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Book Review of Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style , by Randy Olson

2010; Wiley; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1541-4329.2010.00115.x

1541-4329

Richard W. Hartel,

Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture

Olson, R. 2009 . Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style . Washington , D.C. : Island Press . 216 p. ISBN - 13: 978-1-597265638 . US $19.95 “Sometimes it seems that some of the professors are so smart that they cannot understand how we think as students which results in confusion between professor and student.” Anonymous student, exit interview, UW-Madison (2010) The above quote could probably be heard at every science-based institution around the world, about professors not being able to communicate at student level. High-level researchers often don't know how to explain things at a level that untrained people can understand. Scientists in general are not the world's best communicators, or so suggests Randy Olson in Don't Be Such a Scientist. Although not specifically about teaching, the ideas covered in this book translate quite well to the classroom, where, as the student above notes, many of the best scientists have no clue how to relate at the student level. A marine biologist turned Hollywood filmmaker, Randy Olson shares his experiences from both the science community and acting school. After becoming a tenured professor at Univ. of New Hampshire, he quit academia to take acting lessons and go on to make his own films. The perspective in Don't Be Such a Scientist is how poorly scientists in general “teach” the public about important issues (global warming and so on), but his words apply just as well in the classroom. In chapters titled “Don't be so cerebral”, “Don't be so literal minded”, “Don't be such a poor storyteller”, “Don't be so unlikeable”, and “Be the voice of science”, Randy Olson lights into scientists for being, well, scientists. “When it comes to connecting with the entire audience, you have four bodily organs that are important: your head, your heart, your gut and your sex organs. The object is to move the process down out of your head, into your heart with sincerity, into your gut with humor, and if you’re sexy enough, into your lower organs with sex appeal.” Even though the primary aim of classroom instruction is imparting knowledge to students, if the presentation style isn't one that keeps the student's attention, that knowledge will not be effectively transmitted. Students will daydream, text their friends, or even surf the web if the presentation doesn't interest them. They might just as well have skipped class and simply read the book for all the good it did them to attend class. Even when teaching the deepest scientific concepts, classroom practices that “move the process down” a little, through humor and passion, help keep student's attention and promote learning. Don't go too far down the slope away from the facts, though, or you risk being considered a classroom actor instead of an educator. That balance between being cerebral yet still keeping it interesting is the sign of an outstanding teacher. “Back when I was a professor, I was proud of my oratorical skills. Students would hang on my every word. Or so I thought – until, on an overnight field trip to Maine, I spent much of the drive up telling the students in the van all sorts of exciting stories of my days in Australia studying the Great Barrier Reef. They couldn't seem to get enough of my tales. But that night, we were camped out in tents and I overheard a group of the students who didn't realize I was right outside the tent. They were laughing about how they had been encouraging me to tell more stories because they thought I was having fun doing it, and that would make me like them better and thus give them better grades. That was my first awakening to the fact that students are not a realistic audience.” The classroom is a unique environment, where instructor and student interactions are governed by complex rules. Realize that, in general, students are there to get a good grade, not necessarily to learn the most they can. Although, in some respects, they’re there because they want to learn, it's still the instructor's job to provide the motivational push beyond finishing the class and earning a good grade. Jumping right into a derivation of Fick's Law or the details of the Maillard reaction steps without first providing the context for where this information is important would be an example. From his film-making experiences, Olson argues the scientist would benefit from using the arouse-and-fulfill approach. In the classroom, arouse means providing motivation at the start for why the student would want to pay attention, after which fulfilling that desire to learn is accomplished by giving the facts. This is also a sound pedagogical approach – first provide the context for learning and then impart details. “What is boredom? It's the state of being bored. What is the state of being bored? It is to experience something that is dull, tedious, repetitious, uninteresting. So it's the opposite of interesting. And to “be interesting” is, according to the closest dictionary I can find…“to arouse a feeling of interest”.” The point of this chapter is to convince scientists that without a story, communicating science to the public will inevitably fail because the public won't listen – they’ll be bored. Although “just the facts” worked as a line in Dragnet, you have to admit that Sergeant Joe Friday's personality was the epitome of boring (except perhaps when played by Dan Aykroyd, who could turn even the dowdiest cop into a humorous character). It's the same in the classroom if you come out spewing facts. Yes, students will dutifully write down everything you say, but mostly because they want to get a good grade. Will that really help them learn the material? Probably not. I heard an award-winning teacher once say that he thought telling “war stories” in class was where the students really learned the material. His point was that students learn best when there is a context, or story, in which to orient the facts. Adult learners are so much more focused on learning because they have experiences to relate the facts to – they can see where the details fit into their concerns. Most students don't have that experience to relate to and thus, it's the instructor's job to motivate student learning by providing those contexts. One way to do that is through “war stories” (case studies and practical problem solving are other ways). A word of caution though, since the professor who turns too much to storytelling and neglects the facts is also doing a disservice to student learning. Such instructors are often considered rambling fools, not good instructors. That balance between motivating student interest through stories (or some other way) and providing the depth of material in a clear, consistent manner is at the heart of good teaching. “If likeability came down to a formula, scientists would figure it out and be the most popular people in the world. Of course, it's far too subjective for that. But we do know likeability is inextricably tied to elements arising from those lower organs – humor, emotion, passion.” Olson's argument in this chapter is that, for the most part, scientists come across to the public as being arrogant – thus, unlikeable. And that this impedes the message the scientist tries to get across. What makes an instructor likeable to students? Well, an instant way to become unlikeable is to come off being arrogant. Sure, you’re the instructor because you know the stuff and the student doesn’t, but think back to when you had an arrogant instructor. Was that your favorite class? Probably not. Did you learn anything? Possibly. Unfortunately, being likeable does not always go hand-in-hand with being a good teacher (and vice versa). The movie Paper Chase provides a good example where a horribly unlikeable professor used sound pedagogical approaches to promote learning, at least in those students who weren't so turned off by the professor that they quit or committed suicide. In general, students prefer instructors who have a high likeability quotient, particularly if they also use sound pedagogical techniques to promote student learning. “Once upon a time, communicating science to the general public was incredibly easy. In the 1850's, Louis Agassiz, founder of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, gave public lectures on the Cambridge Common that were hugely popular. Hundreds of people would crowd around in the hot summer swelter to hear him speak for three to four hours – not telling religious stories (the heart), not performing stand-up comedy (the gut), and definitely not telling dirty stories (the lower organs). No, they would listen for hours as he talked about … fish taxonomy. What was wrong with those people? I think they had empty heads. There was no television, no Internet, no iPhones, not even electricity. Their brains were in desperate need of stimulation. Think of it – just hearing words and information – it was like letting their brains sit in vibrating massage chairs for three hours. It must have felt sooo good. Things have changed a bit since then.” Imagine students sitting through an entire hour (or worse, a power lecture) just listening to the instructor speak. Like it or not, there really are science classrooms where lecturing, and a little writing on the chalk board, are still the primary modes of information transfer. Although the students may look attentive, you know their minds are somewhere else – the average attention span is like 12 minutes, nowhere near what it was in the 1850's. The focus of this chapter, the first few paragraphs of which are copied in the quote above, is that scientists need to find their voice for the public. Scientists need also to learn to speak to the public (or the uninitiated student) at a level that reaches the audience. No longer can one simply spout the facts and expect the audience to follow every word. Finding ways to stimulate and motivate the learner is becoming more and more important in today's classroom. What do we learn from this book that can help us in class? I think it comes down to how we motivate. Students are generally eager to learn what you have to teach, but they need to be motivated to go beyond thinking about grades. Students may be a receptive audience by the nature of our education system, but instructional techniques often make the difference between an interesting learning experience and boring drudgery. Without losing any of the science, we can turn our classrooms into true learning places by using some of the lessons learned in film-making.