The other week, I sat in on a session run by another part of the university for people to show their teaching practice.
One of the people presenting kick-started their slot by asking everyone to write down their definition of ‘education’ on a post-it, which they then used to elaborate on some key themes.
Of course, one person wrote down something that bore little relation to what everyone else had done.
Oops.
The presenter choose not to get into whether education really is a system of indoctrination, and the person who wrote it down didn’t press them on it, but it did raise an more general question.
How do you cope with stuff coming in from left field?
I’m guessing you’ve had this too: running a session, then someone either saying something so far from the mark that you worry they’ve totally misconstrued things, or offering up a very radical take.
In both cases, you really need to explore what’s happening, either to offer a corrective or to embrace the new breadth that opens up.
This has really been brought home to me this semester by the new course I’ve been teaching, which involves the use of a lot of critical theory to understand European integration.
It’s a course I inherited from a colleague, who was kind enough to let me use her materials, which I largely retained, because I wanted to challenge myself.
That’s been a really positive experience, both because I’ve had to reconsider the ways of talking about the material and because I’ve had to learn about using some new methods, so I can teach about using those new methods.
Fortunately, the use of critical approaches does necessarily invite challenging of ideas and approaches, so the space was very conducive to working with the broad range of ideas present, but it’s something we have to work on, whatever we’re doing.
Personally, I see such moments as opportunities to get students to articulate their thinking and to connect that to what else is happening in the room, which ultimately serves everyone’s learning: if nothing else, if one person is struggling to make sense of a point, then others will most likely be too.
But back to that teaching session.
You’d all recognise that panicked expression as the presenter read out the helpful/unhelpful contribution, and the rapid adjustment of language to note that almost everyone in the room has identified some key themes.
In that case, going off into the outlier wouldn’t have worked in hitting the learning objectives, but often it will, because it is a moment either to bring the confused into the fold, or to bring new ideas to the group.
Both of those are Good Things to do, so do make the most of them.
And think about who you invite to your teaching sessions.