Each semester I teach, I always have one or two students who do not seem to fit in with the rest of the class members. Perhaps the other class members do not fit in well with the one or two! Anyway... Pedagogically, I use a fair amount of group work. Often this interaction can bring students together, but I had one female student last semester who could not seem to get in tune with the other class members. She was quite intelligent, but I never could find an adequate way to include her in most class activities. I have taught for 22 years, and I still cannot overcome this problem. One way suggested to me by faculty mentors was to make it clear in the syllabus that group work was expected and this admonition should be adequate to make students aware of anticipated classroom interactions. I suppose the thinking is that a student could drop the class after the first day if s/he did not like the modus operandi. Still I do not like this method. Still I have no solution either.
Joel
Comments (1)
I think anyone who has taught for any length of time has experienced this Joel. You are certainly not alone. I have struggled for years with this in my labs where group work is a must. If you look around working with groups and teams is a prominent part of many work environments and so I worry that these students will struggle later. Add to that the increasing tendency of globalization to give us team mates who are different from us and it becomes even more difficult for those students.
Posted by Christy Forrest | June 22, 2009 8:58 PM
Posted on June 22, 2009 20:58