Today, Pamela Henney, an adjunct faculty member in the English department at DEI college North Central State College in Mansfield, Ohio, shares her perspective on how perception, language, and expectations can influence faculty-student interactions—and results in the classroom.
Higher education is increasingly focused on developmental education initiatives, and definitely should be with 40 to 69 percent of high school graduates requiring at least one developmental course in college. We fund new developmental programs, devise new pedagogies, share our secrets of success, and warn of failures with others, encourage more studies of our students, and target varied groups of students for extra attention—all highly worthy endeavors. However, we might be missing one crucial point: perception.
Several speakers noted this perception issue almost in passing at this year’s Community College of Baltimore County Accelerated Learning Project’s 3rd Annual Conference on Acceleration in Developmental Education. Perception is vital to student success. If our students see themselves as capable of passing they tend to succeed. We may believe ourselves to be helpful, empathetic, and encouraging with our students, but then we fall into our academic jargon forgetting we are conversing with students.
We often find ourselves so entrenched in the new teaching approaches and prospects for students that we find ourselves believing students will understand the underlying philosophy and pedagogy exactly as we do. They do not often recognize this educational opportunity with the same vigor we offer it. Think about it: How often do we hear cries of glee from a student being told “You’ve placed in Basic Writing, a program to help you progress,” when the student confidently believed himself to be starting out in First Year Composition. How persuasive is it to tell our students this non-transferrable credit course will help “address deficiencies,” “relearn skills,” or even “catch up?”
In addition to creating effective developmental programs and devising new pedagogies all aimed at supporting student success, we need to consider how each element of a student success plan is perceived. If we want our students to have a successful, confident mindset, then we have to seamlessly illustrate our support. The phrase “we are placing you in Basic Writing” is often heard as “You aren’t ready for college English,” “You aren’t ready for college,” or simply “You can’t do this.” For some of our students, it is the same negative rhetoric they have been hearing all of their lives.
The rebuttal for this downward psychological spiral is inherent in accelerated developmental programs. Hearing “Your test score gives you the opportunity to take advantage of our accelerated program” right away translates in a student’s mind into “You can do this” – and not only do it, but do it faster and more efficiently than other students. It also connotes our expectation of student success.
True, this issue seems very simple and much like a sales technique, but students who recognize that other people—especially advisers and professors—believe they can succeed often tend to try to live up to those expectations, even internalizing a “can do” mindset. This apparently minor change should impact student perception of developmental programs and create a positive foundation which meets the criteria for continued success.
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