Jeanine ("Mini-Mikki") and Mikki, 2001
My Teaching Philosophy
A teacher once said to me, "You won't necessarily be able to see the changes in your students during the hour or so that you are with them, so you need to teach them tools-tools that they can take with them and use on their own". This statement forms the basis of my teaching philosophy. My goal is to help my students (or give them tools to) become active learners and critical thinkers to not only succeed in my classroom but to succeed in other classes and situations as well. To provide these tools, I try to ask questions that peak their curiosity and make them interested in becoming active learners, I engage them in demonstrations and other hands-on learning activities, and I maintain a flexible teaching style.
Asking Questions
I believe in asking questions. Lots of them. I want my students to understand the material, I want them to demonstrate to me that they understand, and most importantly I want them to think. Hence, I ask questions that case me as the devil's advocate to encourage thought (and discussion) about a less popular side of a topic. I ask my students to explain the differences between two analyses before providing the answer. I ask questions when I teach and am patient in giving students the time, opportunity, and confidence to show me what they know. This enables me to figure out how to proceed (e.g., what to elaborate on) and makes the students active learners-not regurgitators.
Engaging Students
Active Learning Tasks and Stories. Experiential learning provides students with experiences and real-life examples, and provides students with the opportunity to critically assess the theories and apply them to other aspects in their lives. To enhance experiential learning, I use active learning tasks and stories when I teach. I stress to my students from the beginning that these tasks are not done solely for fun or to "entertain"; rather, they are tools that enable all of us to better approach and understand the material. I have found that allowing students to experience a phenomenon first naturally leads them into discussion on the relevant psychological concepts and related research. For example, students often resist the thought that they conform. Rather than speak to an inconvincible audience, I first have my students experience conformity. In one demonstration, each student receives a packet with letters and vowels on each page. Students circle all the consonants (or vowels) as fast as they can. When they finish, I instruct them to crumple the sheet of paper and throw it on the floor. While some students may give me a few quizzical looks, most comply. The circling, crumpling, and throwing paper process continues a few more times, and students rarely stop complying. My favorite part of this task is looking at the class, looking at the floor, and asking them "Why is there all this paper on the floor?" This simple question leads us into a discussion of conformity, on experiencing conformity, and even to discussing merits (and problems) with the Milgram and Asch studies. It is also very insightful for us - as a class - to look at who doesn't conform - who didn't throw their paper on the floor and why.
I also tell stories with the material as I teach by building on previous concepts, explicitly pointing out relationships to past material, and by using real-life examples to help explain the concepts. These real life examples range from stories that I tell, stories my students tell, to discussions of pop culture (via clips of t.v. shows, movies). Having students experience and apply the material to their own lives (or pop-culture) gives them the opportunity to think beyond the textbook, and to critique the applicability of the theories. Students have commented that they "enjoy the interactive classes, and that they are much more helpful than listening to another lecture". Students have also commented that "the in-class experiments serve to solidify concepts [and understanding]" and that they "enjoy the way the discussion leader used [real-life examples and] stories about herself to help the class understand. . .which made those in the course relaxed and better able to express themselves".
Assignments and Research. Class assignments and encouraging my students to become involved in research are another set of techniques that I use to help my students become active learners and critical thinkers. I assign projects that encourage students to apply theories to other contexts. For example, students write about an experience they have had with a theory/concept (e.g., cognitive dissonance). They break a social norm and discuss how their experience mapped onto (or failed to) the theories/studies on norms. Students analyze novels and/or the media (e.g., t.v., movies, advertisements) based on theories/concepts. Students debate issues based on psychological research (e.g., eyewitness memory, tracking in schools, raising interracial children). As research assistants (and honors students), my students experience the entire research process as they help create stimuli, are experimenters and confederates, help enter and analyze data, and present the research projects they are working on to each other. I enjoy working with students on individual projects, I encourage my students, my research assistants, and my honors students to come to me with research ideas. I also encourage my students to follow through with their research projects to conference presentations and publications (depending on their data), for instance, one of my students (Dina Eliezer, now in a social psychology program at UCSB) gave a talk at the American Psychology-Law Conference in March of 2006 and another student (Katie Bountress) will be presenting a poster at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference in January of 2007.
By giving assignments that encourage the application of theories/concepts to real-life and by encouraging students to get involved in research and giving them a true research process experience (including all the fun and mundane aspects of it), students become engaged in psychology, may decide to pursue it in graduate school, and most importantly gain valuable experience as critical/scientific thinkers. Students have commented "As much as I griped at the time, it was beneficial to do the assignments that were assigned. They helped a LOT".
Flexibility
Teaching, to me, is like getting a "revise and resubmit" from the editors of the classroom-my students. After each lecture, after each topic, and after each semester, I reflect on my lesson plans, revise them, and resubmit them back to my students to ensure that the strategies I use in the classroom are useful. I actively encourage verbal and written feedback, and I try to ascertain, through questions and the bright (or blank) faces, how to adjust to meet my students' needs. For example, some students learn statistics quickly (and get easily bored), while others in the same class are having mild anxiety attacks at the thought of standard deviations, t-tests and ANOVAs. If I get silence when I ask how a boxplot and a histogram are different, then I stop, have my students plot both graphs, and we walk through the differences together. I welcome questions, different points of view, and ask my students to listen with respect-even if they do not personally agree with someone's perspective. Students have commented that my classroom " is a very comfortable environment" and that they "appreciate the inclusivity of the course when discussing". Being flexible allows me to adjust to meet students learning needs, and it allows students to feel comfortable to discuss and ask questions. Students respond positively to this flexibility and have commented: "I admire your effort, flexibility, and kindness in teaching this course", and "You are a great communicator and you put the class on a more personal basis. This makes you very approachable and also keeps people awake."
Conclusion
In sum, when I enter a classroom, my purpose is to give my students tools they need to become active learners and critical thinkers. I constantly adjust, revise, work with my students, and utilize different techniques to engage them in the learning process. I tell stories, I let my enthusiasm for psychology (even statistics!) come out, and I constantly ask questions. At the end of each semester, I leave my students with a few facts from class that I would like for them to take with them in the real world and keep in, what I call, their life backpack, such as considering a person's situation before making dispositional attributions (the fundamental attribution error) or to remind them that correlation does not equal causation. And, I remind myself that while I might not see immediate improvement or understanding during the hour or semester that I am with my students, that I have, hopefully, provided them with a few more tools they can take with them to become active learners and better critical thinkers.
Courses I've Taught or Would Love to Teach:
Introduction to Psychology
Social Psychology
Research Methods and Data Analysis
Organizational Behavior and/or I/O Psychology
Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Social Stigma
Psychology of Gender and/or Ethnicity
Psychology and Law
Social Psychology and the Real World (Applied Social Psychology)
Comments (That Warm My Heart) From Students:
Research Methods and Data Analysis Lab and Social Psychology Discussion Section:
--"Jeanine is truly a talented educator-teaching is one of her natural gifts and she worked hard to promote an atmosphere of collective learning and achievement. She is a gem to this department!"
--"Psych Dept.: Please keep Jeanine, even though she is applying for jobs, just compete in salary so she has incentive to stay." "Jeanine is honestly one of the best TAs I've had. America's favorite TA."
--"Jeanine was honestly the best TA that I have had during my college career. She was extremely approachable, and so helpful-she went out of her way to help her students in any way that she could, whether it was with the lab portion or the lecture portion of the class. Her enthusiasm and willingness to listen and to help is what made the work and course bearable and understandable!"
--"Jeanine is an awesome TA. She is by far the best TA I have ever had. It is rare to have TA's that care so much about their students, but Jeanine is definitely one of them. She sent out constant helpful emails. She always let us know about her research too, making her very personable."
--"Jeanine was an excellent TA and I felt she really cared about her students and their knowledge of the subject. She was always very enthusiastic and made learning a topic like Psyc statistics--dare I say it--almost fun."
--"Had a lot of fun even at 9am! I think this course would have been really boring and felt time consuming if it weren't for Jeanine's upbeat attitude and helpfulness. Felt like I learned more in this lab than in lecture."
-- "I found your discussion section very helpful. . . usually I don't find them helpful, but you did a good job reviewing and going into more depth on the most important and/or confusing topics."
Personal Communication:
"I want to let you know that you are still my favorite TA/Non-Student. . . well, heck, you are my favorite person out of the many people I've met at UVA. In all seriousness, you are the only teacher I've ever had that has impacted me in such a positive way while being intellectually stimulating. In other words, despite having to TA the most "dry" topic ever in 305 (stats), you still made it fun and I actually learned. You're the best and any school will be lucky to have you as a professor. . . I'm so nervous for graduate school. . . I'm just scared I'm going to be the worst out of all my peers. I guess I'll just have to find the Skorinko spirit in me and be far more passionate, hardworking, and spunky than all the others in my league."
-- "I cannot convey how grateful I am to you for all of your help this year. I was appreciative of the time you put into helping me with my thesis, but more, I appreciated your patience and understanding throughout the whole process. You are going to make an excellent professor! I had a lot of fun and really learned a lot. We thought you might enjoy owning a your own penguin, so we adopted a penguin for you, and we named him "Thesis" so you can think of us every time you get an update about his location and well-being. Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you. " --An Honor Student
-- "Thank you so much for all the time you put into my DMP Thesis. Without your help, patience, and support I would have never survived! I know at times we had some long evenings and painful edits, but it really was an invaluable experience for me! I am going to miss seeing you weekly next year, but I wish you the best of luck finishing your dissertation, getting a job, etc.! Thanks again for making this process so bearable! " --An Honor Student
-- "Thank you so much for everything, seriously you have been amazing. I was freaked out when I started my DMP and was all alone at it, I am so lucky you were there to help. And, thank you for encouraging me to submit to AP-LS, I wouldn't have thought I was capable if you hadn't suggested it. You are going to be a wonderful professor, one of the rare kinds that actually care. " --An Honor Student
-- "First, I wanted to say thanks for the last two semesters and to let you know what an awesome TA you are (but I am sure the evals will speak for themselves). You make up the 5% of TA's here that actually care about their students and it's greatly appreciated. Second, I wanted to thank you again for composing a letter of recommendation to include in my medical school application. I could not think of a better person to ask. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you taking time from your busy schedule to help me not just with a letter, but also with the essays. As I mentioned before, it is things like this that set you apart from not just every teaching assistant I have ever had, but from every professor as well. Your kindness and compassion for your students is evident and greatly admired. You deserve all the best in life. I wish you luck as you finish your graduate work, and hopefully we will both be moving onto bigger and more exciting adventures soon. "
Teaching Links:
Society for the Teaching of Psychology
Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology
Project Syllabus
Teaching Tips (APS)
UVA Teaching Resource Center
