Teaching and Advising Portfolio -- Specific Goals

Peter Taylor, April 1995

One half of my teaching and advising portfolio consists of "exhibits" selected to illustrate the important characteristics, themes, and products of my teaching and advising. This WWW document [proper links still in development] includes only the cover pages that introduce the exhibits. They are grouped in sections under three overall pedagogical goals.

[See also Portfolio Table of contents and Personal Home page]

1. Reciprocal animation
I promote strong two-way interaction between the sciences and interpretations from S&TS;disciplines. The ways I do this are demonstrated in two exhibits:
A: Model courses, which break down the barriers among the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities; and between the sciences and S&TS.
;B: Publications resulting from linking my scholarship and teaching.

2. Critical thinking
I encourage students to contrast the paths taken by science, society, learning, and people's lives with other paths that might be taken, and to base actions upon the insights gained. To promote critical thinking my teaching and advising emphasizes:
A: Writing for learning, in contrast with writing to show what a student has learned.
B: Making comments on writing in ways that stimulate rethinking and revision.
C: Exposing the constructedness of teaching and learning; acknowledging the variety of ways people develop questions and come to know what they know.
D: Teaching/learning as a joint dynamic; both learning and teaching benefit from teachers and students viewing the class from both the teacher's side and the students'.
E: Empowerment to act upon critical thinking, building students' confidence to go beyond simply adopting a critical position.
F: Advising towards lifelong learning.
G: Facilitating trans-disciplinary exploration.

3. On-going development of pedagogy.
My commitment to developing S&TS;teaching over the long term has led me to experiment, innovate and develop better ways to learn from teaching about teaching and learning. This is evident in my:
A: Developing a large range of S&TS;courses.
B: Experimental courses and experimenting within courses to develop pedagogical approaches specifically tuned to S&TS;and its open-ended state as a field.
C. On-going development of courses.
D: Varieties of course evaluation, integrated into the teaching/learning process.
E: Promotion of teacher-teacher interaction, especially a teaching co-op among graduate students and faculty.


1. Reciprocal animation
I promote strong two-way interaction between the sciences and interpretations from S&TS;disciplines. The ways I do this are described in the introduction to the portfolio and demonstrated in the two exhibits that follow.

A: Model courses, which break down the barriers among the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities; and between the sciences and S&TS.
;
Exhibit i) Introduction to the syllabus for B&Soc;460/ Rur. Soc. 660/ S&TS;660, "Social Analysis of Ecological Change." Note the course goals. The full syllabus is included in section I.5.

Exhibit ii) The first section of the Course notes/ Teachers' manual for B&Soc;301/ BioSciences 301/ S&TS;401, "Biology and Society: The Social Construction of Life." The full package of course notes is available on request.

B: Publications resulting from my linking scholarship and teaching.

i) The work of the development psychologist, John Bowlby, has been applauded by two opposing historians of psychology; one a Marxist, the other a sociobiologist. In the course of trying to resolve this paradox, I came across Bowlby's account of research on the origins of severe depression in working class London women. I recognized that, if I extended it a little, I could use his account in my "Social Construction of Life" to illustrate how we can move, not only beyond genetic or environmental determinist accounts of behavior, but also beyond interactionist statements such as "behavior is partly genetic and partly environmental." Bowlby's account serves as an effective way to introduce in the first class of the course the sense of social construction that runs throughout.
Using Bowlby's account in my teaching led to my incorporating it in science studies talks to explore, by analogy, a sense of social construction that was neither realist nor relativist. The analogy now forms one section (included here) of "Building on construction: An exploration of heterogeneous constructionism, using an analogy from psychology and a sketch from socio-economic modeling." Perspectives on Science: 3 (1): 66-98.

ii) The synthesis in my "Social Analysis of Ecological Change" seminar of material from the different disciplines and the two angles is novel (see course description and II.1.A above). While teaching this course in Mexico during the summer of 1992, I began to draft a paper which has now been published as "The social analysis of ecological change: From systems to intersecting processes." Social Science Information 34(1): 5-30, 1995 and as "El análisis social del cambio ecológico," in J. Jardon (ed.). Recursos, Energía y Cambio Social. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1995 (both versions co-authored with R. García Barrios).


2. Critical thinking
I encourage students to contrast the paths taken by science, society, learning, and people's lives with other paths that might be taken, and to base actions upon the insights gained. To promote critical thinking my teaching and advising emphasizes the features described in the seven sections that follow.


A: Writing for learning, in contrast with writing to show what a student has learned.

In all my courses, I have assigned written work to be submitted every week or every other week. Assignments often prepare students for a topic in advance of it being discussed in class, and, even when assignments follow the class, they are designed so that the students develop their critical thinking and skills of analysis and synthesis. The "Course requirements and mechanics" section in the Course notes for Biology and Society 301 (see exhibit II.A.1.ii) reviews the range of writing modes used in that course, and the "Assignments and study questions" sections for each class illustrate the kinds of writing assigned. In graduate seminars I require thought pieces on the readings to be brought to class so that students have focused their thoughts and prepared themselves to contribute to the discussion. In recent years I have made more use of in-class writing in both undergraduate and graduate courses for the same purpose.
To illustrate one of the ways that my writing assignments lead students to develop their own thinking, I have included here the schedule of writing assignments for Biology and Society 300, "Investigative Research on the Social Impact of Science.".

B: Making comments on writing in ways that stimulate rethinking and revision.

Students rarely revise their written work before submitting it and they rarely rethink and revise their work in response to the instructor's comments, however detailed these are. While students learn quite a lot from having to write about a topic, they would learn far more if revision were integrated into their work, both before submitting their assignments and after. As I state in a handout on revision: "I don't think you really understand something until you are able to convey it to someone else. Moreover, you shouldn't expect to work out your ideas in one attempt -- everyone needs to revise!"
In my courses, I have always provided extensive comments, and accept revised assignments. During the last five years, I have developed my approach to commenting and revision.
At first I would distribute a handout (included here) on the importance of revision. In my graduate courses and in the undergraduate research course I insisted on seeing a draft of term papers and required students to revise in response to the comments that I made. In my Biology & Society core course I began to require every student to revise and resubmit a certain fraction (now 40%) of their papers. To facilitate commenting and to encourage students to learn by solving expository problems for themselves, I developed a set of codes or abbreviations (included here). In my Freshman Writing Seminar I now require students to run through my comments soon after the assignments are returned and indicate how they would address the comments. In this course and my core course the grade received for any revised assignment is based on the amount of revision done. (This system is described in the Course notes for the core course; see exhibit II.1.A.ii).
Although I still consider that I have some distance to go before achieving the "return" on my comments that I desire, some of the reports from the undergraduate research course of Spring 94 were transformed over the succession of revisions. I have included here the sequence of assignments of one of these students, Noe Copley-Woods, then a sophomore.

C: Exposing the constructedness of teaching and learning, and acknowledging the variety of ways that people develop questions and come to know what they know.

In teaching critical thinking it is important to model it during classes. One way that I do this is by making evident the past, present and on-going development of my thinking, not just its polished products. This applies to my thinking about both the process and the content of my courses. When students appreciate the range of different elements with which their teacher constructs his thinking, they are more likely to reflect upon the analogous constructedness of their own learning and understanding. Moreover, although my exerience and my power means that I cannot help being an authority, I want the effects of this authority to be open for discussion and reflection. In general, I find that by acknowledging the variety of ways people develop questions and come to know what they know, students learn more effectively and contribute more cooperatively to the learning of the other members of the class, myself included. This comes out strongly in 1994 course evaluations for Biology and Society 300; 460/660, and S&TS;662.
I made this constructedness was particularly explicit during last fall's S&TS;662, "Science and Social Theory" seminar (see syllabus). I have included here the introduction to the narrative I wrote when it was my turn to review the course material to date (see requirement 5 in the syllabus).

D: Teaching/learning as a joint dynamic; both learning and teaching benefit from teachers and students viewing the class from both the teacher's side and the students'.

In my graduate seminars students take turns leading the class, but this does not mean reading out a commentary on the readings. Instead I expect discussion leaders to stimulate and guide discussion. I meet with them once or twice beforehand to help them formulate a discussion plan. I also encourage my undergraduate students to appreciate their role in the teaching/learning process. I often schedule "debriefing" sessions after classes, during which two or three students comment on the particular class and on the progress of the course to date. In recent years students in my Biology & Society core course also take turns to observe and report on the teaching/learning dynamics of their sections. I include here the guide I provide for reporting on sections.

E: Empowerment to act upon critical thinking, building students' confidence to go beyond simply adopting a critical position.

I want students to leave my courses with strong critical thinking skills (see Introduction to the portfolio). One of the ways that I promote this is taking them seriously as individuals, beginning with my learning and using students' names, even in a large class, usually by the end of the second week. Of course, it is not possible to sustain a truly individual-individual interaction with each student. However, through increased use of small group discussions and peer commentary in both undergraduate and graduate courses, I am having considerable success in bringing out many students' voices. As a consequence, I also find that students' evaluations of my courses include more detailed and penetrating observations than those I have seen for other teachers (see also section II.3. D).
The first exhibit I have included here (at the back of this portfolio) is the 1994 compilation of research reports from Biology and Society 300, "Investigative Research on the Social Impact of Science." These reports result from our guiding students through all the stages of research from defining a manageable project through to formal presentations of their findings (see section I.3). In many of them students demonstrate that a critical appreciation of science does not have to wait until one becomes an expert in the relevant field. In a lighter vein, the second exhibit is an overhead produced by a few students when they took over the stage to deliver their evaluation of this course.

F: Advising towards lifelong learning.

I have been one of the core undergraduate advisors in the Biology & Society major. This major's unique extra-departmental and intercollege structure makes it an advising-intensive major. So, in addition to having an average of ten personal advisees, other Biology & Society majors bring their questions to me. Until we lost the room, half of my office hours would be held down at the Biology and Society offices, and my office hours continue to advertized as open for general Biology and Society advising. Most undergraduates see Biology & Society as an opportunity to pursue a biology or pre-med education while also exploring concerns about science, healthcare, environment and society. Usually their concerns are ill-defined at the outset. The most important quality of my undergraduate advising has been my willingness to assist students in clarifying their interests and career choices (see first letter included here).
The "Investigative Research" course has been another venue for students to envision their careers in relation to their specific social concerns. Almost all of the students of the 1994 class indicated that the course had stimulated and motivated them to make future investigations (see 1994 evaluation included in section I.3). My openness to students explorations has also led me to supervise independent studies and thesis research for undergraduates on topics from soil erosion to science curriculum development. The latter independent study, for example, formed a key step in the path of Corinne McKamey, who at the time of she took my core course thought she was headed towards a medical career. Instead she became committed to the goal of bringing more girls into science, went on after graduation to train in a program for teaching science through hands on activities, which she now does within the constraints of working at the toughest margins of a big city (see second letter included here). In a different direction, Carla Keirns, while officially a genetics major, was bitten by the science and society bug as a sophomore in my core course, and I encouraged her to take more S&TS;courses. She went on to become one of S&TS's;first "inputs" to a sister graduate program.

G: Facilitating trans-disciplinary exploration.

Undergraduate advising is, almost by definition, trans-disciplinary (see the previous section). However, this turns out to be true also for advising many graduate students, including some within S&TS,;for whom "science and technology studies" signifies something broader and less defined than the specialities of S&TS;faculty. My strength as a graduate adviser is that I am always prepared to help students explore their wider intellectual interests, and back up such exploration with detailed bibliographies and connections to colleagues outside Cornell (see sample A exams bibliography included here). When the students settle on their topics, I provide detailed comments on drafts of their proposals and dissertations chapters.
It is not a straightforward matter to strike the appropriate student-specific balance between facilitating transdisciplinary exploration and keeping students close to established disciplinary lines. Advising our students to adopt a disciplinary identity usually does not do justice to the motivations that brought them to S&TS,;nor, for that matter, to the motivations that led many of us to get involved in forming this separate field of S&TS.; Furthermore, the harsh reality is that a disciplinary identity by itself will not allow S&TS;students to compete on an equal footing with students who have come through the conventional disciplines; S&TS;will have to do special work to secure faculty positions. To help our students do special work, I think that the trans- or, at least, interdisciplinary seeds they bring to S&TS;need to be cultivated. In 1993, building on the interdisciplinarity discussion group I had organized, I drafted and circulated the discussion paper (included here) on S&TS;Graduate Training. This paper addresses the challenge of training graduate students whose work spans the conventional disciplines and at the same time recognizing that some respect for the disciplines is needed if they are to secure academic employment. I also developed the "contract" for my graduate advisees (also included here), with the aim of making expectations explicit early on in the adviser/advisee relationship.
The two students for whom I have served as committee chair wanted to expand the scope of what constitutes S&TS;and identified me as an S&TS;faculty member who would support this. Kavita Philip wanted to expose the mutual construction of resource management, anthropology, and indigenous knowledge systems in colonial India, while Linda Langford wanted to do Participatory Action Research related to technology in everyday life. Linda eventually decided that her interests could not fit in the field, but Kavita is now completing her dissertation and has just accepted the first S&TS;faculty position offered to one of our department's graduate students.


3. On-going development of pedagogy.

My commitment to developing S&TS;teaching over the long term has led me to experiment, innovate and develop better ways to learn from teaching about teaching and learning. This is evident in five features of my work that are described in the following sections.

A: Developing a large range of S&TS;courses.

Taking into account the small number of S&TS;faculty and the fact that it is a field in formation, I considered it important to offer a wider range for S&TS.; Counting the two different themes for the "Science and Social Theory" seminar and the statistics course for the summer school, I have, in effect, developed eight courses at Cornell. In addition, when my course load was 2 and 1, I supervised three multi-person graduate student reading courses. I have also supervised a number of other independent studies, but after S&TS;was formed and I moved to a 2 and 2 course load, these have been less frequent. Descriptions of these courses and independent studies are included in part I of the portfolio.
Each of my courses also involves a high number of formal and other regularly scheduled contact hours. The average over 18 courses in 10 teaching semesters is 4.6 hours/ week (see summary included here). I established this pattern when my course load was only 2 and 1, but I continued it with a 2 and 2 load for three reasons: i) To meet the different pedagogical challenges of these courses (see part I and the other sections of part II of this portfolio) ; ii) It would have been a considerable undertaking to redesign these courses for a different number of class hours once they were "up and running"; iii) The statuatory colleges, in which some of these courses are cross-listed, require one contact hour for each credit.


B: Experimental courses and experimenting within courses to develop pedagogical approaches specifically tuned to S&TS;and its open-ended state as a field.

To further my pedagogical goals of promoting critical thinking and reciprocal animation I have sought out and incorporated a range of classroom techniques; developed a large suite of original courses; involved students in assessing these courses and suggesting changes; and encouraged students to experiment in their discussion leading. The exhibits included here are from my Fall 1994 S&TS;662 graduate seminar on the theme "Changing Life in the Old and New World Dis/orders":
i) The introductory material from the syllabus; and
ii) A video compilation by Pablo Boczkowski, "On being human," with which he introduced discussion for the meeting on cyborgs.
See also the introduction to the narrative (exhibit II. 2. C), which I composed for this course when it was my turn (course requirement 5 in the syllabus).

C. On-going development of courses.

My courses develop a) in response to new developments in the sciences and S&TS;interpretations of those sciences; b) as I address the difficulties and challenges of teaching critical thinking; and c) in repsonse to suggestions from students. Following the recommendation of Cornell's Office of Instructional Support, I began in 1992 to document this process of development in a Teaching Notebook. At the same time I entered proposed changes to each course syllabus directly into a revised version on my computer. (My syllabi also describe the course mechanics.) Other kinds of development work I added to a "to do" list for each course. Of course, some of my handwritten annotations made during class remained only on my class notes, not transcribed into these computer files. After a semester I decided that the computer files provided the most efficient kind of record for on-going development of courses, and I discontinued the Teaching Notebook. Although this left me without a week-to-week record of the development of my teaching, the first three exhibits included here convey the effort I put into self-assessment of my courses and thinking about improvements:
i) The Teaching Notebook for Spring 1992;
ii) A snapshot from the "to do list" I keep on my computer for Biology and Society 301. (Because these notes were not written to be read by someone else, they will be somewhat cryptic, but they should convey the active process occuring); and
iii) "Complexity without stability, a freshman writing seminar assignment sequence," which describes the process of assessment and revision during the first semester I taught a Freshman writing seminar.
I have also included:
iv) a sheet of recent additions to my slide collection to indicate how my teaching keeps up with new developments in the life sciences.

D: Varieties of course evaluation, integrated into the teaching/learning process.

The course evaluations contained or summarized in part I of this portfolio include only a few standard computerized course evaluations. More often I have used written course evaluations specific to each course and designed with input from the students. In the section labeled "301" in my Teaching Notebook (included with this portfolio) I compare the different kinds of evaluation I had used for Biology and Society 301 up to that time, namely, spring 1992.
Through written evaluations students not only provide more guidance about how to improve teaching, but also reflect on how they can get more from classes. In recent years, before students write their end-of-the-semester course evaluation, we make time for spoken appreciations, reflections of students' responsibility in the course, and suggestions for changes. I also incorporate course evaluation during the semester in the form of:
-- "debriefing" sessions after classes with two to three students;
-- discussion and writing exercises related to the course goals and progress; and
-- student observation and commentaries on the dynamics of their section discussions.
This commitment to integrating evaluation into a teaching/learning process is also evident in this portfolio itself. It is designed to provide many more bases for future interactions with my colleagues about teaching than a standard compilation of course syllabi and evaluations.

The exhibits included here are:
i) Two graduate students' thoughts early on in a course on what makes a good seminar; and
ii) Notes from an end of the semester spoken evaluation session (460/660 in spring 1994).
See also the guide given to students for observing the dynamics of a discussion, included in the section II.2.D.

E: Promotion of teacher-teacher interaction, especially a teaching co-op among graduate students and faculty.

In this spirit of on-going exploration of methods for stimulating critical thinking and inter- and trans-disciplinarity, I have promoted deeper discussion about teaching among receptive colleagues and students. I have felt that it is necessary for faculty and graduate students to share our problems, innovations, and successes in teaching as we do in research and writing. Moreover, colleagues will have to interact around teaching in sustained give-and-take if teaching is truly to become equivalent to research in evaluation of faculty.
For a number of years I have been the S&TS;Freshman Writing Seminars faculty adviser, which enabled me to observe and learn how to comment on graduate student teaching. Building on that experience, I co-organized a "teaching co-op" during the last academic year, that is, a program of graduate students and faculty observing and commenting on each other's classes. The role of observer has, for me, clarified many elements of engaged and engaging teaching. Having others comment on my teaching has also stimulated me, for example, to incorporate a variety of non-traditional modes of interaction into my graduate seminars. I now regularly prime or punctuate seminar discussions with smaller groups analyzing selected texts to present back to the whole seminar. The teaching co-op is, I think, one of the kinds of activity needed if teaching is to become equivalent to and mutually supportive of research and publication in the intellectual mission of faculty and departments.
I have incuded here notes I made while observing the Freshman Wrting Seminar of one graduate student. Although these are cryptic -- they were not written to be read by someone else -- they should convey the active process of interaction that was occuring.
See also the guide to reporting on the teaching/learning dynamics of a section, which I developed with the teaching co-op and which the students in my Biology & Society core course use when they observe and report on their sections (exhibit II.2.D).

Notes About Author, Disclaimers, etc