Sometimes you finish a day of teaching and are perplexed by the lack of engagement or in the worst case scenario a resistance to the course content. As I had mentioned in my previous post, Conversional Obsession, this can be all consuming to an instructor trying to get through to these learners. After all, they are paying to be there, why don’t they want to learn?
retrieved from : https://giphy.com/search/bad-student
I believe one key to understanding this behavior is getting to know the motivation of the your individual students, is it intrinsic or extrinsic? This could open up possibilities for the teacher to identify ‘why’ this class may be of use to the students and how it will benefit them personally in the long run. Brookfield discusses this in Chapter 17 of The Skillful Teacher, “The more we know about those we teach, the better placed we are to respond to any resistance they display” (Brookfield, 2015.) Maybe there are outside forces that are preventing them from getting the full benefit of your class. This can be a good starting point for an instructor to increase engagement and this approach will give the learners better value for the money they have spent.
Stephen D. Brookfield, The Skillful Teacher, (2015), p 229, Jossey-Bass.
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