26 Students in a Fellow’s Class
A Note on TLH Pedagogical Methods
The Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) program fosters the democratization of the humanities classroom through what is known as active or participatory learning. Such a transformative model prepares humanities students for a world that requires collaboration, written and spoken communication, project management, critical thinking, analytical reading, cross-cultural thinking, and ideation. Numerous studies, such as those conducted by Google’s Project Oxygen (2014) and Project Aristotle (2017), have demonstrated these skills are key contributors to success in the workplace and in communities and, we hasten to add, to success in the rest of a student’s education as well. Through participatory learning—a method where both faculty fellows and their students learn through a carefully structured pedagogy designed for contribution—every student not only gains essential skills but can see the ways those skills can have an impact on those around them.
TLH participatory methods draw on long traditions of active learning with genealogies in progressive education back to Maria Montessori and John Dewey, radical pedagogy (Paulo Freire and bell hooks), and a variety of contemporary, engaged pedagogies (such as those espoused by guest speakers in our Transformative Speaker Series), including those inflected by social science (such as the work of Carol Dweck on fixed versus growth mindset).
What Makes TLH Methods Innovative, and Why This Matters
In the traditional teaching model leveraged in college humanities classes, a teacher lectures to supplement reading students have done independently; the teacher then opens the class to discussion, usually by asking a question and prompting the students to respond. Typically, one or two students will raise their hand and offer an answer; the majority of the class tends to remain silent. This becomes a trope through the semester, with the course unfolding as a discussion between the teacher, viewed by the class as the authority figure in the room, and those few students who regularly speak up and proffer their opinions. The bulk of the discussion portion of the class is blanketed by an uncomfortable silence, with some students seemingly disengaging from the topic of discussion altogether.
When faculty do not use participatory methods and rely solely on traditional models, most students never contribute or say a word throughout the course, and the teacher has to chiefly rely on term papers and other independent writing assignments to divine what the students have learned from the course. In short, the traditional humanities teaching model typically eschews total participation of the students and the teacher and thus presents itself as an undemocratic pedagogical model, the problems of which are multifold and long-lasting, especially for first-generation college students and first-generation Americans.
This undemocratic model, first and foremost, reinforces inequity and bias within the classrooms in that the students who are most vocal in class tend to be students who self-identify with the teacher in terms of race, gender, age, or ethnicity. Such a dynamic creates an echo chamber effect while the diverse and ostensibly valuable opinions of the students who stay silent are lost. Such a dynamic is anathema to TLH’s and CUNY’s mission of activating and capitalizing on diversity in the learning process.
Another problem with the traditional model is that students exit the course having had an insular experience rather than a communal one; the vital skills of collaboration and cooperation have not been nurtured. In the end, they walk away from the course without a deep connection to their peers or to the material that had been taught in class. Some students may even reflect on their in-class experience and wonder what the utility of humanities classes is in the first place.
To remedy the confluence of problems presented by the traditional model, TLH helped faculty fellows to design and deliver humanities courses that leverage the model of what the American Psychological Association calls “Total Participation,” a method where each student is given a “voice” in the classroom, learning from peers as well as from the instructor. This participatory method is how we all learn outside of school, i.e. through democratization, application of principles to a problem, active involvement in the learning process, and, ultimately, original and meaningful research.
Numerous studies have shown that participatory, active learning methods are more effective than traditional one-way methods such as the lecture or that selective methods common to the typical discussion or seminar course. Two massive “meta studies” (PNAS, 2014 and 2020) of over 225 separate studies using a range of assessment methods (course completion rates, test scores, surveys of retention and applicability beyond the classroom and others) conclusively support the superiority of active learning. Of particular note, the second PNAS study was specifically focused on the gains that first generation and other underrepresented students show through participatory/active learning methods.
The TLH model employs techniques that solicit participation and higher-order thinking from all participants at the same time. TLH also emphasizes the deep and broad skills students learn through participatory methods, allowing students to come away from introductory humanities courses with a remarkable tool set of essential skills that are too often passed over in the traditional humanities classroom.
How it Worked
A key component of the faculty fellows’ selection process was asking applicants to propose ways that they would include their current students in this active learning process. Almost all fellows were teaching concurrently with the TLH seminars so they could practice using TLH teaching methods in real time in their courses. Originally, we anticipated that as many as 6,000 or more students in fellows’ courses would benefit immediately from this 3-year grant. By the end, TLH supported over 7,000 students and over 100 faculty leaders on campuses all across CUNY.
View forms students might expect to receive in a participating fellow’s class: