Issue link: http://ncumarketing.uberflip.com/i/964632
Mark White, PhD Full-Time Faculty, Department of Marriage and Family Sciences Challenging Students to Become Scholar-Practitioners When I have taught master's students, one of my goals was to help them navigate the qualitative shift from producing undergraduate work to graduate work. Given that I almost exclusively teach doctoral students, I value helping students strive to become scholar-practitioners and make another qualitative shift to doctoral-level work. I have tried a few strategies to facilitate this. The first is to share with students a document I created that delineates common grammatical and APA format issues I have encountered in students' writing. This document includes both incorrect and correct examples, and I refer to this document when grading their work (e.g., "please refer to grammar issue #10"). Second, I strive to provide detailed and specific feedback. I use track changes and comments extensively, with the goal of emphasizing how what they have submitted can rise to the level of doctoral work if these issues are addressed. Admittedly, I am still finessing this process and finding the right level of feedback so as to empower, not discourage, but I do hear somewhat regularly from students that they appreciate the level of feedback I provide them. Third, particularly in research methods and statistics courses, I keep a stock of excellent responses to particular text questions or assignment tasks. When I receive a subpar response from a student, I copy and paste in an example of an excellent response to that question with the comment, "this is how another student answered that question." My goal in doing so is to raise their expectations and help them see both what a strong response to that question looks like, as well as give them hope that if a fellow student can respond like that, in time so can they. Finally, when warranted, I explicitly invite students to rise to the challenge, letting them know that what they submitted is not doctoral-level work, that we are training them to become a scholar and an expert in a specific area, and that I need them to provide more depth, specifics, and examples in their work. By no means does the quality of work dramatically shift for most students after I send this message. However, it has for some; for others it began a dialogue about the nature of doctoral-level work, and a few others explicitly indicated they appreciated that challenge and have sought to make that shift in their work. As I reflect on my graduate experience, I grew the most from faculty/mentors who blended warmth/support/encouragement with high expectations. A growth area for me is ensuring I consistently communicate the former along with the latter, as my hope is that all of my students know that I care about them, and I want them to be the best they can be.