Fear of losing student respect drives professors back to traditional teaching

Evidence

It is as though we are to imagine that knowledge is this rich creamy pudding students should consume and be nourished by, but not that the process of gestation should also be pleasurable. As a teacher working to develop liberatory pedagogy I am discouraged when I encounter students who believe if the re’s a different practice they can be less committed, less disciplined. I think our fear of losing students’ respect has discouraged many professors from trying new teaching practices. Instead, some of us think, “I must return to the traditional way of doing it, otherwise I don’t get the respect, and the students don’t get the education they deserve because they don’t listen.” When I was a student, I embraced any professor who wanted to create more progressive teaching practices. I still remember the excitement I felt when I took my first class where the teacher wanted to change how we sat, where we moved from sitting in rows to a circle where we could look at one another. That change forced us to recognize one another’s presence. We couldn’t sleepwalk our way to knowledge. Nowadays, there are times when students resist sitting in a circle. They devalue that shift, because fundamentally, they don’t want to be participants. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 274

Categorization

• SEED: The resistance of students themselves to progressive seating and participation is a sharp angle for an essay on why liberatory pedagogy fails beyond the teacher’s control.
• XREF: connects to: Male academics sometimes repress bodily presence out of fear rather than deference — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 251; Choosing to teach closer to students rather than at a desk disrupts instructor authority; Student pushback makes teachers abandon progressive pedagogy they once championed — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 270 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Teachers trained under a single-norm model fear losing control in multicultural classrooms. #expands (0.85) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 80
• Professors resist treating students as whole people rather than as knowledge seekers #expands (0.78)
• Grade obsession springs from failure fear that also grips professors #expands (0.75)
• Professors’ fear of losing control blocks any class critique in the classroom #expands (0.72) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 377