On Classroom Arguments

I’ve been teaching at the college level now for about six years. I’m teaching a course (Principles of Paleontology) that I’ve now taught in its current form four times. It’s becoming old-hat. I’m familiar enough with the lecture notes by now that I find I’m just reading off what I’d written years ago without much thought. When I wrote the notes, I carefully read the textbook and thought I understood what was going on, but now I’ve forgotten that part of the process and I’ve just accepted what’s in my notes as given fact. And students have sat in my class, dutifully copying down what I said and memorizing it for the exams.

We’ve all fallen into a pattern of – I hate to say it – spoon-feeding. They accept what I say as fact and don’t question it. In some regards, that makes sense. I am the expert after all. It’s a paleontology class and I’m a paleontologist. I oughtta know. Since no one has asked questions in the past, I presumed that I was doing an adequate job of presenting the material. What I was telling them must have made sense and was completely reasonable. I’ve been satisfied that I’m doing a good job. I’ve gotten complacent.

Yesterday that changed. Yesterday, they disagreed with me.

And it was one of the most enjoyable lectures I’ve ever taught.

My class is different this semester than it has been in the past. It started as a class of five, then in subsequent years hovered around 12. This year I have 24 students, and I had to turn students away because there literally weren’t any more seats in the class room and changing rooms is not practical. I have graduate students for the first time, and undergraduates strongly representing majors in both the geosciences and biology.

Yesterday, I presented a statistical argument for interpreting the mechanism of morphological change in the fossil record (either by natural selection or genetic drift). I drew my usual graph, wrapped up my usual talking points, and was about to move on when one of my students said that it didn’t make sense to him. He didn’t like the way I explained it.

I looked back at what I had said, and realized that if I thought about it, he was right. It didn’t make sense. Yet here it was, in my notes and in my textbook. Why didn’t it make sense now? It had once upon a time. What happened?

It was a teaching moment, and I wasn’t the only one doing the teaching. In fact, I needed to do some learning. So I nodded and agreed. Yeah, something smelled rotten. Then the rest of the class chimed in. We had a lively discussion about the statistical methods and the validity of the arguments. What would we predict in various scenarios? What’s a reasonable argument? How can you apply statistics and probability to this problem? I don’t know that we actually resolved anything, but I am certain that more learning went on in that 15-minute discussion than in a typical 50-minute lecture.

And it was fun for me. I didn’t have to do all the teaching. They led the discussion. I just made sure that everyone who wanted to say something was heard, and I illustrated their points on the board.

Yesterday’s lecture is one that will stay with me for a long time. My students argued with me. It was a most civil and pleasant argument, but an argument nevertheless. But the level of learning was fantastic. Even those who sat passively and merely observed the discussion learned. I learned.

Isn’t this how education is supposed to be?