in which he talked about teaching the required junior seminar - more to the point, about teaching the material on the common syllabus that he hadn't chosen, and how he was only a little bit ahead of the students all the way through. To hear this professor talk about material that he found difficult amazed me - he was the professor! He actually had to read things for the first time, too, and was better at some things than others? Wow.

And now I have students who clearly feel the same way - that I just naturally "know" the stuff that I teach them in the classroom; they don't realize that I have to learn any of the material myself. More to the point, they don't realize that planning class entails making choices: what will we read for the day? how will we cover the material - lecture or discussion? what should the focus be? what are the main questions we're going to cover?

And it dawned on me that they don't see these things as work because they have so little sense of the contingency of knowledge - that context and purpose are everything. Instead, they think there is one narrative of knowledge - the "truth" - and that I just have to find it and report it to them. (This is best exemplified by one of my favorite of H's stories from teaching. He was teaching a course in a subfield of American history, and was meeting with a frustrated student, who said to him, "Couldn't you find the book?" H, understandably confused, said, "The book?" "Yes," the student said, "you know, like in my psychology class, we have this book, it says 'psychology.' Couldn't you find the 'x history' book?")

It's not especially surprising that students feel this way - our advising office told us that when most of them arrive here, they're at a dualistic stage in knowledge when they see things in black and white. (It's a little more surprising when juniors and seniors feel this way, but that's another story.) But the problem with this attitude is that the only professorial activity that they therefore see as "work" is the actual reporting of information. Other kinds of activities - leading discussion, or having students work together to teach themselves - are just about the professor trying to get out of the work they're supposed to do. And it's hard to change this attitude just by trying to explain what we do as work, because that just looks defensive. Instead, I think it has to be a much slower, more painful process of opening up their minds to the infinite ways that different people can think about the same subject - that leading them to see that, in fact, the world isn't black and white. Then perhaps they can apply a broader definition of "work" to what it is that we do in the classroom.

I should add that I'm really talking about a small subset of students - the majority are fine, even lovely to teach. But the attitude described above is much harder to combat than some other kinds of issues.

Comments

[shrinkykitten]

This is really interesting. I didn't know myself that profs didn't already know everything they teach. Thus, when I teach I feel like I *ought* to know everything already. I also feel less than competent when I don't.

This is particularly an issue when I teach the class I am teaching now, as it is full of honors students who have a need to prove they know more than me (whee!), and an issue when I teach at wannabeIvyLeague, and students feel very grouchy at having a grad student teach them, and (in the beginning) seem to want to demonstrate I am not competent to teach.

I often wonder at what point you feel competent, or competent enough.

[timna]

I think I was still looking for "the" book in graduate school and it wasn't until I really had to teach that I started synthesizing the material for myself.

[Ancarett]

I have recently been rereading "What the best college teachers do" which has a good chapter on the way that many students, even good ones, come to courses with a preconceived worldview and mostly want to slot your knowledge into that. The best example there was a group of physics profs finding that students came and went with a pre-Newtonian grasp of physics and even when led through their own experimental design, to a rejection of those principles, they found themselves unable to throw away their preconceptions and embrace a whole new way of looking at things.

[TF]

New Kid, in response in part to students' (and my family members') cluelessness about what it is I do all day, what I'm evaluated on, what my job entails (no, research isn't just "my" work or sideline), and in part to the David Horowitzes of the world who say we work 6-9 hours a week for $150,000 (my god, I wish!!), I wrote a post on my/our group blog, CathchingFlies, called "What Does a Professor Do All Day." Don't know how to do an embedded link in comments, so here's the cumbersome URL: http://catchingflies.typepad.com/catchingflies/2005/08/what_do_profess.html

Anyway, I think we all need to be more transparent about what our jobs entail, how we know what we know (my students often ask "How do you know all that *stuff*?"), etc. -- for our own good in practical as well as political senses. Your post, Dr. Crazy's, and others, are a good start. It's probably a good thing that Manny dude showed up in Crazy's comments and stuck around -- maybe he learned *something*. Long live the blogosphere!

Great post, btw -- you articulated a problem that I'd felt but hadn't been able to understand or articulate myself. Thanks!

[TF]

PS -- FYI: I've commented before as "Tina," but I write on CatchingFlies (and a soon to be launched personal blog) as TF so I'm trying to be consistent with that. I lurk a lot. I like your blog! :)

[Celandine]

Oh man, do I ever want the "x history" book! *grins*

I'm now on a dept. committee that, among other things, has been charged with revising our policies and procedures statement. So I was reading it, and somewhere in there was a sentence that basically said that we're expected, in the normal course of things, to be working over 40 hours each week, between class time, prep/grading, research/writing, and service of various sorts. Wish the students could see and grasp that!

[Cheeky prof]

Great post. (It was Iangui, by the way, who wrote the letter you're thinking of). You bring up something important that we all confront. I was especially interested in the point about how students think having them summarize articles, lead discussions, etc. is our way of being lazy and passing the buck. I see these comments a lot on rate My Professor. It sorts of makes me chuckle because I can't help but think what a rude awakening they'd have if they went to graduate school where that's about all students do.

I'm interested to read what others to have to say in response to your post.

[Nels]

This is why I think blogs can be so great pedagogically. Students can see what we do, see our prep. The students who read my blog tell me that they hadn't realized what faculty do or other such things.

[ianqui]

I think the trickiest part of this is not admitting to our students that sometimes we have to teach ourselves part of the curriculum. (Which makes me surprised about your history teacher...) Since students have a preconceived notion that faculty members are experts in every aspect of our topics, I find that they're often intolerant when we don't know something (this is related to the problem of how to handle it in the classroom when a student asks a question you don't know the answer to. Admit it? Fudge? Get the answer by the next class? Make them do it?)

BTW: I was the one who wrote that letter to my family.

[concretegodmother]

Great post! And timely. Check out this article reprinted in today's Los Angeles Times "Current" section (formerly "Opinion"), entitled, "It's not all about you, froshies." :-)

I, too, do not know how to include an actual link, but here's the address (you may have to register to see it): http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-wellesley28aug28,0,2010213.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

[Clare]

I have to say I was amazed that a 'debate' came from Dr Crazy's post, and was a little shocked at some of her criticism. But, there it is.
When I was in uni, there always was this attitude of 'first week doesn't count', but there was one lecturer, Dr. L, who caught on to this. He passed out the handouts, and gave the general lecture. The following week, when his class doubled, he completed the lecture saying "This brings to an end our third lecture, I'd like 1500 words about how it is important to understand X in context". The one's who hadn't turned up were still in shock that Dr L had scheduled a second lecture the previous week, and when it came to the little essay, well they only got through with a day in the library. Those who failed were forced to do Dr. Boring's NT Greek course.
That, I'm afraid, would be my approach. And Dr Crazy is right to say what she said. (I really should be saying this to her as well, actually...)
(sorry that took up so much room, but it irritates me when people don't take uni seriously when a) I do, b) I know they've paid £1000s and c) it is a waste)

[Hugo]

THANK YOU for an outstanding post... as I gear up to start a class today on a subject I haven't taught in three years, I am indeed "one step ahead" of the class once again, knowing at times I will be lecturing on material I digested an hour (or less) earlier.

[ADM]

Loved it, blogged it, depressed by it. Or maybe it's hormonal?

[Rana]

Great post - about such an awkward and often irritating situation.

I think one of the biggest eye-openers my students ever had was when I made them responsible for teaching the class (in small groups) at least once during the semester. (It was a graded assignment, with them required to do things like come up with an in-class assignment, do the readings and some extras, and be responsible for encouraging and promoting discussion.) They hadn't realized just how much work goes into something as "straightforward" as leading a discussion until they went through it, accompanied throughout by advice and nudges from me (i.e. You might want to re-think the wording of this question, unless you want people to just answer "yes." or "That group over there is getting a bit antsy -- you should probably go over there and see if they have any questions about the reading you asked them to do." or "There's only about 15 minutes left in class. Tell them now they have five minutes to finish up, and give them ten.")

If nothing else, it wised up the people who were liable to claim that I "wasn't teaching" because I was making students "do all the work."

This also reminds me of one colleague whose husband suddenly had the epiphany half-way through her dissertation research that "Oh! That's why you can't look up the answers on the internet! No one's done that yet! That's why you're spending all those hours in the archives!" (Oy.)

[Brian Ogilvie]

Great post! It seems there are two related but distinct issues involved. First, there are the students who conceive of knowledge as something static, not the contingent result of research. Second, there are those who resist engaging in active learning or who think that we profs are avoiding our work by leading discussion or having students present their own work.

My own sense is that it takes a long time for students to come to a mature understanding of the first issue. (Some people never get there, it seems.) But the second point can be easier to deal with. I insist in my courses that one of my goals is that students should learn to think like historians, and I liken myself to a coach or trainer. A student would think it ridiculous if a weight training course involved the teacher demonstrating exercises while the students merely watched and took notes. Well, I tell them, it's just as ridiculous to think that they are learning history just by listening to me and taking notes. To learn history they need to do it. They almost certainly won't do it as well as I, just as you wouldn't be able to bench-press three hundred pounds after a few weeks of training. But they'll be learning something, and I will be doing my work in helping them to learn it. Do they think that a weight trainer isn't working when he or she is watching students practice and correcting their moves? It's a metaphor that sometimes works for me.