Woah, this is timely. The topic I proposed back in September was "Teaching INTJs: what did you wish your instructors knew about how you learn best?" As it happens, I just more-or-less finished my (counts) 10th semester of graduate school (as a student) and have been reflecting on pretty much exactly this topic in preparation for writing my course evaluations. So what say I go first.

But wait! First I have to digress with a paradigmatic meta commentary. I think it's in the comm rules. If you don't float up an abstraction layer or two, they make you give back your INTJ card.

How about this: Teaching and learning are more than what happens in classrooms, and all too often discussions of "teaching" and "learning" wind up contracting down to a discussion of mere schooling. I think discussing learning and teaching in classroom setting is important, but but lets not forget all the great breadth of what constitutes teaching and learning. The one-on-one formal pedagogy of a music lesson is also teaching and (hopefully) learning. The "show me how to do this" of a in-person help-desk support request is learning and (hopefully) teaching. The "tell me how things are done here so I can help you make it less fubared" is also a form of teaching and learning.

To the extent we focus, in this discussion, let's focus on all the forms of "If you think you're going to teach me something, here's what I wish you would know about how to do that most effectively and painlessly for everyone involved."


Teaching and learning might reasonably be compared to ballroom dancing (even when there's lots of people involved): it helps to have some idea of who is leading. I admittedly don't know if this is also true of ballroom dancing, but in education, either the teacher or the pupil can lead.

One of the big differences about me, as a student, and I expect this is an INTJish thing, is that when I look around at my peers, most of them seem to be very passive learners, who expect (or at least behave as if they expect) to open up their heads and have education poured into it. They evidently expect the instructor to lead the dance of education. I can totally do that, too. But I, apparently unlike most of my peers, am totally comfortable leading as the student. I actually prefer it to anything other than really great leadership from the teacher.

This means that a mode of "teaching" that really works for me is that you just answer my questions. You let me drive. I don't expect you to be totally passive; I expect you to say things like, "That question doesn't make any sense because it presupposes Blah, which is incorrect." And, frankly, at times I'm going to come up with these vasty big-picture overview questions which amount to "So in 2500 words or less, summarize this topic about which people write PhD dissertations", so it's not like you won't be working hard. And I have a deal with the Devil that every time someone says, "Uh, hmm, gee, that's a good question", I get to live two years longer. (If you want to be on my invite list for my Y10k party, just ask; I'm tentatively planning on booking a hall near Tranquility Base if I'm in-system.)

This can be a bit of a problem in a classroom environment, where, unless I'm being on my super bestest best behavior, I can hijack your class in an eyeblink. And I don't even mean to do it, I'll just muse something aloud like, "Gee, that sounds like what Jung said about function differentiation..." and we're off and running.

If you don't want me to hijack your class, you can just say so. (I have games on my palm pilot! I can check out if necessary.) Really, this comes down to making your expectations known to me.

And for some reason, a lot of professors in classroom environments (well, at this school) seem to be allergic to spelling out their expectations in some way or another. For some, I think it's pretty clearly a resistance to making firm statements. I had one prof who was, AFAICT, a flaming ENFP. He would sooner cut off his own arm than make a plan in advance or specify deadlines. He had deadlines, of course; there comes a point where the school requires him to submit our grades, so he wanted our assignments in early enough that, you know, he could read and grade them all. Telling us what the deadlines were.... he didn't want to structure our experience that much. Other professors don't have that hang-up, but seem to have suspicions that somehow by telling us what length they want us to write to or what size font to use, they will be facilitating our cheating on the assignment. Still others don't have those issues, but feel that if they tell us too much about what the assignment actually is, we "won't think outside the box".

Speaking for myself -- and perhaps for you guys too, I dunno -- I'm pretty sure you, the instructor, need to be far, far more concerned with bringing my attention to where the box is than worrying whether I will be thinking outside it. I'm a pretty amazingly divergent thinker. I have a lot of trouble keeping track of just where I left the box. In fact, if you want what I do to have any relationship, whatsoever with the box? You had better present me with a treasure map to the box. In writing.

Because -- really -- I'm pretty box-finding impaired. Maybe it's like dyslexia. We can call it "dyspuxia". What this means is I cannot count the number of times I have turned in fabulously well done assignments which turned out to be completely not what the instructor had in mind. But the instructor will allow as how, yes, nothing in the assignment as given actually ruled out what I had done.

More on accommodating my dyspuxia, below. To return to the point at hand: I'm not actually some mad iconoclast rebel-without-a-cause, ODD trouble-maker*, I'm actually completely willing to go along with your reasonable requests. Sure, I might think they're dumb, but I won't say so; I'm here to get an education, not teach you to teach. If you let me know how you want questions, class discussion, assignments, whatever handled, dude, I'm completely happy to do it however you like. I mean, barring really outrageous stuff (e.g. will not write paper in my own blood.) But I haven't got any particular need to do it my way. It's just that if you don't make it really plain to me what your way is, I might not figure it out on my own, and then I'll wind up defaulting to my way, and one or the other or both of us might be really unhappy with that.

(* They're down the hall.)

Actually, I'm not merely easy going about your pedagogical requests: I can be a downright goody-two shoes about them, which, strangely, a lot of instructors seem ill prepared for. I think this comes from my background in music and theater, in which being asked to do all sorts of weird, if not down-right embarrassing, things for educational purposes was an every day occurrence. The instruction of music is often (and for good reason) "Wax on, wax off*" instruction. [* If you don't know where that's going.] If you propose to me that you can teach me best by letting you lead, indeed, by letting you lead to the extent that I'm simply blindly following a program of instruction you understand but which is completely impenetrable to me upfront... I can totally do that. You will find me freakishly capable of operating in that mode. Where other students piss and moan, and have to be coaxed along, I'll just do what I'm told.

Which means you had better not indulge in hyperbole.

Look, an instructor in historical counterpoint once said, "I really don't think someone can write in a historical style unless they were to immerse themselves in the music of the period, and listen to nothing else for a year."

That seemed reasonable to me, so I did.

I later found out he didn't expect to be taken literally, but, hey, I think it kinda worked, so I'm a satisfied customer.

So I can do wax on, wax off style learning. Here's the thing, though: you have to actually be willing to take that level of responsibility.

Here's what wax on, wax off isn't. It isn't just expecting me not to ask questions. If you want me not to ask questions, it had better be because you've figured out a course of study which you have reason to believe will actually work.

One thing that drives me up a wall -- and now I not just referring to formal instruction -- is when I ask a question, and get a prepared recital that answers... some other question. I'm not talking about misunderstanding the question. I'm talking about a behavior I've observed in coworkers, where when I'll ask, "How does the Ferblungit module handle array input?" and the person asked will recite everything they know about the Ferblungit module, and never mention input handling -- arrays or otherwise -- at all. And it will be the whole long monologue, and they get offended if you interrupt and ask, "Yes, but what about handling array input?" It's much like having the manual read to you; and if the answer were in there, I would have found it when I RTFMed, which is why I'm asking. I actually sort of expect this failure to engage with my actual question when I ask questions in email, because apparently a lot of people aren't so good a reading comprehension, but I can think of three stunning examples in face-to-face communication.

Which brings me to another point: Really, I'd like it in writing. Particularly your expectations and that map to the box. While I love discussion and, heck, as a musician I'm all about auditory information, really, I'd like the complex stuff written down. And I love charts and graphs. Apparently normal people have trouble with graphs; for me, they are some of the most lucid forms of explanation.

It's funny, perhaps, in that I have no visual imagination to speak of. My ability to visualize is close to non-existent. But perhaps that's why I need it written down -- it's not like I'm going to reconstruct it to be a picture in my head from the data.

Remembering my dispuxia, considering how much trouble I have keeping track of the box, it really helps not to add basic communication snafus into the instructional chain. If you give me oral instructions and I write them down, Hermes only knows what I'll actually do for the assignment.

Note: I have no such difficulties in the work place. Go fig. Of course, nobody is trying to play little, "I don't want to tell you too much because then you won't be creative enough", games in the work place; maybe that has something to do with it.

Speaking of writing: I have a concision problem. In case it wasn't manifestly evident by now. Actually, it's not a concision problem, per se. I'm pretty expeditious about getting my ideas across. I don't belabor them. (Heck, I hate repeating myself.) No, the problem is that I get these big, fat ideas, and try to cram them into little tiny assignments. Or more properly, I get assignments like, "Discuss Blah", and, well, I gather from instructors' reactions that from their perspective, it's like that bit in Hitchhiker's about the man who was overdosed with truth serum and told to tell "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"... so did. It seems there is no topic so particular, so specific, so limited, that when I turn my attention to it, it doesn't erupt into a mighty 20+ page discourse. Not counting bibliography. Hera help you if I actually get into the research.

Or looked at it another way, I'm both very thoughtful and highly opinionated, and those to things together will mean never having to say, "Gee, I don't know what to say on this topic."

I have been finding written assignments a fabulous way to learn a subject. I'm pretty sure that's not how most people experience them. I surmise my peers and profs see them as ways to demonstrate one's learning -- indeed a recent prof of mine referred to the final paper as a "proof of learning". My classmates often seem to me to be approaching their written assignments with the attitude of "what is the minimum amount of work I can do here to get my minimum acceptable grade". No disparagement meant; I do plenty of assignments like that, myself and approve of crossing the swamp without getting seduced into alligator wrestling. But where papers are concerned, that seems to me to be missing one of the great educational opportunities available to one, and I'm trying to scoop up as much education as I can get as I pass through grad school. So I approach written assignments from the perspective of, "What can I learn here?"

Typically, when invited to pick a topic, I'll use the opportunity to investigate something I think I'll benefit by knowing. If I do choose something which is already in an area of strength, I'll take the occasion to deepen my knowledge or to work out my thoughts on a topic more clearly.

Concomitantly:

1) I care a lot about the educational affordances of the assignment. But if you can't think of a good, educational assignment, that's OK, I can pick one for us.

2) I'd be delighted to get thoughtful feedback, but really, if you're busy, just slap a grade on there and let me know how well or not I met expectations. The educational part of the exercise was the research I did in preparing it. I'm not writing it to submit my thinking to you for you to evaluate whether or not I got it right. Of course, if you want to engage me on the level of content, that's great.

3) Unless you have a PhD in English, or I have hired you as a proof reader, or it is in fact a writing class, don't tangle with me on issues of English usage and style. Don't go there. I can take you. You have better things to do. I promise to use a spell-checker if you promise not to get into arguments about split infinitives, terminal prepositions, comma usage or citation format. I have a copy of the official APA style guide and I'm not afraid to use it.

Finally, one important other thing to know is this:

I'm bad at conclusions and often submit things right up against the deadline.