by Daphne Loads
So what does it take to be a university teacher? As an academic developer, this question is often on my mind. I know it’s more than subject knowledge plus technique. More and more I’m coming to think that as George Jackson put it, “you gotta have soul.”
“Some women, they grow a little shorter,
Some women grow a little old,
Short or tall, young or old
If you wanna love me you gotta have soul.”
Here Jackson firmly rejects metrics and introduces the notion of soul. Okay, he’s talking about love, but I think his ideas apply to teaching too. Seriously. If you want to be a university teacher, you gotta have soul.
So what do I mean by soul? Let me give you an example. Say we’re trying to learn about “student engagement.” There are lots of ways we could deal with this topic. At one end of the continuum is techno-rational learning. I liken this to taking the temperature. We could, for example, use learning analytics to find out how many hours students are studying online and how many comments they’re posting on a discussion board. This would give us a straightforward measurement of student engagement in a particular course. (For a discussion of some of the debates around learning analytics and student engagement, see Wintrop, 2017).
If we wanted to delve a bit deeper, we could try to bring about a transformational learning experience, and get lecturers (and students) to re-examine their taken-for-granted assumptions about what engagement actually means. This suggests something more immediate and vital, that I think of as feeling the heat. Sarah Mann’s (2001) paper on students’ alienation and engagement is a great example of this kind of critical reassessment, and could be used as a prompt for further reflection. She proposes a range of (surprising) explanations for why students might experience alienation rather than engagement, and makes suggestions about how teachers can respond.
But I’m talking about going further and doing what Dirkx (1997) describes as learning through soul. This symbolic, metaphorical way of learning makes me think of the mythological phoenix, who rises from the flames. One of my favourite ways of inviting in soul, is through collaborative close reading of a poem. As a group, we read and build up layers of meaning, word by word and line by line. Randall Jarrell’s piece : “Office Hours 10-11” works well when we’re talking about student engagement:
Dear Mr. Jarrell:
It seems that the twenty-fourth floor is complaining of lost students who are hunting you. Could you put your name and office hours on the door?
Thank you.
The English Office
[University of Texas, at Austin]Mr Jarrell: Come back and you will find me just the same
Hunters, hunters–but why should I go on?
Learn for yourself (if you are made to learn)
That you must haunt an hourless, nameless door
Before you find–not me, but anything.Lost Students: It never seemed to me that I was lost.
You were, perhaps; at least, no one was there.
I missed you; why should I go back?
I am no hunter, I say. I was sent
And asked to find–not you, not anything.English Office: Each of them is lost, and neither hunting;
And they stand still around a crazy door
That tells a truth, or lie, that no one learns.
Here is a name, an hour for you to use:
But name, or come, or come not, as you choose.Randall Jarrell
Together we could explore the echoes and patterns in this poem: the huntings and hauntings, the poignancy and paradoxes. We could notice that “made to learn” seems to mean both “forced to learn” and “created for learning” and that “we missed you” may or may not have any emotional content. This way of learning can be very powerful; it doesn’t, of course, suit everyone.
So I think of learning through soul as at one end of a continuum. Techno-rational learning is instrumental; it’s about adapting to external requirements. It lends itself to measurements of performance and productivity and can be presented as an objective report. Transformative learning, by contrast, is concerned with seeking and making meaning. It includes not only individual reflection but also social critique. Discovery and authenticity are valued; it might take the form of a reflective journal. Finally, learning through soul draws on narrative, symbol and myth. This kind of learning makes space for spirituality in all its forms; it draws on emotion and intuition. I have given the example of poetry, but in fact soul seems to be at home wherever the varied disciplines we know as the arts and humanities come into play.
One way of explaining this is by talking about two ways of experiencing the world: logos and mythos. According to Dirkx (1997), logos is,
“…the realm of objectivity and logic, the triumph of reason over instinct, ignorance, and irrationality…”
Whereas mythos represents,
“ very personal and imaginative ways of knowing, grounded in a more intuitive and emotional sense of our experiences …. giving voice in a deep and powerful way to imaginative and poetic expressions of self and the world.”
When we make and respond to paintings, music, drama and the rest, we are following the way of mythos and this opens up forms of learning that are inaccessible through logos.
I still prefer George Jackson’s way of putting it:
“You gotta have soul.”
References
Dirkx, J (1997) Nurturing Soul in Adult Learning
New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 74
Mann, S (2001) Alternative Perspectives on the Student Experience: alienation and engagement Studies in Higher Education 26 (1)
Wintrop, A. (2017)Higher Education’s Panopticon? Learning Analytics, Ethics and Student Engagement Higher Education Policy 30(87–103)
Humanising Higher Education 