TABLE 2.
Example instances of Positively Phrased Instructor Talk
| Subcategory | Example instance | |
|---|---|---|
| Building the Instructor/Student Relationship | Demonstrating Respect for Students | “I’m not going to give you 20 pages to read over the weekend. It’ll be short. Maybe one page, not 20 pages. No. Not 20 pages! 1–1.5 pages. It’s doable. The point is I’ll definitely do something that is doable, not impossible for you because everybody has other things to do, other classes, personal life, job, so I understand that as well.”—Study 1: Whole Course |
| “And in terms of textbooks, I don’t have you buy a book. I try to keep it on the cheap for you, because I know you’re all sort of literally starving students with tuition and having to take extra semesters and all of that.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Revealing Secrets to Success | “I can’t emphasize enough that going over those index cards and after that, getting a chance to talk to somebody else about this biology, even if it’s only about some of the stuff we studied, I think that’s really going to serve you well.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “Those of you who haven’t seen it, look at it. Start prepping. Start thinking about it. And what I recommend doing is first just thinking about the topics, and jotting down notes; building and sort of brainstorming. And then you can start sort of framing, and then you’re going to want to get the flow.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Boosting Self-Efficacy | “So I’ve seen all of you working hard in this class I’ve seen all of you reading critically and reading well through your reading reflections that I’ve been reading and I’ve seen you addressing sort of broad open-ended questions and making arguments for things in your index cards, so I know that you’re very well set up to do well on this so, if you can bring all those skills to bear, you’ll be in very very good shape.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “So you have done a lot of writing at this point. I’m sure it feels like it. So I want to take a few minutes at the beginning of class to highlight some of your progress, because I think it’s really easy to just keep doing it and keep doing it and not realize that you’re actually making progress and that things are looking good.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Establishing Classroom Culture | Preframing Classroom Activities | “Take a moment now to check in with somebody nearby, and compare what you’ve got, and make sure you’ve got something to fill in, some example to put in each of these locations. Because what I’ll do in a moment is I’ll randomly call on people to offer an example for each part of the table.”—Study 1: Whole Course |
| “One thing I like to do in these classes is have people talk to each other and discuss problems, and take apart problems that I show. So, just to get started, because you’re going to be talking to each other a lot, I’d like to start with this simple index card exercise that I always do.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Practicing Scientific Habits of Mind | “That was really fun to read because it’s interesting to see people really challenging the text and not just taking for granted what they’re reading but interacting with it and saying like, ‘Well Ok, what do I really buy of this? What evidence do I take away?’”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “You’re going to use the evidence and ask questions with your card and be skeptical. Ask those questions.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Building a Biology Community among Students | “So, if you don’t have a note card, this is a great time to meet your neighbor. Introduce yourself and ask them if you can borrow a note card, and pay them back next week.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “We’re going to first try to understand this by having a common experience, because it’s often helpful to do something together here in class and then talk about it, because then we all have the same experience.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Giving Credit to Colleagues | “I wrote my outline, I didn’t know exactly how (the guest lecturer) was going to present it. When you have a guest lecturer, you let them present the material. I just told her what she was going to present. And I know it’s a little different but it’s actually really cool to get other people’s way of explaining things and all of that in my opinion.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “It’s also written by one of my colleagues, so give her some props for that. She took my notes and a bunch of the other instructors’ notes and put them together—aggregating, as it were. Very well written.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Indicating It Is Okay to Be Wrong or Disagree | “These are the kind of activities we’re going to do all the time. So, I want you do like they did, and take a risk and go up there and who cares if it’s wrong, now’s the time to know if you have misconceptions or if something isn’t right.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “Do you agree or disagree, and why? And this is written so that they’re actually—neither answer is completely technically correct. So, you are totally advised to argue one way or the other on it.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Explaining Pedagogical Choices | Supporting Learning through Teaching Choices | “All of these are tools to try to get you a little bit more comfortable with something that you can’t normally see, so having an animation is really helpful for a lot of students.”—Study 1: Whole Course |
| “All right, learning outcomes. I’ll try and start classes with learning outcomes. These are the things that I am going to be testing on. These are the things that after you—after each class, and you leave this room, I want you to know.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Using Student Work to Drive Teaching Choices | “In a big class like this I usually don’t get to talk to every student every day when we have class. But if I have you write something down really quick, then I can actually hear from all of you, and it gives me a much more equal and equitable feel for what’s going on in the class and what’s going on in your heads. So it allows me to hear from everybody and adjust to what’s going on in the class and adjust to your needs.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “I looked over your index cards from last week, the review card, where I asked you guys what the difference is between DNA genes. And, again, came up with some common mistakes or misconceptions that people wrote down. So, I wanted to kind of go over a few of the more common ones here.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Connecting Biology to the Real World and Career | “Okay, so you can be an advocate for yourself and know how long it takes to get over a cold and how long it takes to get over a flu. And go see the doctor if you’re really nervous but make sure you ask the questions, ‘Oh do you actually see evidence of a bacterial infection?’ And watch their eyes go.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “The first semester I taught, we did extra credit, and I had you—I had people review an article from the news because I find that one of the things that I hope that you get out of this class, if you get nothing else out of this class, is a little bit more awareness of how science impacts your life.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Discussing How People Learn | “I think we learn best by our own experiences, more so than me talking about it. So experience all this.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “Some of the old ways that we think learning works or happens research is showing are not really very effective methods. For example, if I just stand up here for 2 hours and talk at you and lecture to you, and you sit there and listen to me, only ∼10% of what I say gets into your head. That’s a really, really small amount of information. And so, there’s a lot of new research out there, educational research that shows that there are different ways that make learning more effective.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Fostering Learning for the Long Term | “I like this example for a number of reasons. Because it gets at our theme of learning I guess for this first day and it relates to our goal to have authentic and lasting learning.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “If you couldn’t remember at the end of the class what you learned in the beginning, then the learning is really quite useless, right? Because we really hope that you’ll remember 5 years from now.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Sharing Personal Experiences | Recounting Personal Information/Anecdotes | “Sometimes, I don’t know if you guys have ever had this happen, but sometimes when I’m making salad at home and I cut open tomatoes, I see the inside of tomatoes, sometimes the seeds have started sprouting.”—Study 1: Whole Course |
| “When it was raining, like the day after, my allergies just flare up.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Relating to Student Experiences | “I’m definitely somebody who, when I read a textbook, I definitely glaze over. I just end up reading the same paragraph 50 times before I even understand it at all.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “Everything is anonymous, so when I was a student, I hated to raise my hand and answer questions. This makes you not have to do that. Everybody answers the question and no one has to be like nervous to talk in front of the class, so I think it’s amazing.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Unmasking Science | Being Explicit about the Nature of Science | “It is absolutely a fool’s errand to think that politics, morals, etcetera, don’t play a role in the field of science.”—Study 1: Whole Course |
| “Part of science is standing on the shoulders of giants. Has anybody heard that term before? That means we are not the first ones that have started learning stuff, right? We are using the knowledge of other people.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Promoting Diversity in Science | “In the past, science has not been a terribly diverse place. And that’s not because it’s not meant to be a diverse place. In fact, there are a lot of well-known studies that show that teams of scientists from diverse backgrounds are better problem-solvers than a team of homogeneous scientists or from similar backgrounds. So, it turns out this is a critical piece to science.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “And not only that, you should be able to communicate effectively with diverse groups as well.”—Study 2: Sampling Method | ||
| Fostering Wonder | “Every time I see the inside of the heart, see the AV valves, the semilunar valves, it just, I think they’re amazing to look at, and see the real thing.”—Study 1: Whole Course | |
| “I think the labs are really, really cool, so I’m excited about them. And I’m excited for you guys to get to go through them.”—Study 2: Sampling Method |