Chapter 8 The Great Researcher = Great Teacher Myth

It is a myth that a person who is a great researcher is a great teacher. This is what the chapter is about. Patrick Terenzini and Ernest Pascarella, who are education professors, examined the myth very closely, concluding that a person who does research might not be able to teach the subject they are researching.

Universities hire prestigious award winning researchers but are boring and inactive with the students in the classroom. The attitudes of many researchers toward undergraduate education are negative. A professor at the University of Michigan makes the comment, “Every minute I spend in an undergraduate classroom is costing me money and prestige.” A comment like this from a professor is shocking because one would think a professor would be motivated to teach a university to young students. It is a bad attitude that creates a bad atmosphere and environment in the classroom, causing students to skip class and day dream not listening to the professor. Students need to bring a high amount of self motivation to class because of the attitude the teachers has.

The class room suggests different methods of learning. It includes small changes like a major attitude shift for faculty, actually listening to the students, not facing the blackboard the entire time, providing frequent feedback, and taking student questions. Faculty members need to take the students comments seriously and most of they seem to be arrogant and don’t care.

In contrast to the passive roles, students can be encouraged to speak and take action in the class room by collaborative work with the teacher, learning from one another. This can produce greater gains in academic content and skills. Students cry for individual instruction. The lecture creates a classroom full of students learning at the same rate, same notes, same exams and same activities. No one learns the same! How can we teach someone something the same why to everyone, especially in a class room full of 500 students? “Lecturing produces student passivity, absence of intellectual curiosity…prof fail to engage their brains…always in a hurry to leave as the class ends.” This is very true! Sometimes teachers ramble on and on about nothing and then blame the student, the victim, for not understanding and not paying attention. I’ve been through it and many many people have been through it.

Fortunately, there are excellent universities that exist, and faculty who provide students with individual attention and a multitude of active learning situations. From reading the past two chapters, maybe it isn’t the athlete who is at full fault for not doing going to class. Maybe part of the issue has to do with the professor or the classroom environment. Class might not be interesting or active enough and the athlete feels it isn’t important. It is just a thought but it would be interesting to hear the comment of an athlete and what they think of the classroom experience.