R3 1.17 September 15, 2023 Reflection: Teaching from the Same Side
What would a new era of non-adversarial pedagogy look like?
As an avid watcher of trends in higher education, there’s one right now that I think could be big. It gets its power from a surprising number of forces that are currently all bearing in the same direction: away from the me-versus-you, zero-sum, penalty-driven pedagogy that’s traditionally dominated higher ed, and toward something that is a lot more collaborative.
This is what I’ve come to think of as same-side pedagogy.
I’m still turning over in my mind what the exact definition could be, but it’s clear what same-side pedagogy is not. It is not about the transaction of points, nor strict policies kept in place via a policing mentality. Those old ways rest on a set of assumptions, ideas we might not say out loud but that we do believe (or might have believed in the past): That students just want the best grades possible for as little effort as possible. That they’ll work harder to evade learning than they will on learning itself. That our job is to catch and chastise them as they play the evasion game.
Same-side pedagogy starts from a different place. It means assuming, quite simply, that students do want to learn what you have to teach them. That even though they may not always know how to follow through on those intentions – or may temporarily lack the energy to make it happen – they are in school to learn. That student goals, what they want to get out of your class or out of college in general, are as important as your goals as a teacher – and that those two things are probably more aligned than traditional teaching would suggest.
It is a philosophy with deep roots. I think of the buzz around “learner-centered design,” a concept that might seem quaint now, but was pretty influential in the late-aughts when I was first getting interested in redesigning courses. Fast forward a decade and it brings to mind Peter Felten and Leo Lambert’s relationship-rich education model, which to me would imply that students, faculty, and staff are interacting in ways that are warm, non-adversarial, and generally positive.
Other driving forces break down into those that are pushing us away from the old approaches, and those that are actively pulling us toward new ones. Let’s start with the “push” forces first.
The reset wrought by emergency remote teaching and the pandemic pivot. As I wrote back at the height of it all, the upending of our accustomed teaching modes meant that faculty had to prioritize quickly and with few guidelines. Whenever I found myself groping in the dark for ideas, my beacon was student goals. If some teaching approach or class policy was going to help students get what they came for, I figured it was worth trying. And in the overwhelm of hybrid remote teaching, nonessentials fell away. Ultra-strict policies – no missed classes, no missed deadlines ever, and so on – also seemed absurdly impractical in a world of mandatory quarantines, essential-worker schedules, and heavy caregiving responsibilities. It was a mess at times, but it pushed me to try out some ideas I never would have considered before, and many of those had to do with supporting rather than pursuing and policing students.
An overwhelming array of ways that students can cheat – and few ways to reliably catch them at it. AI tools are the latest and most powerful among these, but in truth, each passing year has seemed to bring more threats for faculty to worry about (discussed in depth in this great episode of the Tea for Teaching podcast). And given the incredible capabilities of the latest generative AI tools, I doubt we will ever have true “AI detectors” that could flag computer-created content. All of this dovetails with increasing faculty disenchantment with remote proctoring and traditional plagiarism detectors. In a world where we can’t, and shouldn’t, rely on surveillance and threat to get students to do the work, something else needs to take its place.
The long-overdue push for equity and inclusion. Traditional pedagogy relies on intimidation and authority more than we like to admit. And the more intimidating you are as a faculty member, the greater the risk of discouraging students from seeking your help – a risk that will likely land harder on minoritized and historically excluded students. Hard-line policies for late or incomplete work also work against equity. Inflexible deadlines are a major barrier for students with caregiving responsibilities, especially when coupled with economic pressures (a dynamic that’s laid out to devastating effect in this recent book). Lastly, research has now demonstrated that courses built around just a few high-stakes assignments, with little guidance or scaffolding in between, are less supportive to minoritized students.
On the flip side, here are some of the positive forces drawing us toward same-side pedagogy.
New approaches to grading. Susan Blum’s wildly popular anthology Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) and the brand-new book Grading for Growth: A Guide to Alternative Grading Practices that Promote Authentic Learning and Student Engagement in Higher Education are two high-profile examples of intense faculty interest in alternatives to traditional grading. While the ungrading/alternative grading philosophy is a distinct trend unto itself, I think it naturally raises questions about how we motivate, inspire, and form productive relationships with students, if not solely through adding and subtracting course points.
Compassion, kindness, and care in teaching. Fueled by, but not entirely tied to, pandemic teaching was a new focus on offering genuine care to our students. It’s a theme that’s been expressed beautifully from a number of different perspectives: Make the Kind Choice (Gina Foster), A Pedagogy of Kindness (Cate Denial), and teaching with compassion especially in the presence of trauma (Karen Ray Costa). Similarly, there’s a new focus on how we communicate these values to students, featuring interesting work on how to establish a warm and caring climate right from the start. As with ungrading, teaching with kindness is its own distinct movement, but one that’s clearly incompatible with the adversarial stance that same-side pedagogy looks to replace.
I predict that as these different sub-trends gain momentum, we’ll see more discussion of how to put them into practice – specific techniques from rewriting syllabi to getting rid of grade penalties for late work to re-thinking how we talk about grades in the first place. Universal Design for Learning also continues to provide inspiration for how to open more avenues to student success, and continues to be a refreshing alternative to the idea that rigorous teaching means limiting the number of students who do succeed.
Now for the challenges we will face as we look to make same-side teaching a reality.
Pressure to progress, packed schedules, and general speedup of student and faculty work. While we are getting students to engage more willingly, and hopefully more deeply, with our material, we can’t ignore all the counter-pressures getting in the way of this lovely vision. Degree planning is becoming an ever-more-high-stakes game as time in college becomes ever more expensive. Students carry hefty loads of extracurricular activities and paid work, with the latter not being optional for many. Faced with meeting your flexible, learning-oriented course plan, or the inflexible, points-driven deadlines of your colleague down the hall, stressed-out students will surely deprioritize yours. Who can blame them? But this tight competition for time puts same-side teaching at a systemic disadvantage.
Finding the right supports for metacognition and self-regulated learning. Same-side teaching means that students must shoulder more of the load of getting motivated to do the work. Some will struggle more than others when they have to do this without constant threat to their grades. Ultimately, adjusting to this approach is a good thing, even a necessary one as more students enter into careers where remote, self-managed work is the norm. That said, it will take some experimentation to find out how best to help students develop the skills needed to keep themselves on track.
Unequal privilege and protection among faculty. Minoritized faculty will likely face an increased, and unfair, level of scrutiny and skepticism from their peers when they bring in any practices seen as unconventional. The untenured will feel pressured to adopt a risk-averse stance, lest any early blunders or failed experiments trigger career-ending blowback. All of this will lead to an uneven experience for students as they move from course to course.
Standards. It’s probably time to get rid of our old notions of rigor, especially when they rely on harsh course policies to back them up. But there is no getting around the fact that there are still skills and bodies of knowledge that students have to have, if they’re to be successful in future courses and in life. In some fields, there are also certifications, standardized national exams, or other external benchmarks that must be met. We do students no favors when we send them out unprepared, so we need ways to work toward that common goal, especially when this will require some intense and uncomfortable effort on the part of students.
That’s a lot to contend with. But it is not insurmountable. If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably already engaged with at least a few same-side practices, and you’ve probably figured out a few ways around these problems as well as plenty of others. Here’s hoping that putting a name to the effort helps move it along even faster.