The impetus to write this article arose out of our experiences as sixteen women and one man completing an assignment on gender in the classroom for a fourth-year seminar on feminist thought. Sharing our work revealed that our individual experiences were not isolated, chance incidents.

Although we had known that, for the most part, the classroom is not a neutral place, theorizing these experiences uncovered the deeply systemic character of discrimination. Depending on our gender, race, class and sexual orientation, we discovered that we are heard differently and hear differently; as a result, we take away with us more lessons...

At York University we have a Teaching Assistants’ Resource Group, which works closely with graduate students from the wide range of disciplines and departments within the university. Operating in contradistinction to the assumption that teaching is learned through osmosis, the group provides a mechanism for confidential peer consultation and discussion of pedagogical issues. As well as attending to teaching strategies and techniques, the group offers assistance in understanding individual student differences and promotes sensitivity to human rights and equity issues. While the group provides a forum to foster teaching assistant development, it also offers a forum for the discussion of...

For long periods during the writing of my dissertation, I consoled myself with the comfort that — even if I was making no headway on my thesis — I had produced a definition ofdissertation dementia.I imagined that dissertation dementia is that peculiar affliction located at the precise centre of three different sets of contradictions. The malady is created in the mad space between delusions of grandeur and the imposter syndrome, between fear of success and fear of failure, and between fears of abandonment and persecution mania. If this definition of dissertation dementia is humorous, the experience of it is anything...

“I have a problem with the notion that there is huge power imbalance in the classroom,” he [Michael Bliss, a University of Toronto history professor] said. “It’s not the reality. Professors are not doing their duty if they give bad grades (to an outspoken student) and students are not contributing if they don’t speak up, if they hide behind what they think is a power situation.” Mr. Robinson, on the same panel, disagreed. “That’s a surreal view of the classroom,” he said. “The reality is that there is a significant power imbalance. The professor has tremendous power.” But others argued...

The Ontario Human Rights Code recognizes the “dignity and worth of every person” and provides for “equal rights and opportunities without discrimination.” This legislation applies to all teachers, students and staff at any university in Ontario. Anyone who feels that they have been targeted or disadvantaged because of race or ethnic affiliation has the right to seek recourse under the law. York University’s Centre for Race and Ethnic Relations interprets this legislation as thesine qua nonand an essential pillar of the academic and scholarly freedom to discuss, explore, criticize and create our collective understandings of who we are....

The diversity to be found among today’s university student population in terms of social class, gender, race, ethnicity, language,¹ sexuality and dis/ability poses significant challenges that require us to examine our pedagogical approaches if we are to make university education relevant and equitable to students. Much of this diversity in the student body is brought about by conscious efforts to remove barriers to university education. As a result, the new population of students enters with the expectation that the principles of access and equity will be reflected in the pedagogical approach to their education, and that their cultural interests and...

Certain issues in critical and feminist pedagogy trouble me, even though these approaches have had a profound impact on my own teaching practices. It seems to me that critical and feminist pedagogy both operate with a somewhat contradictory set of assumptions about students. On the one hand, they emphasize the knowledge and experience that students bring to their education, whether acquired from schooling or from life. On the other hand, they seem to assume that students need to be shaken out of ignorance and complacency, challenged in a way that disturbs their most deeply held assumptions about the world. However,...

Over the past twenty-five years, feminist scholars and activists have challenged teachers to create a curriculum in which women’s experiences and actions play a central role. Feminist pedagogy, as it came to be called, included more than just making course content gender balanced; it involved transforming how that content was transmitted, thereby making the classroom a site of social change. This article outlines three major elements of feminist pedagogy and, using examples from my own teaching of Canadian history, will consider some of the theoretical and practical strengths and limitations feminist pedagogy offers.

Early proponents of feminist pedagogy envisioned teaching...

This article describes some of the experiences and insights gained from an attempt to use feminist pedagogy in a course entitled “Women and Men in Organizations.” It was written as part of an ongoing dialogue between the course director and one of the students in the course. We evaluated the success of this teaching approach according to Carolyn Shrewsbury’s three dimensions of empowerment, community and leadership.

At the beginning of the course, the instructor advised students of the course objectives:

to examine critically the growing literature on women and men in organizations

to help students explore the personal implications of...

One of the key concepts in feminist pedagogy is empowerment, which in much of the literature has been related to giving individuals a sense of control. Ideally, the feminist classroom provides students with control over the processes of their own education. More importantly, however, this individual empowerment is fostered within a climate of collective interdependence and responsibility for the integrity of the classroom. One of the greatest strengths of the feminist classroom is its potential to become a place where students are able to debate in a relatively protected sphere and work through issues together.

The practice of feminist pedagogy...

Heterosexism is to sexual diversity what racism is to ethnic diversity. Whether rooted in hatred, fear or ignorance, whether overt or covert, heterosexism devalues the lives of lesbians, gay men and bisexual people. Unlawful discrimination, violence, harassment, etc., raise serious issues beyond the scope of this article, though, sadly, not always beyond the experience of our students. Here, however, I want to consider how instructors might satisfy more than just our legal obligations to ensure that the classroom is a secure learning environment for all, one that respects diversity while allowing for vigorous debate.

Owing to their authority, instructors must...

I’m a perpetual student — or so they tell me, and with three degrees under my belt and a fourth on the way they could be right! My studies, punctuated by five years in full employment, span two continents, three disciplines and undergraduate through postgraduate education. I have experienced the highs and lows of a multitude of teaching formats: lectures, small groups, research seminars, “live” projects, laboratory work, simulations and case studies, and a variety of assessment methods: essays, reports, individual presentations, group projects, research papers, articles, reviews, dissertations and theses.

After all this I think I can put my hand...

Individuals with a range of intellectual abilities who receive, process or express information in ways that are different from those used by most other individuals are described as having “learning disabilities” (LDS). University students with LDS can have average or above-average intellectual abilities, yet experience difficulties in one or more of the following areas: perceiving, listening, speaking, reading, writing, calculating or spelling. They might lack skills in organization and some can experience problems with social interaction. However, to succeed academically, many students with LDS have had to become expert problem solvers, compensating for the obstacles to their learning by being...

For nearly two decades, advocacy organizations, students and university teachers have been working to remodel post-secondary institutions because they agree that equal access to education for students with disabilities is a right, not a privilege. The inclusion of persons with disabilities under human rights codes and under employment equity legislation has prompted institutions of higher education to improve the physical access to campuses for students with disabilities, particularly for those with mobility impairments, medical disabilities and visual impairments. Guaranteeing that students can enter a library or lecture hall has been, and continues to be, a primary focus of human and...

What constitutes good teaching? What attitudes, strategies and methods best promote student learning? These are matters for inquiry and debate. It is clear, however, that generic approaches can disadvantage certain groups of students who might have particular needs. Addressing these needs most probably will also assist all your students; however, the experience of “adult” students will certainly be enhanced if you keep a few things in mind.

Adult students come to university with a variety of educational experiences. Many have had rigorous and very traditional early schooling; others might have had their schooling prematurely or even severely disrupted. However, their...

Like other large urban universities, York University is fortunate to have a large number of students from all over the world. Some have come to Canada for their education; others have recently settled here. Some students, whether born in Canada or elsewhere, speak French, Canada’s other official language, as their native language. These students for whom English is a second language (ESL) have a broad range of educational backgrounds and their English fluency varies. Often very good students, they might have difficulty expressing what they know, especially in courses that require essays and essay-type examinations. Some, accustomed to a more...

Just as the lecture hall is a physical symbol of a university, the large lecture – one instructor addressing a room full of students – is emblematic of university teaching. And its special role is justified: a good lecture is an efficient and potentially inspiring way to teach. But lecturing also has its special problems. Unlike a seminar discussion, where the “chemistry” of the group influences its success, the large lecture depends much more on the instructor, who has greater control and thus greater responsibility. Lecturing can be one of the more theatrical modes of teaching, and not all academics do well...

Universities everywhere are currently under pressure by funding agencies to stretch their resources and accomplish more with less. What this has meant for teaching is increasing class size and a growing focus on large-group lecturing as the mainstay in our repertoire of teaching techniques. This trend has met with resistance from many academics concerned about a decline in the quality of education that we are providing to undergraduate students. They contend that large-class lecturing is simply not as effective as discussion for teaching undergraduate students. I am not convinced that this is necessarily the case.

Numerous comparative studies indicate that...

The lecture is the most pervasive forum for student learning on university campuses. When you consider that the majority of classrooms and lecture halls are designed with masses of chairs and tables (usually bolted to the floor) all focused on a single location – the lectern – this is hardly surprising. Yet despite the constraints imposed by the physical environment, there are pedagogical advantages to lecturing as a mode of instruction. There are also limitations. In this article,¹ I offer suggestions for overcoming some of them. In practical terms, I describe the “One-Minute Paper,” a simple technique developed by a physics professor...

Fed up with asking, “Any questions?” only to be greeted by silence? Heard that students learn best when they participate actively in the class, but not sure how to make it happen? Want to begin group work, but not sure where to start? Tired of hearing from the same students every time you ask a question? Concerned about the students who don’t participate? Think-write-pair-discuss (TWPD) provides a solution to all of these problems and more. It is a simple and effective way to improve student learning and at the same time, according to Gareth Morgan of the Schulich School of...

When I reflect on how to encourage students to participate actively in classes, I realize that I use a combination of strategies ranging from subtle evoking to unvarnished provocation. Underlying these strategies is an awareness of group dynamics and stages of group development, a philosophy of power sharing and an enthusiasm for my subject matter. I would like to share some of my tactics in order to engage your participation in an exchange of ideas and reactions.

Class participation and the energy and focus of class members are influenced by the stage of development of the group. Researchers who study...

Most of us consider being resisted as a traumatic experience. We feel it destabilizes our social image and jeopardizes our credibility. Consequently, we try to avoid such situations in ordinary social life. For example, to take friends to a movie we consider fantastic or to get them to taste a wine we see as the best vintage ever, only to discover our opinion questioned afterwards by the Françoise Truffaut or the wine taster of the group is very hard to take. It is quite unlikely that we would not fight back. It is natural to want to protect our self-image....

For some instructors, the spectre of on-line communication conjures up images of the virtual university; others see it as an opportunity to augment face-to-face meetings with our students. With class sizes growing, and students working more, we need to look at ways to communicate with our students outside of the strict timetabling options of the university. While this is important now, it will be become more so in the future. Our pedagogical needs determine our communication choices, but the initial decision is whether and to what extent we will rely on computer-mediated communication (CMC). Can we be assured that our...

Students learn best when they are actively involved in the process. Balacheff (1990) argues that mathematical knowledge is not learned passively by internalizing carefully prepared and organized material through lectures or texts, but is constructed by the learner or doer of mathematics through solving problems. Asking students to form small study groups fosters active learning and encourages them to go above and beyond what is being covered in lectures in order to develop their own understanding of course material. Studies reveal that students who work in small groups tend to learn more of what is being taught, retain it longer...

Alienation is a big issue for first-year students at a large university. Teachers need to find ways to reduce the impersonal aspects of this environment for new students and help them feel part of the university community. This process can begin on the first day the class or tutorial meets: warm-ups are an effective way to reduce student alienation (Nell Warren Assoc. 1991).

What are warm-ups...not? They are not lessons in themselves; they are not set to fill a time block; they are not games without a purpose. They are, however, effective catalysts for promoting group dynamics by creating a...

At the beginning of the final examination in one of my courses last year, I noticed that one of my students was visibly distressed and unable to proceed. I asked her to leave the room with me and offered my help. She told me that she had been assaulted the night before and had, until this moment, been unable to find anyone to talk to about the assault. Shocking as it was to hear her story, what disturbed me more was her difficulty in finding anyone in whom to confide. She was a first-year student from out of town, living...

Any discipline has a central core of proven, basic “truths.” At the boundaries of these core areas there are always significant grey areas that constitute the exciting new frontiers of research. Studying alone, students can achieve an understanding of the core areas and might even glimpse the new frontiers. When called upon to discuss these newly learned ideas with other students, and to engage in a purposeful project to apply their knowledge, students are more able to integrate and master core knowledge and understand the excitement of scholarly inquiry into the new frontiers of knowledge. For this reason, I have...

In thinking over the strengths and weaknesses of my teaching in the first seminar course I taught, I identified two main problems. First, in leading class discussions I found it difficult to gauge students’ views on issues and consequently to pose questions that would produce meaningful debates. Small-group discussions sometimes fell flat, as groups reported back to the class that they’d concluded “the same as what the last group said.” Second, my expectations that students could make connections between course materials and current events were too high – not because the course materials were particularly difficult, but because students’ awareness of...

Guided field walks can be an important component of courses for which on-site observation is suited. For example, in courses I teach that partly centre on the production of urban space, walks are used to illustrate modernist architecture, social housing, deindustrialization, gentrification and many other themes. Abstract ideas become tangible and the interests, values and sentiments immanent in urban forms are made visible.

The tradition of undergraduate field observation in urban study originated in the early decades of the century at the University of Chicago, where students were often directed onto the streets of the city as their classroom. Generation...

In professional schools such as the Schulich School of Business, the case studies used are brief descriptions of real situations faced by organizations in day-to-day business dealings. These cases give students a simulated hands-on opportunity to apply their knowledge and experience to problems that arise in the course of business decision-making. They enhance the practical aspect of the program.

This method of teaching works best with smaller groups. A group of twenty to twenty-five students is manageable and can generate a good discussion. Typically, groups large than thirty become difficult to facilitate, since some members of the group might not...

Many things happen in a class that are related not only to teaching and learning, but to group process. Is a class a group? Yes, I am sure that the members of a class that meets with regularity are part of a group. Group workers (as teachers, we too are group workers) are aware that groups have a life of their own, where both process and product are important. People in a group react to factors that can interfere with learning. Groups provide support and resources to their members. In every group/class the following might be familiar: the monopolizer who...

As instructors, we frequently face disappointment in how students handle reading assignments, seminar presentations and examinations, yet often they receive little guidance in how to prepare for these tasks. While students learn by doing, there is nevertheless a tradeoff in class time wasted or lacklustre discussions and poorly presented seminars. Commercial handbooks are expensive and unlikely to address the precise concerns of students or your particular agenda of expectations. Some instructors solve the problem by eliminating seminar reports from their evaluation schemes, but this doesn’t really help the students and merely passes the problem on to future instructors.

A better...

The office hour is an ambiguous area in the teaching assistant — student relationship. Some teaching assistants (TAs) see the office hour as the best time to grade written work; others use it as an opportunity to socialize with other TAs; still others regard the office hour as something to be avoided altogether. The problem arises from the fact that this block of time is unstructured and traditionally has not been given a distinct function other than to ensure that the TA is “made available” to the student.

As a result, the office hour is often associated with crisis occasions – some...

Despite teacher desire to focus on course content, especially at university, I would contend that power is always part of the curriculum.¹ Acknowledging the centrality of power to the teaching-learning process not only shifts attention away from the content, but also unsettles certain notions of what constitutes progressive teaching; at the same time, it opens up possibilities for reorganizing classrooms and creates the foundation for vibrant teaching and learning experiences. This article, then, argues in favour of proactive interventionist strategies to deal with power dynamics and demonstrates how the absence of such an approach can undermine even apparently progressive practices,...

It can wreck classes. It manifests itself in class discussions when no one participates. It is apparent in essays and exams. If no one has done the reading, a tutorial drags on for a very long time.

In preparing this article, I discovered that there are probably as many approaches to getting students to do reading assignments as there are teachers. While methods vary, our goal is common — we want students to want to read. Here, then, are a bunch of carrots (and a couple of sticks).

Choose readings appropriate for your students. Select works that illustrate the main ideas of...

In several of my fourth-year seminar classes, I have experimented with what I call the checklist approach for encouraging students to do the required and suggested readings for each class. Each week at the beginning of the seminar, I pass around a checklist with the students’ names along the left-hand side and all the required and suggested readings for that week along the top. It is quite easy to generate each week’s checklist. I have a list of my students in my computer. (I usually download these from the university student information system, but someone without such a facility could...

“You can’t tell a book by its cover,” according to the old proverb. Many people do, however. In the 1950s, some women looked on paperback stands for covers featuring two women. This was the coded design of the lesbian pulp romance. Students also respond to titles, covers, dust jackets and prefaces when they decide how much time and effort to put into their course texts. I propose that we workwithstudents’ tendency to judge these overt signals, as a means to critically introduce controversial topics and engage students in how meanings are formed. My example here is lesbian material...

Our culture worships speed and our breakneck academic pace mirrors this addiction all too well. One of the results of this is that the majority of our students read poorly; that is, they read to find out “what happens” (or in some disciplines to extract a few key principles) and ignore almost everything else they could learn if they read with greater awareness. McCluhan’s suggestion that the medium is the message goes largely unheeded by most of our students and consequently few of them read critically. What follows is a brief description of one exercise I use at the beginning...

My tutoring of students at York University’s Centre for Academic Writing has made me very aware of the fact that writing assignments that seem relatively straightforward to us can be difficult for even bright students. The writing of an essay involves a very complicated series of processes. Students might perform poorly in the general task only because they run into some hurdle early in the process and just do not have, or know how to apply, the particular strategy that would allow them to overcome it. Sometimes the hurdle arises not so much because they lack a specific cognitive skill...

As teachers, many of us encourage our students to collaborate with each other to enhance their learning process, but sometimes overlook similar opportunities for collaboration ourselves. Happily, the experiment in student writing and learning groups that a colleague and I initiated in 1993 suggests that sharing resources and expertise across teaching units can lead to mutual advantage.

The idea for the writing/learning groups came from a Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education conference session given by faculty and students from the writing centre at Trent University. They outlined a model for establishing small writing groups among students enroled...

Each academic year, instructors and librarians see a new crop of students who arrive at university with few or no skills in library literature searching. Yet most instructors expect that their students will be able to do a literature search to find sources for essays or other assignments. The successful undergraduate literature search is a complex process involving several levels of skill and judgement. The widespread use of diverse information retrieval technologies complicates the process even more. For students whose only previous experience in library research might have been using the clippings files in their high-school library, an academic library...

Responding to students’ writing is among the most challenging tasks facing a teaching assistant or inexperienced instructor. We all know the intense frustration of trying to make sense of the fractured prose of students who we know are interested in the class and are doing the readings, yet who lack the skills to articulate their understanding. When facing their papers, how do we begin to address the tangle of difficulties that compete for our attention? Teaching assistants trying to complete a graduate program have probably all felt a conflict between the time spent on their studies and the time spent...

Many of my colleagues outside the York University Faculty of Arts Centre for Academic Writing sometimes confess that they have no clear image of what happens once their students enrol for one-on-one writing instruction. How, they ask, does one-on-one teaching differ from the individual conferences they often hold with students during office hours? Why, they wonder, do some students already enroled at the centre still hand in flawed assignments, and how can course directors and writing instructors work together to help students articulate their ideas in clear and persuasive ways?

Perhaps context is the most significant difference between one-on-one tutoring...

For many of us, evaluating our students’ writing is a necessary but often frustrating task. Given the time and energy that we spend commenting on our students’ essays, it is understandable that we feel the reward should be greater, that our students should pay more attention to our advice than many seem to do. After all, it is in their own best interests to become better, more effective writers. However, the next batch of essays provides fresh evidence that many of our students possess a virtual immunity to our evaluation of their work. Their writing improves, at best, only marginally....

Marking is not mechanical work, unless the format of the assignment is multiple choice. You do need to exercise good judgement. Even in mathematics, there are usually several ways to solve a problem and there could be more than one correct answer. In one workshop I conducted, I asked teaching assistants to mark several sample solutions to a test. Different teaching assistants gave very different grades for identical answers and they all had good reasons for doing so. There is no absolute standard for which you must aim, but there are strategies you can use that will enable you to...

It is seldom that professors have the opportunity to reflect on the nature, organization and intent of their teaching. We often are too close to the task of teaching to see the “me” behind it.

In this short reflection on my teaching I attempt to step back and see the “me” in what I do. I relate my beliefs about the teacher – learner relationship, examine the various roles I play as a teacher and probe the practical meanings of my view of teaching. In this last regard I focus on the evaluative process in teaching. I show why and how...

There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, about the introduction of medicare in Scandinavia. In one country, let us say Norway, the government gave doctors a range of different methods for receiving payment and all doctors were allowed individually to choose ones for themselves. Another country, let us say Sweden, announced one payment plan to be applied to all doctors alike. Only one country’s doctors went on strike. Which one it would be is entirely predictable.

Perhaps the Norwegian doctors were too busy mulling over the various schemes to work up sufficient irritation to fuel a strike, but as teachers we can...

In 1990, I had the good fortune of attending a week-long workshop on Classroom Assessment Techniques, based on the work of Patricia Cross and Tom Angelo.¹ Though I was familiar with many of the teaching techniques presented at the workshop, the logic of classroom assessment was new to me and I found it a compelling approach to thinking about teaching and improving student learning in my classes. After the workshop, I found myself thinking about teaching in entirely new ways and was inspired to adapt existing assessment techniques and develop some new ones for my political science classes.²

Classroom assessment...

The two stories that follow were contributed to Core, York’s Newsletter on University Teaching, in reaction to the publication of an article describing the One-Minute Paper¹. Each story documents the unexpected nature of the feedback the technique can elicit from students and the power this gives the instructors to modify their teaching.

What I’ve been reading recently about the One-Minute Paper finally convinced me I really had to try it. The notion of a cheap and simple tool that offered instant feedback, for both students and teacher, was irresistible. I decided to use a One-Minute paper during a two-hour class...

In its most basic form, the question for the One-Minute Paper is usually brief and focused: “What was the most important point you learned in today’s lecture?”; “What was the muddiest point?”; or “Do you have any outstanding questions?” Cross and Angelo (1988,148–50) provide a good summary of the One-Minute Paper and argue that it is one of the easiest and most effective of classroom assessment techniques.¹ However, they also encourage faculty to “adapt” classroom assessment techniques such as the One-Minute Paper to suit their specific needs, and many faculty have done so.

For example, Kloss (1993) varied the...

Although they are less common than other forms of course surveys, formative evaluation surveys can be extremely effective teaching aids. Formative evaluations conducted during a course provide instructors with opportunities to gauge progress towards course objectives, to encourage student feedback and to reinforce information communicated in outlines and classroom discussions. More than that, they hold out the promise of engaging students and instructors in a constructive dialogue that can advance teaching and learning aspirations while enriching shared experiences in the classroom.

The formative evaluation is one of several types of course and instruction surveys. In some instances, students and instructors...

You design the course. You deliver the course. At the end, the students evaluate the course. Along the way, a few of them let you know how things are going. You ask for more comments but few are forthcoming. Result: you receive summative feedback, useful for redesigning the course for a future offering, but you lack formative feedback that will help you improve the current version on a week-by-week basis.

Perhaps this experience is typical, perhaps not. It was for me until a few years ago. I found it difficult to find out, as the course progressed, whether and what...

For many instructors, year-end evaluations provide the main source of student feedback on course content and on our own performance. Whatever the advantages or limitations of this exercise, two things seem clear: it does not always communicate what is really on students’ minds, and communication occurs at a point when opportunity for timely response to student concerns is obviated. Over the past few years I have come to rely on more informal strategies for student feedback, both as a complement to formal evaluations and as compensation in their absence. Though rather simple exercises, they elicit sometimes surprising responses.

In the...

Peer pairing is a process by which two instructors are teamed for the purpose of providing each other with mutual support and feedback on their teaching effectiveness. It was developed by Joseph Katz and run successfully for several years through the New Jersey Institute of Collegiate Teaching and Learning at Seton Hall University (Katz and Henry 1988). The essence of peer pairing is that the partners take turns, for a set period of time, observing each other teach, conducting student interviews in order to deepen their understanding of how to help each other improve, providing constructive feedback and acting as...

The peer-pairing observational model provides a framework on which to base enquiry into the complexities of teacher-student interaction. Regardless of discipline-specific concerns, there are general issues that can be shared by colleagues from any field. Although many peer-pairing experiences successfully involve paired colleagues from different academic units, the instructors in French studies felt that they needed to address specific teaching and learning issues related to second-language teaching. Given the complexity of our task as teachers, it is often impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of our delivery in the classroom. Inviting a colleague to regularly observe our classroom can provide meaningful...