David's original, comments, and final draft

Invited by changing leave patterns in the department to teach Statistical Methods in Economics for the first time in 10 years, my first reaction was to run for the hills (1). But, from the security of a tenured position, I found myself excited by the prospect of drawing on the host of pedagogical approaches and technologies I've encountered since then (2). Extracting a promise to be able to teach the course several times over the next few years, I jumped into the fray. This paper is a progress report. My goal is to apply the idea of the differentiated learning classroom, a hot topic in the K-12 pedagogical literature (Gregory 2002; Tomlinson 1999), to introductory statistics. I set learning goals, then sought the best strategies for facilitating students reaching them while still leaving me with a life (3).

(1) Student anxiety and antipathy to the material often translates into low evaluations for the professor.

(2) The Journal of Economic Education, Journal of Statistics Education, and Teaching Statistics are rich sources as are regular features devoted to pedagogy in American Statistician and Southern Economic Journal.

(3) "Having a life" meant for me that no one course, however exciting, can interfere with engagement with students in other courses, ongoing scholarship, participation in institutional governance, being present to family and friends, service to community, relationship with God, and opportunities for therapeutic laziness.

Comments:

Deborah: Your use of the term "therapeutic laziness" set me to thinking (again) about use of words - I think I know exactly what you mean by the term - which I might name 'self-care' - and I am caught by wanting to reject the negatively loaded word 'laziness' and wondering if linking it with 'therapeutic' redeems it sufficiently for the minds that are so set on work and productivity!

Anne: I so like the lightness w/ which you write; the jocular tone, the sense of a man writing who wants (and insists on having) a life, your sense of the gap between your ideal and what you could actually do, the tension of wanting to run this new experiment well and the real limits of time and energy are well conveyed...

A few false notes: the first footnote, which says you were afraid of this course because you might get low evaluations. I was surprised: I expected fear because you didn't know how to do it/were afraid you couldn't do it well...is your own final grade really so important? And does tenure really help you not value it so much?

Conventional reader: I wonder if you want this much personal revelation in this context. Rather than detail the different aspects of your life, might you convey the same sentiment with a phrase such as "without overwhelming myself completely"?

Revised Draft:

In preparing to teach introductory statistics, you've brought all your lectures, reading assignments, problem sets and exams up to date. The semester is laid out like a carefully mapped journey you have taken in the past and will take again. Still, you resonate uncomfortably with the fact that many of your students don't really want to be here, in a required course that seems so disconnected from the ideas and methods of analysis that drew them to economics. You fear that once again many students will fail to earn merit grades, driving away prospective majors and depressing your student course evaluations and sense of vocation. Perhaps this year the students will be better.

How many teachers of introductory statistics have had similar thoughts before the academic year begins? How many would like to change this dynamic? When, as a result of changing leave patterns in the Economics Department at Bryn Mawr College and after a ten year's absence, I was asked to return to Statistical Methods in Economics, I wanted to create for myself and for the students a different experience than the one described above. Excited by the prospect of drawing on the host of pedagogical approaches and technologies I've encountered over the last several years (2), and having extracted a promise to be able to teach the course several times over the next few years, I took up the challenge. This paper is a progress report.

My approach was to set learning goals, then seek the best strategies for facilitating students reaching them while still leaving me with a life.

(Full texts of both David's working draft and his submitted paper are also available on-line.)

Return to Once Upon a Time: The Satisfying Experiment of a Quaker Writing Group