Being a full-time student for 13 years, the most familiar and unfamiliar profession for us is teacher. I can hardly count how many teachers I have encountered in the 13 years but I can still name some of them who changed me or had a great impact in my life. Why it is “the most familiar” and “unfamiliar” at the same time? The reason is quite simple, so many teachers we have met and so much time they have spent with us make it a familiar profession for us; whereas, different teachers apply different ways of teaching makes it also unfamiliar for us. Course teachers are specialize in teaching and helping students to learn a/some specific course/course. In other word, the familiar part is their duty, while the unfamiliar part is pedagogy.
No matter what pedagogy a teacher applies in his/her teaching, the better one is always the one works better for all students. Thus, there are a lot of professionals looking for better pedagogies by studying students’ performance. I found an interesting paper, Robert Drake’s “When Liking Your Students Empowers Them: A Case Study”, which is discussing a more effective teaching approach through case studying.
According to Felder’s “Student-centered teaching and learning” (2009), most class time is spent with the professor lecturing and the students watching and listening in the traditional approach of college teaching. Now more teachers focus on creating more effective teaching approaches, for example, student-centered teaching methods. These methods shift the focus of activity from the teachers to the learners, and therefore, they are more likely to take the initiative to learn. In his article “When Liking Your Students Empowers Them: A Case Study”, Robert Drake(2010) points out this approach is harder to realize as the class size is getting larger and limited detailed methods provided according to his personal teaching experience. Accordingly, he conducted a questionnaire survey for Historically Black University freshmen to prove his hypothesis that better faculty-student contact results in students’ good academic performance and self-esteem.
According to the author, a questionnaire was submitted to two groups of students who all attended the same course, one of which consisted of two sections where the professors tried to keep a good relationship with the students by making additional non-academic efforts and the other one was made up of six other sections where the professor made no extra non-academic efforts.
The questionnaire consisted of two parts: a closed-ended one, which shows the level of agreement / disagreement on some specific statements reflecting students’ attitudes towards the professor and the course; and an open-ended written comment on these statements. Drake concludes that the combined analysis of the questionnaire and the overall academic performance of the students on this course show that student-faculty relationship based on respect has a positive role in students’ confidence and academic performance.
Drake demonstrates a detailed background of the process of proposing this hypothesis and backs up the significance and operability of this survey with excellent use of all kinds of sources in the introduction. The potential advantages of the student-centered approach, combined with the author’s own teaching experiences, offer readers a better idea on the importance of this issue. Ideas flow from paragraph to paragraph smoothly and logically in this part as Drake organizes these materials coherently.
This survey succeeded in identifying and paralleling most characteristics for the comparison of the two groups, for instance, the elements of the study object, which were the students and the course, suggested by the author. Nevertheless, Drake has neglected to consider another essential element of the study object, the professors. Although at first it seems that non-academic efforts was implemented or not was the only difference between the two groups, it is questionable whether the academic methods used by the professors in different sections were similar to each other enough that these can be ignored when analyzing the data collected through the questionnaires.
Furthermore, the author obviously fails to balance each side of the comparison on quantity. The target group contains two sections while the other one contains six sections. Despite the method Drake used to analyze the data collected through closed-ended part, which was based on the mean of each specific category eliminated the effect on the conclusion caused by this difference, the responses gathered though the open-ended part on each group were imbalanced. Drake’s conclusion might seem more valid if he had equal groups.
The way Drake designed the questionnaire in favor of reaching a more convincing conclusion. It consists of two parts: a closed-ended four-point Likert scale one and an open-ended one, which complement each other precisely. On the one hand, closed-ended questions may draw misleading conclusions as limited range of option provided. In contrast, open-ended ones fix this appropriately by giving respondents greater freedom of expression. On the other hand, the disadvantage of the latter is responses are hard to sort and analyze and which of the former are easy coding and analyzing.
The article is organized effectively with a clear focus, which is the hypothesis that better faculty-students relationships benefit academic motivation. The organization follows the pattern of recognizing a problem, putting forward a hypothesis and verifying it by analysis of the data collected though the survey. The decisive factor of this survey, the questionnaire, was properly designed by the author. The whole survey would have been more credible if Drake parallelized significant elements for the comparison of the two groups, which are academic methods supplied and the section number. This verified hypothesis would contribute to a more detailed student-centered teaching approach. Extra non-academic efforts made by the professors can create a better faculty-student relationship, and what’s more, the students may feel being respected by their professors. Therefore, students can gain greater academic confidence and a willingness to study though this positive relationship.
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