The Teaching of Psychology in Autobiography: Perspectives from Exemplary Psychology Teachers Edited by Trisha A. Benson, Caroline Burke, Ana Amstadter, Ryan Sidey, Vincent Hevern, Barney Beins, & Bill Buskist.
37 An Autobiographical Look at My Teaching Career Barbara F. Nodine Arcadia University pp. 254-259

As I am about to receive an award for 35 years of service from Arcadia University, I take this chapter as an opportunity to review, in an informal and personal way, my teaching career. My teaching career and my life as a working mother and wife of a fellow academic are inseparable from each other and from the culture and societal changes for these roles over the years. This autobiographical format feels a bit self-centered, but I assume that readers will be served by the lessons of this compilation, or, as in my case, gain a perspective of the times in which some of us became college professors.

Some Biographical Facts

I am Professor of Psychology at Arcadia University (formerly Beaver College) in suburban Philadelphia and Chair of the department. I earned a Bachelor's degree in psychology at Bucknell University and PhD at the University of Massachusetts. I am the co-author of Writing in the Arts and Sciences (Maimon, Belcher, Hearn, Nodine, & O'Connor, 1981), Readings in the Arts and Sciences (Maimon, Belcher, Hearn, Nodine, & O'Connor, 1984), and Thinking, Reasoning, and Writing (Maimon, Nodine, & O'Connor, 1989). I am also the author of the Study Guide for students to accompany three editions of an introductory psychology text by Benjamin, Hopkins, and Nation. I was a co-editor of Volume IV of the American Psychological Association Activities Handbook (Benjamin, Nodine, Ernst, & Blair Broeker, 1998). As the guest editor of a Special Issue devoted to writing in Teaching of Psychology (Nodine, 1990), I was able to bring some of my work in the field of composition to psychology.

My teaching awards include the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1975 and CASE Professor of the Year Arcadia University Award in 1989. National awards include the Robert S. Daniel Award for Teaching Excellence Award in 1996 and the American Psychological Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence in 1999. In, 1994, I was invited to deliver a G. Stanley Hall Address.

I have been President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) and also President of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA). Service on numerous committees related to undergraduate teaching at APA led to being a member of the Steering Committee for the St. Mary's Conference on Undergraduate Education and the resulting book, which took place in 1990-93.

Another gratifying experience was as Director of the Summer Experimental Program, 1989-92, a collaboration between Arcadia University and Community College of Philadelphia, bringing at-risk college students to a college program to encourage completion of their bachelor's degree. Our program was modeled after the Ford Foundation collaborative programs and sponsored by the William Penn Foundation.

Serving as a consultant/evaluator for psychology department evaluations has been a rewarding experience, as I offer evaluative and contextual perspective on undergraduate psychology programs that differ in how they can best serve their students in their type of institution.

My Early Development as a Teacher

As I talk with students about their goals and their plans for attaining them, I look ruefully at my own history and see a lack of goals and very short-term planning, which I never divulge to them. Marrying quite young, I attended graduate school because my husband was going and because I could not get a job. My graduate work was funded by a grant and my family, so I never worked as a graduate assistant. Leaving school and accompanying my husband to his new academic position, I, as a new mother, traveled through those early years, parenting and eavesdropping on my husband's interactions with students and class preparations. I knew no one else with a PhD who was parenting for a career and the few women faculty I knew were not parents. Over the course of seven years, with three young children, I had yet to earn a paycheck with my advanced degree, except for a few part-time teaching, fill-in positions. The roles of well-educated mother and faculty wife were quite comfortable.

A part-time position at Arcadia University led the following year to a full-time position. Probably because my early part-time teaching opportunities had been so badly taught, by my own standards, I worked very hard my first year at Arcadia to make those Introductory Psychology courses successful, which led to my shift into a full-time tenure track position. Introductory Psychology at Arcadia, 35 years ago and still today, is a year-long, two-semester course, so topics can be explored in some depth.

I discovered that I knew very little psychology, having spent a record three short years obtaining my PhD. I was pretty good at methodology and statistics and had in-depth knowledge of a few topics, but very little general knowledge of psychology. I spent my first few years learning the content of the discipline that I was teaching. My barometer of teaching quality was the attentive looks on student faces, which are quite easy to read in classes of 25 students. Early lectures were accompanied by large packs of notes. The day that I somehow left my notes at home on my desk, where they were prepared during the quiet hours between 9:00 pm and 1:00 am (such is the not so comfortable life of a working mother), was a turning point. I discovered that I could deliver a good lecture without that large pack of notes. Younger faculty who have always had their notes on their computer may not be able to understand the importance of those handwritten notes.

Besides learning the content of my courses, the other thing that I learned to do during those early years was figure out ways to demonstrate the content and engage students in it. At that time, I had never heard the words "active learning," but it was obvious that having students participate or observe a study I was discussing would engage them with the material. Most of the activities I generated myself because source material was very limited in the early 1970s. I recognized the value of asking questions, both mine and theirs, as I thought about the few courses in which I had been taught well.

Besides inventing activities and reading background material, attending the EPA meetings was an important factor in my development as a teacher. Hearing invited addresses were exciting, not only because they were well delivered, but also because they provided the background of ideas in areas that were not part of my graduate training. When you are a faculty member at a small college, there is little opportunity to hear a wide range of psychological ideas discussed. Thus, attendance at EPA connected me to the larger world of psychology. For most readers of this chapter, a longer period of graduate training and some early experience at teaching would provide this background, but it had not been part of my beginnings as a psychologist. Also, EPA began to have occasional discussion sessions directed at teaching, so gradually those faculty concerned with their teaching role at their universities shared expertise and, in fact, bonded with each other. These offerings were fairly limited in the 1970s, but have grown significantly as a facet of EPA offerings, as has the group of faculty who share these interests.

Working at Defining Myself as a Teacher

I was becoming comfortable with my role as the teacher in the classroom. Then the struggle turned to a reconciliation of my enthusiasm for the content of my classes with the imperfections of student enthusiasm and learning. Why don't they show complete comprehension and preparation for each class and each exam? After all, I was perfectly clear about both the material taught and my expectations of them for each assignment and exam. This struggle is an on-going one for me, and I will discuss it again in the next section.

Not only are college professors expected to be successful classroom teachers, we are also expected to meet the other criteria of the tenured professor. The criteria differ a fair amount, depending on one's teaching "niche." The balance of quality teaching, scholarly work, and service differ immensely from institution to institution. As a pre-tenured faculty member, I had to figure out the balance for myself. Now, as a department chair and faculty mentor I guide new faculty in understanding the criteria at my institution and others.

There are general lessons to be learned from the chapters in this collection with respect to meeting the criteria. There is wide variation within and between institutional settings. Watching those near and dear to me at other institutions led me to the belief that the criteria at my institution were a good match to my inclinations and strengths. At Arcadia University, teaching was defined as the first and most important criterion for tenure (but not for promotion) and my success in the classroom made this criterion attainable. The criterion of scholarly work was broadly defined to include professional activities, presentations to a wide variety of audiences as well as published work, both original empirical work and contextual. Some of my scholarly work was also influenced by the type of institution at which I taught. As a faculty, we are collegial and collaborative. This characteristic of the Arcadia faculty climate led me to my work in composition, which led to several books and articles.

Writing-across-the-curriculum, as it was then called, is an application of cognitive psychology to the student process of learning and writing about that learning. This cross-disciplinary area contains aspects of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, constructivism, active learning, and faculty development. I was interested in all of these areas, so the fit was perfect, and the collaborative work began. I published two books with five co-authors, from five different disciplines, and then a third book with three co-authors. At one point in my career, I found myself making a presentation to the College Composition and Communication Conference, in the form of a scripted dialogue, with one of my colleagues in English. It was a bit like being in a play, in front of an academic audience. I wondered what my thesis advisor would think of this step in my career.

When I gained tenure at Arcadia, I was the only woman with young children who held tenure. At another point in my career, I was one of two women with the rank of full professor and the other woman was not married nor a parent. That situation changed quite rapidly, though, and my description is no longer appropriate of my university nor is it likely to describe others. Some rewarding aspects of that situation came to me later. Periodically, I would meet alumni of the university who would tell me that I was a role model for them. One, in particular, said that she entered a doctoral program in psychology because I was proof that you did not have to choose between having a family life and having an academic career.

The Examined Life as a Teacher

Explaining a psychological perspective on teaching and learning was a necessary component of the collaborative work that I have done with people from other disciplines, so before it became de rigueur to have a personal philosophy of teaching, I had articulated it in our interdisciplinary efforts. I believe that students learn as a function of their cognitive engagement with the material they are learning. This notion is hardly a profound idea; though all faculty probably give lip-service to this belief, they may not act on it. The belief that students must be cognitively and constructively engaged in the material should structure the nature of lecturing, lecture aids, assignments, and assessments in our classes. The particulars of how one provides this structure differ from one faculty member to another, and technology may have changed how some of these aspects manifest themselves, but at the core should be a teacher engaging a student with the material. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to itemize how I have structured my classes and what techniques I have used for which level of classes, but all of them have been directed at this cognitive engagement. Over the years, new techniques, gleaned from conferences and collegial sharing are all directed at the same goal of engaging students to construct their own knowledge.

The frustration I have about teaching, which has haunted me for three decades is my disappointment in the level of work and comprehension shown by many students. Why did they not live up to my expectation? Was my expectation one of perfection? Were they bad students? Was I a bad teacher? How can I change the manner in which I structure Introductory Psychology or Senior Seminar to make all students the best students they can be? In my long teaching career, I have adapted to the disappointment over lack of perfect performance from my students, but I have never succumbed to the pessimistic thought that I can not do more to engage them. Thus, I read about teaching techniques, I talk to my colleagues, I attend meetings and workshops, all with the goal of making my teaching better.

Advice for New Teachers

An advantage to a long career in academe is that you gain some perspective on what you and others do as teachers and scholars. When I began my career, Teaching of Psychology was more of a newsletter than a journal and there were no conferences on teaching. Those opportunities and guides should be taken advantage of, because they provide perspective and guidance.

As a department chair, I give advice to new teachers about how to succeed in teaching and other faculty expectations at my institution. As a member of a collaborative group offering a pre-convention workshop on teaching sponsored by APA, I provide similar advice. The latter activity takes a much broader perspective on success in teaching. During a two-day workshop, we attempt to teach the participants the essentials of successful teaching. Two principles organize that workshop: (a) teaching and assessment of teaching are directed by your personal philosophy of teaching and your implementation of that philosophy into your planning for the course and (b) the particulars of the elements are affected by the context of the type of university setting in which you teach. Thus, successful teaching requires a self-reflective perspective on personal philosophy and knowledge of the wide range of options for delivering teaching and assessment of teaching.

Final Thoughts

For me, my teaching career is nearing the end, though I have been unable to say the word "retirement" to my dean. To stop being a college professor, even after 35 years, is unthinkable. For some readers, your teaching career is just beginning and I hope you enjoy as many years doing it. If you don't love it, think about it, review it, revise it, care about it, then find something else to do.

References

Benjamin, L. T., Nodine, B. F., Ernst, R., & Blair Broeker, C. (1998). Activities handbook for teaching of psychology, Vol. IV. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Nodine, B. F. (1990). Guest Editor, Special Issue: Writing in psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 17(1).

Maimon, E., Nodine, B., & O'Connor, F. (1989). Thinking, reasoning, and writing. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Maimon, E., Belcher, G., Hearn, G., Nodine, B., & O'Connor, F. (1984). Readings in the arts and sciences. Boston: Little Brown.

Maimon, E., Belcher, G., Hearn, G., Nodine, B., & O'Connor, F. (1981). Writing in the arts and sciences. Boston: Little Brown.

This page was first posted online on November 10, 2005 and was last updated on November 10, 2005

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