University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center


*II. Interacting With Students*

Teaching a Diverse Student Body

Our student body is comprised of a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate students from a wide variety of ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds. Significant numbers of African American, Asian and Asian American, Hispanic, international, and gay/ lesbian/bisexual students diversify our student community. Although students within a particular minority group may have a common racial, ethnic, or cultural identity, their experiences and backgrounds differ. Thus these individuals exhibit a diversity of attitudes, perceptions, and opinions about themselves and the world. There is, of course, no monolithic perspective for any group of people.
Yet being part of a minority group may have a strong impact on students' classroom interaction and performance. Thus, although race is not normally a consideration with respect to imparting knowledge about specific disciplines, awareness of race can affect students' comfort level in class, their active participation, and their perception of their status within the class. Minority students frequently speak of feeling isolated or spotlighted on the basis of their race. When they feel this way in a class in which they are underrepresented, their perceptions may affect their performance. The TRC's handbook, Teaching a Diverse Student Body, offers many practical ideas about how you can work toward creating a classroom climate conducive to learning. Here are a few brief tips:

Treat all students as individuals regardless of their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Despite good intentions motivated by awareness of a minority perspective, making assumptions or generalizations about an individual's experience or perspective can create problems and should be avoided.
Make efforts to ensure that your treatment of students in and out of class (including body language and interactions) are perceived as equitable and fair. For example, if you chat informally with students after class, provide the same opportunity for informal contact with all your students. In addition, encourage students to visit you during office hours to foster good student/ teacher relationships.
Create a climate that encourages dialogue by allowing a wide range of opinions to emerge in a nonintimidating environment. Encourage students to express themselves freely.
Vary the races and genders you use in examples, whether anecdotal or visual. Avoid stereotypes.
During discussions, do not spotlight individual students by expecting them to articulate the "minority perspective" or by calling on them particularly when topics involve issues of race or an ethnic, cultural point of view. Establish a fair way to involve all students in discussions.
In large lecture classes, notice where minority students sit, establishing eye contact with them and asking them to participate equally.
Assign class projects and design study groups to involve students equally in groups without feeling that they are imposing. Minority students sometimes find it difficult to be invited into groups and may be overlooked by other students when working on class projects.
If you are a member of a minority group, be aware that students' perceptions or expectations of you may be stereotyped or unreasonable. Model the behavior that you wish them to emulate: expect them to respect your right to be yourself, as you in turn respect their rights of individuality.

Sources of Errors in Problem Solving

Inaccurate reading. The student:

reads without concentrating on meaning.
skips unfamiliar words.
loses some facts or ideas.
doesn't reread a difficult section.
starts to work the problem before reading all the
material.

Inaccurate thinking. The student:

doesn't value accuracy above speed or ease of
completing the work.
doesn't take enough care in performing some
operations.
interprets words or performs operations inconsistently.
doesn't check or review unfamiliar or unclear
procedures.
works too rapidly.
draws conclusions without sufficient thought.

Analyzes problems poorly. The student:

doesn't divide a complex problem into parts;
doesn't use the simpler parts to understand the
harder ones.
doesn't use prior knowledge and experience to
make sense of unclear ideas.
doesn't use the dictionary when necessary.
doesn't construct a useful representation of ideas
on paper when necessary.

Lacks perseverance. The student:

lacks confidence and gives up easily.
chooses an answer after only superficially
considering the problem.
solves the problem mechanically, without much
thought.
reasons through part of the problem and jumps to
a conclusion about the rest.
tries one way to solve the problem and gives up if
that one doesn't work.

(Adapted from Whimbey and Lochhead, 1980)

Training Students to Solve Problems

You can help by training the student to solve
problems more effectively. Orient your help session
around how the student thinks about the problem
rather than how you would go about solving it. You
must elicit the student’s thinking so that you can teach
better problem-solving procedures. To encourage
students to reflect about the process and let you in on
it, try the following techniques:

Have students read the problem aloud and
tell you how it can be solved before working on it.
Ask students to “think aloud” while solving the problem, constantly talking about what they are doing and why. Doing so slows down their thinking and makes the process more apparent to you. You can help them analyze their reasoning and find their mistakes by asking specific questions about their approach to or understanding of the problem. Use some of these questions to help students clarify their thinking:
- Tell me what you know about the problem.
  How could you break the problem into small
  steps?
- What are some ways you could solve this
  problem?
- Please tell me how you got from step one to
  step two.
- I don’t understand your reasoning behind
  that step; will you please explain?
- What are you thinking right now?

When students are very confused, you may
need to model good problem-solving techniques,
showing how you read and understand a question
before working the problem. If necessary, show the
student your process for solving the problem: working
step-by-step, backing up when necessary, breaking a
complex problem into parts, trying a new method
when one doesn’t work, etc. After modeling the
process, have the student work a similar problem to
demonstrate understanding of the process.

(Adapted with permission from the University of Michigan TA
Guidebook, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, Ann Arbor,
Michigan, n.d.)

Without good student responses, teaching has no chance. With good student response, its possibilities for satisfaction and accomplishment are almost
without limit.

—Norman Graebner, History