Reflection The Student / Teacher Partnership For those of you who have seen the movie ‘Jerry Macquire’ you’ll know that Tom Cruises’ character had a flood of reflective thoughts about his profession and career that he felt compelled to put in writing. Obviously Jerry’s thoughts were discordant with those of his employers and he found himself unemployed and our story developed from there. I guess it is one thing to have a reflective thought and it’s another to commit it to print. A permanent record of your thoughts requires some degree of fortitude – or stupidity! Once his thoughts were in print and circulated, Jerry found himself torn between feeling brave or stupid. As a relatively new academic still on the steep face of the learning curve, I thought it was important to commit some of my thoughts to text and as I write, I too find myself torn between keeping my thoughts private for self reflection or making them public, committing myself to my convictions. In the case of the latter, I hope I don’t find myself with an invitation to afternoon tea at a crowded café with one of the Profs! We often hear discussion that many academics are not equipped with the personality traits to satisfy the attribute expectations of the students. It is often suggested that, by the nature of the type of work undertaken by many teaching academics, that they tend to be extraverts while research academics tend to be introverts and, thus, precluding them from exhibiting many of the attributes desired or expected by students. It is my belief that each of us has the full gamut of personality traits; it is just that each of us has a unique balance of trait manifestation. I can’t imagine, however, that you could be successful in either role without a good balance of all traits. How do we want to be perceived by our students? What descriptors would we, as teachers, like to be identified with? It brings me back to Jerry Macquire. After a lot of hard work and ‘commitment,’ Jerry secured a great deal for his client. The celebratory scene displayed a strong relationship which was looked on with jealousy by a competing agent/client. As lecturers, we may see similar disparities in relationships with our students. Some of us may not care, as long as they learn. I think learning is facilitated by strong lecturer/student relationship but it must have the key ingredient that can’t be bought, sold or introduced one day – respect! Jerry Macquire had earned respect and in turn had developed respect for his client – then the relationship moved to a whole new level of productivity. It is only when we truly respect our students that they can come to respect us and then we create a fascinating and mutually rewarding learning environment. So, are we different from our students? As academics we spend a lot of time illuminating the inadequacies of students and the difficulties they present when we teach; late assessment items, need for ‘spoon feeding’, complaints about workload, tardiness, students who don’t participate, disruptive students etc. These obstacles to learning, I think, are also displayed when we as lecturers become the student (eg. staff development workshops etc). I think the lesson is that we should have greater understanding of these obstacles and become more flexible / tolerant. It is interesting that, as a group, our expectations of students are higher than the expectations we impose on ourselves. I think it is interesting to hear how each of us sees ourselves in relation to our students. Are we empowered? Many see students as subordinate and you hear phases like “my way or the highway” or “there is one way to do it and that’s my way” type comments. What model do we apply to our class dynamic? In health we traditionally have a delegated decision making model for doctor/patient relationships where the doctor is the authority and the patient plays a passive role in their own health management. In recent years, I guess in part as a consequence of the information age and our expectations and the advantages of patient education (eg. compliance), the health model has moved away from this to one where the patient plays an integral role, as an informed party, in their health management. Education is or should be undergoing similar transitions - empowerment of students. Clearly, there are many strategies that can be employed in teaching/learning but there should be an appropriate balance. I teach students to challenge authority to gain a deeper understanding of key concepts and utilise student driven learning strategies. Quality assurance and quality improvement programs are a valuable tool in any process, but their usefulness is limited if the process is not continuous. Continually striving to improve and increase quality provides a mechanism for ongoing competitive advantage. So, back to Jerry Macquire. No movie is complete without a love story and Jerry falls for his trusty side kick. It is here I find my final thought. It should be us, as career educators, that say to our students (and thus define the dynamics of our relationships): “You complete me” |