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Okay, I admit it: “Lie” might be too strong a word. And it’s really not on purpose that professors are lying to their students. They may not even realize the lie themselves. It may be more accurate to say that professors simply aren’t telling students the whole truth. But with a little more truth, both teachers and students may benefit.
The Big Lie
The big lie is this: That a college education is all (or even primarily?) about learning a lot of information. The truth? College is more about learning SKILLS, including these (AAC&U, 2015; APA 2013):
- Communciation
- Collaboration
- Critical thinking
- Professionalism
- Ethical and social responsibility
- Scientific inquiry
There are more, but you get the idea. Do I have evidence of professors not telling the whole truth? Yes. In their review of the literature, Martini, Judges & Belicki found that instructors seem not be talking about such skills in the classroom. They surveyed students and found that “their instructors placed little emphasis” on skills, and that students “had given relatively little thought to these types of skills when completing their university assignments” (p. 117). The lie is perpetuated in both large and small ways—even by our course titles. After all, our courses have names such as “Abnormal Psychology” rather than “How to collaborate and communicate while studying psychopathology.”
The result might be that students and faculty miss opportunities for skill development. For example, students don’t see the value of writing as any more than a way to understand the facts rather than learning how to develop and communicate ideas.
Why might professors be lying?
I don’t have empirical evidence for this speculation, just personal observations and self-reflection. But professors might not tell the whole truth in part because they love their content—as they should! For example, if you love psychology you are more excited about telling people what you know about psychology than about teaching them how to write or to work in teams. However, the fact is that teaching by talking about knowledge might be on its way out (AAC&U, 2015).
Another reason professors might not be telling students about the skills they’re teaching is that they don’t know how to teach skills. Many professors know how to write, but many haven’t even been taught how to teach their content, let alone a host of skills.
Conclusion
Most of my colleagues (and I, for that matter) have very good motives; we’re just not transparent and intentional enough about them. Sometimes it just seems like the teaching/learning system is changing all around us and we’re struggling to keep up. Martini et al. also give professors some credit. They suggest ways to help professors tell more of the truth—including talking about the purposes of assignments on syllabi and in class. They believe that professors have good motives: “We … believe that many psychology instructors develop course assignments and other methods of evaluation with the intention of fostering skills as well as an understanding of content” (p. 121). Wouldn’t it be nice if they let students in on their thinking!
References
American Psychological Association. (2013). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major (2nd. ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2015). The LEAP challenge: Educating for a world of unscripted problems. Washington, DC: Author.
Martini, T. S., Judges, R., & Belicki, K. (2015). Psychology majors’ understanding of skills-based learning outcomes. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1, 113-124.
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Mitch Handelsman is a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Denver. With Samuel Knapp and Michael Gottlieb, he is the co-author of Ethical Dilemmas in Psychotherapy: Positive Approaches to Decision Making (American Psychological Association, 2015). Mitch is also the co-author (with Sharon Anderson) of Ethics for Psychotherapists and Counselors: A Proactive Approach (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and an associate editor of the two-volume APA Handbook of Ethics in Psychology (American Psychological Association, 2012). But here’s what he’s most proud of: He collaborated with pioneering musician Charlie Burrell on Burrell’s autobiography.
© 2015 by Mitchell M. Handelsman. All Rights Reserved
