• Albert1990
    1
    Hi! My name is Albert. I am a college student studying sociology. I am in a sociology theory course in which each of us is required to teach a class period. My assignment is to teach a period in which we are covering selected readings from Discipline and Punish (Foucault) and The Logic of Practice/ Social Space and Symbolic Space (a lecture) by Bordieu. I was wondering if anyone could recommend texts which will prepare me for this assignment outside of the course readings? I have six weeks to prepare so there is time to read but I would like to find a commentary on these philosophers in general as well as analysis on the assigned readings if possible.
  • tim wood
    9.2k
    As to content, no. As to task, yes. When appropriate material is in hand and mind, then decide what you want them to know or be able to do when your teaching is done. Know or be able to do. Know or be able to do. If you do not have an answer to that, you cannot teach - for the simple reason, what are you teaching?

    When you make the decision, write it down. Written, understood, and adopted, it becomes the sure light to guide you through any darkness, difficulty, or doubt. And of course you can and should run it by your professor well in advance - it will impress the hell out of him or her.

    In determining what to teach, pay careful attention to your audience and understand who they are and what their abilities are. Your instructor is also a part, and there is nothing to prevent you from teaching him too, though what he learns may not be the same thing as the others.

    You now have a statement: "When I have done, I want them to know exactly [....] and be able to do exactly[....]," either or both. The "exactly" serves to get you close. At the rifle range, it's "aim small, miss small."

    You should by now have realized that your forty minutes or so is not a lot of time. Whatever you take on will have to fit the time. Trim your material - possibilities - accordingly. Build in success: make it something both doable, and that you can do. Check again with your professor. That is, sit down with him or her and ask questions, present, and ask for advice.

    Learning is about memory. Life itself is about the moment, and remembering the moment - two very different things. In order to teach, you must be memorable.

    Two ways to teach how to whittle. You can talk about it. And you can give everyone a knife and a piece of wood and set them (appropriate) tasks. Is there any way at all you can get your class to "whittle" your material. To actively engage them. There's an expression, "We can teach or we can do, what's your pleasure?" Doing is far the better, if possible. And it has the added advantage of reducing your actual class work, shifting it to them. You merely have to manage, letting the material and the presentation do the teaching. One general approach, subject to near endless variation, is to divide the class into two or more groups or teams, and present the "knowledge" as something to be instantly mastered and competed with.

    But eventually you have to master your own presentation, whatever it is, with props if any, or notes for the board, if any. Now you have to script it, and practice it, in an empty classroom, with a watch. Maybe more than once. And it all has to be simple, simple, simple. And even simpler, the simpler the better. The small thing well done is done forever, and far better then the thing not done.

    And over-all, that's all there is to it. A fantastic amount of work to reduce something difficult and complicated to a forty-minute snack that your audience won't even realize they're eating, something so simple-seeming they won't realize just how hard it was. But if you get any of this, your instructor will notice, and you'll get an A for effort!

    Suggestion: it's usually a good idea before the class, or at the beginning, to take two minutes to write at one end of the board briefly what's going to happen, like a quick table of contents, this good and useful of lots of reasons.
  • Number2018
    559
    You can try Michel de Certeau “The practice of everyday life”.
    There is a comparative critique of both Foucault and Bordieu. A little bit outdated, it gives a different
    perspective.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.9k


    That's the book with "reading as poaching" isn't it! I could never remember where I read that, which, there you go.
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