Instructor-participant hybrid

This is a companion post to Benedikt’s post describing the first-day energy theater for the group he participated in.  I was in Lane’s group, which is sort of significant to say in and of itself because Lane was definitely a central participant.  The other participants were Lezlie, Linda, Mary Sue, Joel, and Liz.  I was supposed to be an “extra” (in the theater sense) but found it very hard to keep my mouth shut – I tried, really I did, but I noticed that Stamatis was behind me and managed to not say anything the whole time, unlike myself, and it sounds like Benedikt achieved restraint also in a way that I did not.  I’ll keep trying.

Lane did a lot to draw the teachers’ attention to the rich physics issues in the scenario (cart oscillating on a spring).  For example, when the teachers had done a frictionless version (no thermal energy transfers) and then were modifying their scene to include thermal energy, Lane asked them to consider when the thermal energy is transferred – constantly all along, or more at certain points in the oscillation?  At the time, I didn’t understand why Lane would think they needed to think about that.  Having heard from Lane later at the instructor’s meeting, I now think that he was acting as neither an extra nor an instructor, but as a kind of a “special participant.”  Participants have the authority to raise physics issues for group consideration, according to their own interest.  Lane thinks that the thermal-timing question is interesting, so, in his role as a participant, he can bring it up.  It’s a little bit of a hybrid role that he’s taking on, though, because Lane knows the answer to the thermal-timing question, so in that sense he’s being an instructor rather than a participant.  This instructor-participant hybrid is something Renee Michelle and I saw a lot in TAs.   We think it originates in a desire to relate to the students and not be too formally “teacherly,” while at the same time giving the students the benefit of their greater expertise.  “Benefit,” in this case, is roughly: an increased opportunity to enjoy the satisfaction of a beautiful, coherent, rich physics model.

I think a problem with the participant-instructor hybrid role is that no matter what the instructor thinks – no matter how modest and friendly one acts – the participants see the instructor as an authority figure, and are at risk of giving over their ownership of the intellectual work to that person.