Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education)

by Jessamyn Neuhaus

As Linda Hodges and Katherine Stanton write, “Too often we provide students with the answers in our discipline before they even understand the questions.”67 In their discussion of how expert blind spots can hamper our ability to foresee what issues students will face, Hodges and Stanton describe the common occurrence of students complaining that “the exam problems were nothing like what we did in class”: These remarks may lead us to assume that students are not paying attention, are not spending enough time on assignments, or simply are not studying hard enough. In some cases these assumptions may be true, but another interpretation is that these student comments reflect the differences in the way novices approach problem solving compared to experts.68 Experts know how to apply the larger concepts in our field to specific problems. We can see how different types of problems require application of a particular solution method. But novice learners believe problem solving should be quick and easy because they have simplistic beliefs about learning and about knowledge. They focus on the answer, not the process. Therefore, “our problem-solving exercises for students must explicitly require them to spend meaningful time analyzing principles involved and envisioning how these same principles might be ‘disguised’ in other settings.”69