Letting students facilitate their own seminar while I remained silent: a tool to encourage group collaboration and student-centred learning.
In my teaching and learning (and in my personal life as well), I’ve found the term ‘psychological safety’ (Edmondson et al. 2004) to be invaluable. The concept of psychological safety means that at certain levels of social discomfort or hierarchy, people simply do not want to risk being wrong. With greater psychological safety, comes greater tolerance and willingness to take a risk, which enables learning. The difference between psychological safety and trust, while they are similar, is that psychological safety occurs on the level of a group.
Students in seminars often have varying levels of participation, and while there are ways to structure the seminar to encourage participation, often there is a noticeable difference between those who remain silent and those who speak. For one of my seminars, I decided to recuse myself from speaking to ensure that my voice wasn’t heard as the ‘right answer.’ I told the students, who were sat in a circle, that they had to organically facilitate the discussion themselves, responding to each others’ points, and being aware of when they were speaking frequently in order to let others have the floor. After some slightly excruciating pauses, every one of the students in my seminar eventually spoke – a remarkable and rare occurrence! The students not only enjoyed the seminar, they were able to take greater risks than they had before.
Edmondson, A.C., Kramer, R.M., & Cook, K.S. (2004). ‘Psychological safety, trust, and learning in organizations: A group-level lens.’ Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and
Approaches,12, 239–272.
O’Neill, G. and McMahon, T. (2005). ‘Student-centred learning: What does it mean for students and lecturers.’ Emerging issues in the practice of university learning and teaching. Dublin: AISHE.
Based on my experience on having marked a good number of coursework papers, I tend to offer students some specific pointers on things to avoid when writing assessed essays. Although this might seem a bit on the negative side (a list of Thou Shalt Nots), I have found that students respond well to being given a list of pitfalls to avoid. The criticism of poetry can often seem, otherwise, somewhat on the impressionistic side. The effect on the coursework is noticeable, compared to years where I have not offered this type of resource. I have had, recently, the opportunity to form a Practical Criticism reading group, which focused on this type of strategic textual approach to, in my opinion, very positive results. The pointers are as follows:
The exam for the module I teach (EN1107, Re-Orienting the Novel) consists of two components: an unseen close-reading exercise in Section A and an unseen essay question in Section B. This post considers the ways in which I teach my students how to prepare for Section A, the close-reading task.
As defined by Helen Brookman and Julia Horne, ‘To read closely is to perform a purposeful and skilled analysis and interpretation of the structural, stylistic, and linguistic features of a literary text.’ The act of close-reading a literary text is one of the fundamental skills that an English degree offers a student. Indeed, close-reading is of such significance to the study of literature that I have set out, from the beginning of my teaching practice, to ensure that my students are not only prepared to engage in close-reading during their exam for this module, but throughout their degree as well.
During my sessions, I typically offer students two (often interrelated) passages from the week’s novel on a handout, accompanied with prompter questions. I offer them these passages in the context of a wider thematic concern that we are examining in class. A particularly notable, successful example of this practice was during our sessions on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. I taught two classes on that novel, on the themes of ghosts and children respectively. In our session on ghosts, I framed the discussion with a quotation by literary critic T.J. Lustig, who points out that ‘One of the most notable absences in the narrative of the governess is that of the word “ghosts”’ (256). I then encouraged my students to read the two extracts from the novel in the context of Lustig’s quotation.
My approach here was successful because it enabled students to generate discussion on the nature of the ghosts in James’s novel, and engage in an actively, lively debate as to whether the ghosts are real or a figment of the governess’s imagination. With the aid of the prompter questions provided, and my call-and-response style of enabling class discussion, the task gave each student an opportunity to exchange ideas both during task discussion and to the class as a whole - no student was excluded.
My approach was also useful in keeping the discussion orientated around two key passages in the novel — the first concerning the initial appearance of Quint, and the second on the governess’s subsequent speculation of Quint’s identity with Mrs. Grose. Again, with the aid of the prompter questions, the class were able to use these two passages as case studies to read the novel as a whole, and to interrogate James’s descriptions of the Gothic and the supernatural.
The fact that I offer close-reading passages each week throughout the module also helps students to develop their analytical skills through regular exercise. Repeated, persistent close-reading allows the students to pay particular attention to the ways in which literary works (and novels in particular) create meaning through language, metaphor, imagery, tone, and structure. Where the final exam is concerned, the act of close-reading passages also ensures that students can potentially engage with and analyse any unseen passage from a given literary text — they have been given the tools necessary to pass the examination and, more importantly, they are then able to use their analytical skills in a variety of contexts, situations, and classroom environments. At the same time, close-reading tasks also enable me to monitor their learning, allowing me to give advice on ways in which they can hone their skills (suggesting further areas of exploration and analysis which they might not have considered), and also to encourage and provide positive feedback so that they can feel confident in honing their analytical skills.
In sum, close-reading is a foundational principal while engaging in the study of literature, and is also a key part of my teaching practice, particularly during my first year as a Visiting Tutor. By giving students the ability with which to analyse a given passage, I am also strengthening my own abilities as a teacher, actively reflecting on my own teaching style, and ensuring that the learning process is reciprocal.
Bibliography of works cited and consulted:
- AHoneini1
Featured in a collection of essays called Teaching Shakespeare: Passing It On, Russ Macdonald counters the argument that the most effective way to teach Shakespeare is ‘“to get them on their feet”, to make them speak the lines themselves’, instead advocatinh a style that might more properly be called ‘keep[ing] them in their seats’ (31). This is not to suggest a lack of engagement with text, but is rather a more comprehensive engagement with it. In this, McDonald offers a number of recommendations to assist in helping readers to engage more fully with the language of the plays, and to develop personal strategies for meeting the challenges of the words. While a tutor might not wish to adopt all, I found a number of these points useful when it came to conducting in-class discussion, and have summarised them below:
1) Lose the ipod.
Find a silence place so that your attention is not divided. Be sensitive to the metre, rhymes and aural imprints of the passage.
2) Try reading aloud.
Speaking can help clarify meaning. This can be employed to the whole text, or only occasionally. Reading in groups can also be illuminating, but cannot substitute for solitary engagement with the words on the page.
3) Work out your own method of using glosses and footnotes.
Readers will approach textual notes and glosses differently, and different editions present them in various ways. It can be distracting, for instance, to be glancing down or turning to the back for notes on the text. Read until the text doesn’t make sense, or return to the notes at the end of the scene to fill in details.
4) Read in manageable chunks, as skill permits.
There is no fixed amount that one should read at one time. Different kinds of reading require different kinds of attention. On the whole, it is best to read until one realises that words are not being fully taken in.
5) Write a brief summary as you finish each scene.
A short, one or two sentence, summary on the scene forces the question of comprehension and provides a useful study document.
6) Remember that you are reading dialogue.
It helps to remember that lines read can be lines spoken between characters: in longer speeches a reader can forget what preceded it and what the passage is in response to. Consider, for instance, if the speaker is agreeing or disagreeing with the other, or whether they are changing the subject.
7) Remember that you are reading poetry.
It is important to acknowledge the difference between reading poetry and prose, and to pay attention to the language without skipping over bits that are harder to understand. Learning the names of poetic features can help ease anxieties of discussing verse. See Paul Fussell’s Poetic Matter and Poetic Form (1965) and Gideon Burton’s website ‘Silva Rhetoricae’ (link below).
8) Forget that you are reading poetry.
Though this seems a contradiction, McDonald here prompts readers to remember that they are reading, above all, English sentences, with conventional elements of expression: subjects, verbs, objects, etc. Consider the grammatical outline of sentences that seem complex.
9) Alter word order, adjusting syntax as needed.
The English language in the sixteenth century followed a different, unfixed, word order, and Shakespeare’s sentence structures vary accordingly. Students can be encouraged to alter the order of sentences in an effort to make a sentence clearer.
10) Observe the logical pointers, particularly conjunctions.
Conjunctions can be unusually revealing in that they move a passage from one segment of thought to another. An awareness of words such as ‘but’ and ‘because’ and their functions can therefore help make sense of a difficult passage.
11) Look for the antithesis.
Shakespeare’s use of antithesis is, for McDonald, both fundamental and rewarding – descriptions are often constructed through contrasts over which ‘the student might be encouraged to linger’ (40).
12) Look for visible rather than hidden meanings.
This advice is not limited to Shakespeare. Imaginative text should be viewed less as a puzzle or word game and more as a verbal structure calculated to give pleasure.
If I were to add to McDonald’s comprehensive list following my experience of teaching on an undergraduate Shakespeare course, I would be inclined to stress the value of online resources such as Early English Books Online, Oxford English Dictionary Online, and online Shakespeare concordances. I frequently used these as tools in the class room as a means to both clarify and further discussion, encourage close reading, and to introduce students to the wider material available to them when coming to conduct their own close readings.
Bibliography:
Burton, Gideon (ed.), Silvae Rhetoricæ < http://rhetoric.byu.edu/> [last accessed 24 May 2017]
McDonald, Russ (2009), ‘Planned Obsolescence or Working at the Words’, Teaching Shakespeare: Passing it On. G.B. Shand (ed.) Oxford: Blackwell.
Recommended sites:
Crystal, David and Ben (ed.), Shakespeare’s Words < http://www.shakespeareswords.com/> [last accessed 5 June 2017]
Early English Books Online <http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search> [last accessed 5 June 2017]
Open Source Shakespeare: An Experiment in Literary Technology
< http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/> [last accessed 5 June 2017]
Oxford English Dictionary <http://www.oed.com/> [last accessed 5 June 2017]
-jjedwards
Thanks for your thoughts on the Russ McDonald piece ‘Planned Obsolescence or Working at the Words’, which obviously engages with some critical issues around teaching via close-text engagement. I broadly agree with McDonald: there can be an overemphasis on getting students ‘up off seats’ when teaching Shakespeare. This overemphasis is – I think – a result of the (completely laudable) desire to break down and democratize the usual, authoritarian hierarchy between teacher and student. Where traditionally the teacher stands at the front of the class and delivers his or her lesson to seated, 'passive' students, teachers are now increasingly eager to get students more actively involved in exploring a text. Student engagement does not necessarily mean being physically active, though, and there should always be space in the classroom for the type of concentrated, critical reading McDonald proposes (perhaps not unrelatedly, I have found students used to a highly participatory and democratic online culture sometimes seem to crave the more traditional, hierarchical relationship between teacher and student). I think the tips McDonald provides are very helpful practical guides for how teachers may encourage students toward a more fully engaged, ‘bums-on-seats’ close-reading, which does not have to be exclusionary of peer-to-peer engagement and thought. That said, I do wonder if McDonald is perhaps a little too reliant on a dichotomy between text and body: might it be that getting students up and ‘thinking’ through the text somatically is, in itself, a viable form of close-text engagement? I am thinking particularly about his tips around dialogue and poetic rhythm, both of which may be further explicated and understood somatically – by acting the text out through the (seated or unseated) body. Even with these possible limitations in mind, I think McDonald raises a really good point about the value of close text engagement and his insights should give teachers the confidence to make sure that students are able to properly ‘linger’ with a text, in the classroom and beyond.
Richard Ashby
I recently finished Teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe: Learning versus the System by Liam E. Semler and thought I would share some thoughts about its insights into teaching in an increasingly neoliberalized, ends-orientated academy. Semler is an academic working in New South Wales, Australia, where he also contributes to state-wide teaching assessments – but Teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe also has plenty to say about higher education teaching in Britain (15) and beyond, not least with the more systematic approach to teaching assessment promised (or threatened) by the TEF.
Semler presents a candid and witty first-person narrative of his pedagogical negotiations with ‘systematized’, assessment-driven, bureaucratized learning. Through anecdotes and statistics, Semler convincingly demonstrates the way in which standardized curricula and ‘learning outcomes’ tend to prioritize a narrow set of skills (test-taking, rote memorization and so on) and promote merely ‘surface learning’ that forces individual teachers and students to ‘fit’ learning expectations and experiences into predetermined systems (Semler subtitles his opening chapter, ‘How systems eat us for breakfast’). Semler shares his experiences experimenting with various pedagogies in teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe to put pressure on these existing systems (or ‘Learning versus the System’).
Perhaps the most interesting part of Teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe is where Semler describes his ‘Bard Blitz’ experiment. This activity is inspired by an eclectic mix of pedagogical theories and presents a four-stage method for teaching Shakespeare that moves from close reading and ‘translation’, to reflective engagement, to concrete and abstract concept development, and concludes with ‘active experimentation’ (71) – particularly in the form of creative responses to the plays. The Bard Blitz is designed to support students as they generate various independent ideas based on ‘close textual analysis and a personal collection and disposition of concepts’ (72).
I too teach Shakespeare and I found myself intrigued with the idea of the Bard Blitz, especially as I sensed my own teaching often became a little too authoritarian (even systematic) when students struggled to comprehend a particular idea or speech. I usually began with the first stage sketched by Semler – close reading and ‘translation’ of the Shakespearean text. But I often felt I was too quick to intervene and ‘impose’ a meaning for the students in the following discussions, as opposed to letting them establish meaning independently and creatively. This – I think – tended to shut down the type of independent, reflective engagement and concept development Semler sketches.
I fully intend to employ Bard Blitz in future to try and foster more student engagement and reflection. In particular, I want to allow the students engage creatively with the plays and (literally) embody the meanings they discover by having them begin the class by acting out a scene as a form of ‘close-reading’. I will then ask how that performance reflects the way they interpreted the text (reflective engagement); how that interpretation might relate to the ideas generated by the play more widely (concept development); and, finally, get the students to engage creatively with the text by writing stage-directions for how they think the scene should be acted, based on the ideas they have generated by first acting the scene out, and then supporting (or interrogating) those ideas through further discussion. This – hopefully – will foster a more open intellectual environment in the classroom and avoid the pitfalls that Semler identifies in his critique of modern learning-systems.
References:
Semler, Liam. E., (2013), Teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe: Learning versus the System London: Bloomsbury.
Richard Ashby
This sounds like a really interesting approach to teaching Shakespeare and, as you suggest, finding new ways to encourage student engagement on a compulsory (rather than an elective) course, and to open up discussion. I really like the Bard Blitz’s emphasis on student learning as a process rather than the drive towards an accessible product, especially when teaching first-year undergraduates who are only just finding their feet (and critical voices), though I wonder to what extent this practice might be undermined by the extent to which students are judged on the production of a final, summative assessment. This is an issue that we discussed a little bit on the course that I was teaching, and there remains some way to go as to finding a model that balances assessment with experience, exploration, and engagement – I know, for instance, that on some courses student participation (among other factors) would count towards their final grade. This may not be the answer, but I think discussions about synthesizing these issues have the potential to be hugely productive.
-jjedwards
Hello Richard,
This was a very interesting post, and I found it relevant to my own experiences as a statistics demonstrator. Often, there is a focus on the ‘right’ answer in this field as well, without encouraging students to explore their own ideas and attempt to interpret analysis themselves: which are all integral to statistics. I can also be very restrictive in my style too and I shall actively try to limit this from now on. I am intrigued by the idea of acting out characters: whilst I think it’s a great idea for creativity-purposes, it does make me wonder if some students (such as socially-anxious, or English-as-second-language etc.) may not engage with this play process, and what may be done to overcome this?
Thanks again for the interesting post!
Best,
Aysha
There are plenty of books suggesting techniques for teaching classes with an international makeup but understandably these don’t address the specific issue of one or two poor speakers of English in a university-level English Literature seminar. The University’s English language requirements usually mean this isn’t much of an issue, but we also have visiting students from universities abroad, where seemingly the language requirements aren’t so stringent. While it is frustrating for the native-level speakers and disrupts the class cohesion, my experience has been that the exchange students themselves are the ones who miss out most in the seminars. We can point them to the various college services, but a single term isn't enough time to catch up with the native-level speakers.
During the most recent term I taught, we decided to try to solve the issue by putting all the exchange students into a single class, taught by my supervisor.
At the time I felt it was the best decision: it prevents disruption for native-level students and allows the pace of the class to be targeted at a more suitable level. And of course in my seminars we had no problems since the issue was taken elsewhere.
On reflection, however, I have mixed feelings about what we did. While it did avoid disruption to the native-level students, it didn’t fix the problem for the exchange students themselves; it just concentrated it into one place. It also prevents integration between the exchange students and those students taking the full degree here.
On paper these students are getting the same education as everyone else albeit for a briefer time, but there isn’t real parity. It’s very easy to throw such terms as ‘segregation’ about too: is this discrimination or just a sensible separation of the students according to their needs?
I love diversity, so what do we do when it seems to clash with our primary purpose of high-quality education? Should we separate the students, like we did, or do we just grit our teeth and try our best to integrate them, accepting that their experience will not be the same as everyone else’s?
I’m still not sure what I think is the best option. I lean towards distributing the students equally among the seminars but I’m still not certain that this is the most effective way for the students to develop in their understanding of Literature.
Bibliography
Brown, George and Atkins, Madeleine, Effective Teaching in Higher Education (Abingdon: Methuen & Co., 1988)
Carroll, Jude and Ryan, Janette, Teaching International Students: improving learning for all (London: Routledge, 2005)
Ryan, Janette, A Guide to Teaching International Students (Oxford: Oxford Brookes University, Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning, 2000)
-- Scott Shepherd
This is a very important point to make about a complicated problem, especially for the study of English literature where language is key. I have also taught seminars where second language English speakers were put into a single class, and this generally means a few native speakers share this class, which gives them, for good or for bad, a very different experience from the other seminars on the course. It appears that, while exchange students do enjoy each others company, is does create a kind of segregation and might even prevent the sort of experience for which they come to the UK. It is even questionable, in this global age, to separate all exchange students and non-native English speakers into a group. But if the visiting students are distributed equally into other seminars, it sometimes does make it difficult to pitch the discussion and speed of the class, meaning some get left behind. There seems no easy solution, but perhaps it would help to organise optional additional catch-up lessons for overseas students or to take care that their language skill levels are taken into consideration in the marking process.
- ZULE066
In teaching Shakespeare to over-sized seminars of first-year students, there were a few difficulties I found difficult to surmount. The first was that, given the large size of the class, it was often very hard to get students to contribute to discussions, either because they were shy or because they felt one of their peers might contribute instead. There was a temptation to make a second lecture of the seminar hours and rely on the passive transmission of information, especially for complicated topics. However, as Laurillard (2012) theorises, ‘communication, feedback and the expression and re-expression of ideas helps deepen student understanding’, not least because ‘dialogue implies a sharing of authority – not necessarily a sameness but a recognition of equally legitimate roles’ (Ashwin, et al., 2015, p. 189). What I needed was a way of developing a conversational framework not just with me, their seminar leader, but with their peers, whose ideas might benefit them by challenging their own views and ideas. My goal was to find a way of encouraging conversation without forcing contributions in an authoritarian way by picking particular students.
The other major problem was in making certain that the students were prepared and had read the texts. Once again, the large size of the seminars made it easy for students to hide behind their peers’ hard work. As per the suggestions of Honeycutt (2011) and Lowman (1996) I decided it was necessary to design a seminar activity that would make use of the reading and that would help them to develop skills needed for the course assignments.
In order to facilitate communication, reading and close reading I experimented with an informal debate during the seminar on Henry V. To do this, I prepared the class the week before by telling them that they would need to concentrate on the character of Prince Hal in their reading without telling them exactly how, to encourage attentive reading and wider preparation. I then prepared two simple positions: ‘Prince Hal is an ideal prince’ and ‘Prince Hal is a Machiavellian opportunist’. At the beginning of the class, the room was divided into these two positions, tables and chairs abandoned, with some students siding with the statement they agreed with, others choosing to play devil’s advocate. I stood as chair. I then gave them 15 minutes to prepare arguments and counter-arguments, encouraging them to anticipate what their opponents might say, and to back up their arguments with quotations chosen from the text. The discussions in the groups were extremely heated, with students flipping through pages to find exact quotations. The debate was a success. I had never seen my students so excited, especially considering it was a 9 am seminar. Both sides came up with good arguments, retorts, counter-arguments, and could pinpoint specific examples when called upon to do so. Occasionally it was difficult to stop them from interrupting one another and to let me chair the session.
I subsequently learnt that this was a method also tested by Hannah Crummé (2013) at King’s College, who reports that her own experiment was mostly to encourage close textual analysis, which was successful. From my experience also, it appeared that close reading came more naturally to the students when they were placed in a situation where they had to rely on it to convince their peers.
Successful though the method was, there were a couple of drawbacks: one was that it became difficult to regulate the discussion. This was not so much a problem in terms of establishing my authority, but was a problem insofar as the students started to show a little bit of animosity towards the opposing groups and did not always deal with their peers politely. If I conduct the same activity in future it would be worth laying down some ground rules to make sure they are respectful to one another. The other, more problematic difficulty, was something I discovered from later student feedback: in the heatedness of the discussion and in the presence of many different accents, the non-native English speakers felt unable to keep up with the discussion. It may be that this method is not so well suited to a class made up of different demographics, or that, once again, it is necessary to establish clarity and speed of speech in the ground rules. It is not clear whether this will affect the spontaneity and energy of the discussion.
Bibliography
Ashwin, P., Boud, D., Coate, K., Hallett, F., Keane, E., Krause, K. L., & Tocher, M., 2015. Reflective Teaching in Higher Education. London: Bloomsbury.
Crummé, H., 2013. Close reading in the Undergraduate Classroom. In: D. Chadha and D. B. Hay, eds.
Higher Education Research Network Journal: Prizewinning Essays. London:
King’s Learning Institute, pp.13-24.
Honeycutt, B., 2011. 3 Things Students Can Do with Reading Assignments During Class, [online] Available at: http://barbihoneycutt.com/download/april-2017-3-things-students-can-reading-assignments/ [accessed 12 May 2017]
Laurillard, D., Teaching as a design Science: Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology. London: Routledge.
Lowman, J., 1996. Assignments that promote and integrate learning. In: R. J. Menges and M. Weimer, eds. Teaching on Solid Ground: Using Scholarship to Improve Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp.203-231.
-ZULE066
I thought the task you described here was excellent, and certainly makes a change from the close reading exercises that are typically deployed in English literature seminars. I would be very eager to deploy this task during my teaching, particularly because it would enable students to find exact quotations from the text itself (rather than having to rely solely on a handout), which surely would prove invaluable for their essay writing. This task also enables healthy, enlivened debate in class which enables feedback and makes seminars a place of inclusion. Such a task would enable me to develop my own teaching style in the future, and ensure that I am not rigid in my teaching methods but am open to new possibilities. I will, however, be sensitive to the drawbacks of this task (as you highlight) in order to set ground rules, ensure such debate does not get out of hand, and enable non-native English speakers to be engaged in the debate.
- AHoneini1