CTUP

SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE

COUNCIL FOR TEACHERS OF UNDERGRADUATE PSYCHOLOGY

[Editor’s note: David Johnson is CTUP Southwest Co-Coordinator]

Professor Charles L. Brewer, editor of Teaching of Psychology and a past president of both CTUP and APA’s Division Two, created the following 10 points. They are reprinted with permission of Prof. Brewer; Brooks/Cole Publishing Co.; and Stephen F. Davis, Randolph A. Smith, and Roger L. Thomas, authors of the Instructor’s Manual for Weiten’s Psychology: Themes and Variations.
1: Be clear about what your own educational objectives are, and be sure that your students are clear about them as well. If you do not know where you are going, the likelihood that you will get there borders on randomness.
2: Know the facts thoroughly, but go beyond the fact. Emphasize concepts and principles that have wider applicability than isolated facts. Many students will not remember all the facts for the final examination. If they do, they will have forgotten most of the facts two weeks after the final exam. The attitudes and principles that they have learned, or might later discover, will serve them better. Remember Brewer’s Law: Everything is related to everything else. And its corollary: You can’t really know anything until you know everything.
3: Be willing to say, “I don’t know,” but try to decrease the frequency with which it is necessary to do so. Remind yourself of James Thurber’s sage observation: “It’s better to ask some questions than to know all the answers.”
4: Communicate with clarity and conciseness. It is a simple task to make things complex, but a complex task to make things simple. Heed Thoreau’s advice and simplify, simplify, simplify.
5: Be genuinely interested in and excited about what you are doing, if you expect your students to be interested in and excited about what you want them to do.
6: Be impeccably fair with every one of your students. Be friendly with all of your students, but familiar with none of your students. At the same time, recognize that you will not like some students as much as you like other students. I am strongly biased in favor of capable students who work assiduously to learn the facts, concepts, and principles that I consider important. I would be less than candid if I said otherwise. Do you have any biases in this connection?
7: Strive to maintain rigorous academic standards. Emerson probably came close when he said, “Our chief want in life is someone to make us do what we can.” Don’t expect perfection from your students but strive for steady improvement with a religious fervor. A common problem of beginning teachers is their almost pathological need to be liked or loved by their students. I suggest that being respected is far more important and desirable. I don’t know many respected teachers whose classes are flooded with mediocre students who always get As without doing any serious academic work. In the obituary he wrote for a psychologist whom some of you will recognize, Ben Underwood remarked: “Extraordinary teachers are those who influence the lives of students in profound, irreversible ways. These teachers need not be nondirective; they need not take a poll among the students to determine what should be covered in a course; they need not hold hands with students in circle in the hope that somehow, something beyond the midbrain will be stimulated. The master teacher views intellectual pursuits as tough and exacting challenges of the highest order and expects the students to view them in the same way. Art Melton was one such teacher.”
8: Maintain close ties with colleagues of all ages. You will learn a lot from them. From the older ones, you will learn valuable lessons about perspective and Zeitgeist. From the younger ones, you will learn how to stay intellectually alive and to have a healthy skepticism about traditional ways of doing things. When you find yourself agreeing with the majority of your colleagues, it is probably time to change your mind!
9: Stan Ericsen was right when he said that “the most important influence the teacher can have on students is to help them learn how to learn independently.” I believe that self-education is the only kind of lasting consequence. The very best teacher is the one who has no students, because they would have learned how to learn without the aid of their teacher.
10: Be willing to work hard for intangible rewards that often don’t come until years after students graduate. In important ways, Henry Adams was right when he said that teachers affect eternity; they never know where their influence stops. But you must learn to be patient, to be patient, to be patient…with your students and with yourself. In fact, one of the most frustrating things about teaching is that you never know what you are doing. I sometimes hope to be a house painter or a bricklayer in my next reincarnation. Why? Because they can more easily quantify the results of their work. My experience suggests that, if 5% of your students really become engaged with the learning process, you can consider yourself a smashing success! That’s a depressingly low proportion, isn’t it?

And that completes my list. It might have had 100 points on it. Despite incredibly hard work, low social status, vows of poverty, disappointments, and variable or delayed reinforcement, teaching is the most rewarding and the most joyous thing I have ever done. I simply cannot imagine doing anything else! Charles L. Brewer

Editor's Corner

Forget June--Teaching Conferences are “busting out all over!” I have started a file to store regional and national teaching conference brochures. The count is up to seven with the addition of two newcomers—The First Midwest Institute for Teachers of Psychology which was held on March 4 and 5 at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, IL and the First Annual APS Institute on The Teaching of Psychology, a one-day preconference scheduled for June 30 in Washington. Welcome! And with these three national and four regional conferences, one might ask if CTUP is becoming superfluous. No way, and I will cite you seven great reasons why! First, only CTUP ensures that programming specifically designed to foster quality teaching is presented in every region. Second, the delivery of this programming occurs efficiently and optimally in conjunction with the regional psychology conventions. Third, integrating teaching sessions with those designed for science or practice topics offers a stimulating alternative to conferences offering total immersion in teaching sessions. Fourth, the formal establishment of the teaching conferences with a permanent location and staff prevents the broad-based, dynamic involvement of a number of faculty in the planning of the programming. Included in this newsletter is a membership flyer with a listing of the Executive Board, 19 psychologists working on CTUP programming at six regional conventions. But two or three times that number are actually participating. And next year more new faces will be added. In the southwest, my home region, David Johnson is set to succeed Ed Kardas for a two-year term as coordinator with a search underway for a co-coordinator. And in at least two other regions, searches will soon begin. Fifth, the programming is outstanding as evidenced by the highlights in the rest of the newsletter. Sixth, CTUP has done an outstanding job of serving students, teachers, and departments of psychology for 25 years. Seventh, CTUP is growing in both membership and scope. Its role of providing quality programming at the regional level was recognized by the APA National Conference on Enhancing the Quality of Undergraduate Education in Psychology. And a recommendation was to expand that role to include recruiting high school teachers as members who could participate with CTUP in regional meetings on teaching issues. A future issue of the newsletter will be devoted to exploring ways to connect college/university faculty with our high school counterparts and how CTUP can facilitate such linkages. In anticipation of that issue, your experiences, suggestions, frustrations, comments, and insights would be appreciated. Please mail them to Ken Weaver, Department of Psychology, Box 4031, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS 66801-5087 or e-mail them to WEAVERKE@ESUVM.BITNET.

Two errors need to be corrected from the last newsletter. First of all, Dave Hertzler’s (eastern coordinator along with Henry Morlock) name was misspelled. Sorry about that, Dave. And the newsletter was issue 1 of volume 4, not 3.

Regional Convention Programs

Eastern Psychological Association, April 15-17, Providence, RI

Midwestern Psychological Association, May 5-7, Chicago, IL

Thursday Symposia: 1 Faculty strategies for reducing marginalized experiences in the undergraduate classroom; 2 Integrating feminist scholarship in the psychology curriculum; 3 Faculty, graduate, and undergraduate perspectives on the professional development of students; Invited Address (with Psi Chi): “John B. Watson: Some aspects of his life and career,” Charles L. Brewer, Furman University; Planning Session (with Psi Chi, Psi Beta, CUPP); CTUP–CUPP Administrative Session; Friday Symposia: 1 Opportunities and challenges for learning and teaching abroad; 2 Academic integrity: Do we practice what we teach?; Invited Address: “A talk to teachers: Bending twigs and affecting eternity,” Charles L. Brewer, Furman University; Demonstration: Using new technology in teaching; The Creative Classroom for activities and demonstrations. Wonderful effort, Blaine Peden (715-836-3481) and Allen Keniston.

Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, April 22-24, Las Vegas, NV

Symposium: Training the teaching assistant–models of two successful TA training programs will be presented, one for graduates and the other for undergraduates. Perspectives will be given by faculty and teaching assistants. Reviews of the literature will also be presented. Discussion regarding issues from other universities are welcome. Roundtable discussion (with Groups Under-represented): Feminist issues in Curriculum and Assessment; CTUP Poster Session; Teaching Take-out of activities and demonstrations for use with large introductory psychology classes; CTUP Social Hours. Job well done, Susan Bromley (303-351-1890) and Jann Adams.

Symposium: Thursday Morning Live: Demonstration of Psychology Activities I, Film Festival: Instructional Videos for Psychology I (The Prisoners of Silence and Beyond Belief: Explorations in the Paranormal); Symposium: Friday Morning Live: Demonstration of Psychology Activities II; Film Festival: Instructional Videos for Psychology II (Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Rock Videos and Just Black? Multi-Racial Identity). Fine effort, Virginia Andreoli Mathie (703-568-6114) and Robert Brown.

Invited Address: “Teaching Personality in Introductory Psychology,” William Graziano, Texas A&M University; Invited Address (with Psi Chi): “Changing Subjects and Subjects of Change: Postmodernism in the Teaching of Psychology,” Jill G. Morawski, Wesleyan University; Teaching Activities Exchange; Teaching Technologies Demonstration: Computers and CD-ROMS; Symposium: “Mentors, Moving, and Other Graduate School Nightmares;” Invited Address: “Thinking About Learning, Learning About Thinking,” Thomas V. McGovern, Arizona State University West. Good work, Ed Kardas (501-235-4231) and Dave Johnson.

The Last Lecture with JoAnn Brannock, James Waller, Douglas Matheson, and Delia Saenz; Invited Address: “Learning to Do While Doing to Learn: A New Twist on a Trusted Pedagogy,” Harvey Wichman, Claremont-McKenna College; CTUP–CUPP No-Host Social Hour; Invited Symposium: Great Teacher’s Seminar, Teaching Take-Out: Effective Teaching Strategies in the Multicultural Classroom, CTUP Breakfast for Teaching Psychologists Networking and Planning for 1995; Teaching Activity Exchange/Poster Session. Nice job, Jim Waller (509-466-3296) and Mary Allen (805-664-2366).

CTUP’s Midwestern and Western Coordinators, Blaine Peden and Jim Waller, respectively, have articles published in the February, 1994 issue of Teaching of Psychology.