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> 2) When I asked the math professors how to explain "show your work," some of them bluffed and blustered, but none of them could give me a straight answer. At

> 2) When I asked the math professors how to explain "show your work," some of them bluffed and blustered, but none of them could give me a straight answer. At worst, I got, "they should just know." It sounds like you were teaching calculus or maybe college algebra ("they should know" is actually good advice for the higher level mathematics courses -- most departments have a whole course that's more-or-less about how to write proofs). At research universities, the tenure-track professors rarely teach anything below Calc II, and might not teach any Calculus courses at all. Certainly nothing below Calc I. If you ad junct again, consider asking the other ad juncts/instructors instead. They're more likely to have lots of exposure to that university's demographic in a relevant course.

pc86 8y ago
I'm not conceding that it's reasonable for a professor to answer something with "they should just know," but I think the issue here is that they seemed incapable of explaining it. It's one thing to say to a class "you should know how to $x, so I'm not going to teach it to you right now" but another entirely to be either unwilling or unable to explain exactly what they mean to a colleague.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Keep in mind that teaching is its own skill. Especially in universities, that skill can get awfully specific awfully fast. In particular, for a TT professor at an R1, odds are extremely good that they've NEVER taught anything below calculus and may have never even been the instructor of record even for calculus courses! They were hired to do research and teach graduate/upper-level undergraduate courses. Teachers that know how to explain and assess everything in a graduate analysis course with perfect clarity might not know how to handle the situation where a student doesn't know what it means to "show you work" in the context of calculating a derivative or solving a linear equation. In fact, they might not have even thought about learning/teaching that material themselves since early high school or maybe even middle school. This doesn't make them a bad teacher. It just makes them a bad calc I/college algebra teacher. Which is okay -- teaching those courses is not their job and is not what they were hired to do. So this is somehow a bit like complaining that a web programmer isn't particularly adept at kernel hacking. That doesn't make them a bad programmer, it just means they focus is elsewhere. Again, most universities do hire experts in teaching the lower-level courses. They're just not typically tenure-track professors.
  - analog31 8y ago
    Indeed, the professors are either surprised or offended that the university even offers college algebra, which they obviously never had to take, and which they consider to be a few levels below remedial. Admittedly, I was a math major in college, and was unaware of the existence of college algebra until I was hired to teach it.

pc86 8y ago

I'm not conceding that it's reasonable for a professor to answer something with "they should just know," but I think the issue here is that they seemed incapable of explaining it. It's one thing to say to a class "you should know how to $x, so I'm not going to teach it to you right now" but another entirely to be either unwilling or unable to explain exactly what they mean to a colleague.

throwawayjava 8y ago
Keep in mind that teaching is its own skill. Especially in universities, that skill can get awfully specific awfully fast. In particular, for a TT professor at an R1, odds are extremely good that they've NEVER taught anything below calculus and may have never even been the instructor of record even for calculus courses! They were hired to do research and teach graduate/upper-level undergraduate courses. Teachers that know how to explain and assess everything in a graduate analysis course with perfect clarity might not know how to handle the situation where a student doesn't know what it means to "show you work" in the context of calculating a derivative or solving a linear equation. In fact, they might not have even thought about learning/teaching that material themselves since early high school or maybe even middle school. This doesn't make them a bad teacher. It just makes them a bad calc I/college algebra teacher. Which is okay -- teaching those courses is not their job and is not what they were hired to do. So this is somehow a bit like complaining that a web programmer isn't particularly adept at kernel hacking. That doesn't make them a bad programmer, it just means they focus is elsewhere. Again, most universities do hire experts in teaching the lower-level courses. They're just not typically tenure-track professors.
- analog31 8y ago
  Indeed, the professors are either surprised or offended that the university even offers college algebra, which they obviously never had to take, and which they consider to be a few levels below remedial. Admittedly, I was a math major in college, and was unaware of the existence of college algebra until I was hired to teach it.