What's the Nicest Way to Tell Students They're Wrong?

[smallcleanrat]

Got a comment from a teaching eval for a course I TA'ed saying I need to be "less condescending" and that I made them "feel stupid" whenever I corrected an incorrect answer.

I ran discussion sessions which mostly consisted of students breaking into groups, with each group assigned a portion of a scientific journal article. They help each other understand the details of their part of the paper and then each group explains their part to the rest of the class. They need to explain the experimental question, the experimental methods and results, and the authors' interpretation, in addition to coming up with their own critiques. The student comment mentioned an example in which I said something like "I don't think that's what the authors meant. What they're trying to do here is..." in response to one of their explanations. Student didn't give an example of how they would have preferred me to correct them.

As part of mandatory TA training, one of these sessions was filmed and evaluated by our training instructor. She told me I needed to soften the blow more when I correct students. She pointed to one instance in which a student gave an incorrect explanation and I said "Actually,..." and told me I shouldn't have said "actually". I didn't even realize that could be considered harsh. She said, "Praise them for the part they got correct before pointing out what was incorrect." but didn't have an answer when I asked how to respond when the student doesn't get any of the parts correct...

What are some better ways to correct a student?

Note: Only one student comment complained about this. I got several comments describing me as "friendly", "approachable", and "helpful". So I did not universally come across as a big meanie.

[dismalist]

One student? Ignore.

[Ruralguy]

I wouldn't ignore because someone actually pointed out this same issue. follow the advice...just soften the blow a bit better.

[smallcleanrat]

I wouldn't ignore because someone actually pointed out this same issue. follow the advice...just soften the blow a bit better.

What can I do to soften the blow?

[dismalist]

I wouldn't ignore because someone actually pointed out this same issue. follow the advice...just soften the blow a bit better.

That was the training instructor, who has his or her own objective function.

[mamselle]

I've sometimes had a situation like that come up; in that case, I might say, "Well, I can see why you might think that, but it turns out that...."

Or perhaps, "Thanks for your comment, it's interesting that you might see it that way, however..."

   In other words, reinforce the effort to answer at all, first, if no part of the answer is reinforceable.

(I don't really see "actually," as an unkind thing to say once you've done that....but maybe that's a trigger I'm not familiar with, either.)

I'd also say that you're in an awkward place since you might not have been given enough direct training in such things.

It's good that you get some guidance in your classroom interactions at all--some TA's don't--but it can feel a bit like you are being dinged for something you might not have thought was even wrong, or had had other instructors do without knowing they shouldn't have done it either.

Also, it seems to me that class reviews can be a bit of a minefield since the reviewer has some motivation to make themselves look good by pointing out something even a tiny bit wrong, just to show they're "on the job."

For example: I was once called in to teach a French course with less than a week to go before classes started. The office thought the previous instructor--who'd accepted a TT job at the last minute elsewhere--had already ordered the books. When I got to the bookstore, it turned out that she hadn't, so I had to put in a rush request for them and was told it would take another week for them to come in.

They didn't even have an instructor's copy for me to use, so I planned the first six classes using other materials that I knew would dovetail well enough.

The second class (a Friday: it was a MWF class series and the 1st week started on a Wednesday) the chair came in to review my class, so they'd have a review on record to back up my hire. I thought things went well enough, so I wasn't worried about the report.

But I was a bit miffed when I finally read it.

She'd dinged me for not referring to the text book once in class and making no assignments in it--even though I'd TOLD her none of the books were in yet, and no-one had them, including me!

It's just like that sometimes....la vie, c'est comme ca.

M.

[Hegemony]

You: Why did Angela in the text decide not to marry David?
Student A: She decided she hated David!
You: Ah, that's interesting! Let's look at some details in the text. Which part are you looking at there? Can you find a place about Angela's feelings about David?
Student A: Um, huh, what about on p. 101 here?
You: Ah, right. Oh, yes, good, there's a lot about Angela and David here. Well spotted! Let's look at this part more closely. Let's find one detail and think about that. Who can choose one for us?
Student B: What about where Angela says 'I hate this!'?
You: Oh, yes!  Strong words there! Now let's think about the context of this. What could be motivating her here?
Student C: I think she's put on the spot by her parents.
You: Ah, that's interesting!  Oh yes, it says that further down the page, where she says, "I hate that they're making me choose before I even have a chance to think." So Student A picked up on a really important word here — maybe the central word, right? "Hate" is a strong motivator. But maybe she's not hating David himself, maybe she's hating having to choose too soon — don't you think?  Let's check out some more details...

That's a little more directive than I would usually be, but just to show how it might be done. The thing is that merely telling them they're wrong doesn't help them assess the evidence better. And assessing the evidence is the real skill you're building, that underlies all the facts. So instead of correcting the facts, which shuts down the discussion, it helps to model the kind of evidence-gathering that leads to a better interpretation of the facts. So go back to the evidence, rather than skipping ahead to correct the answer.  That's unless it's a very simple incorrect statement —

Student: So the Civil War was over by 1793, and...
You: Wait, hang on a minute. [Musingly] The Civil War was over by 17... oh, I get it, you mean the Revolutionary War! I know, when you get too many facts in there sometimes — why, the other day I — okay, never mind, going on! 1793 — we were talking about the process of...

[youllneverwalkalone]

Got a comment from a teaching eval for a course I TA'ed saying I need to be "less condescending" and that I made them "feel stupid" whenever I corrected an incorrect answer.

I ran discussion sessions which mostly consisted of students breaking into groups, with each group assigned a portion of a scientific journal article. They help each other understand the details of their part of the paper and then each group explains their part to the rest of the class. They need to explain the experimental question, the experimental methods and results, and the authors' interpretation, in addition to coming up with their own critiques. The student comment mentioned an example in which I said something like "I don't think that's what the authors meant. What they're trying to do here is..." in response to one of their explanations. Student didn't give an example of how they would have preferred me to correct them.

As part of mandatory TA training, one of these sessions was filmed and evaluated by our training instructor. She told me I needed to soften the blow more when I correct students. She pointed to one instance in which a student gave an incorrect explanation and I said "Actually,..." and told me I shouldn't have said "actually". I didn't even realize that could be considered harsh. She said, "Praise them for the part they got correct before pointing out what was incorrect." but didn't have an answer when I asked how to respond when the student doesn't get any of the parts correct...

What are some better ways to correct a student?

Note: Only one student comment complained about this. I got several comments describing me as "friendly", "approachable", and "helpful". So I did not universally come across as a big meanie.

I love how people in higher ed almost universally complain about millennial students being entitled puppies. Yet, if we accept that one gets chastised for using an innocent word like "actually", it is hard to imagine a different outcome.

OP, I imagine you are doing all you can to not come off as a dick, and you opening this thread is also indicative of that. I would focus on what the majority of the students say. You can't win everyone over, nobody can.   

[Caracal]

OP, I imagine you are doing all you can to not come off as a dick, and you opening this thread is also indicative of that. I would focus on what the majority of the students say. You can't win everyone over, nobody can.

I agree, and I don't think the OP is a jerk. However, I know that when I was new to teaching, I got a lot of comments about how I seemed to students that were strange to see because they were totally at odds with the way that I thought of myself and other feedback I'd gotten through my life. What was happening, I later realized, was that when you are in a position of authority, people interpret your nervousness differently. I was just feeling lost and unsure of what I was doing, but some students thought I was a jerk who was dismissive of their comments and questions.  I wonder if what has happened in these cases is that you're feeling understandably anxious about keeping a discussion going and looking stupid up there, and so when a student says something wrong, your mind goes immediately to trying to fix the problem, and that student and others then interpret your response as dismissive or critical.  A lot of this is just about getting more comfortable with being in charge.

[ergative]

Got a comment from a teaching eval for a course I TA'ed saying I need to be "less condescending" and that I made them "feel stupid" whenever I corrected an incorrect answer.

I ran discussion sessions which mostly consisted of students breaking into groups, with each group assigned a portion of a scientific journal article. They help each other understand the details of their part of the paper and then each group explains their part to the rest of the class. They need to explain the experimental question, the experimental methods and results, and the authors' interpretation, in addition to coming up with their own critiques. The student comment mentioned an example in which I said something like "I don't think that's what the authors meant. What they're trying to do here is..." in response to one of their explanations. Student didn't give an example of how they would have preferred me to correct them.

As part of mandatory TA training, one of these sessions was filmed and evaluated by our training instructor. She told me I needed to soften the blow more when I correct students. She pointed to one instance in which a student gave an incorrect explanation and I said "Actually,..." and told me I shouldn't have said "actually". I didn't even realize that could be considered harsh. She said, "Praise them for the part they got correct before pointing out what was incorrect." but didn't have an answer when I asked how to respond when the student doesn't get any of the parts correct...

What are some better ways to correct a student?

Note: Only one student comment complained about this. I got several comments describing me as "friendly", "approachable", and "helpful". So I did not universally come across as a big meanie.

I love how people in higher ed almost universally complain about millennial students being entitled puppies. Yet, if we accept that one gets chastised for using an innocent word like "actually", it is hard to imagine a different outcome.

OP, I imagine you are doing all you can to not come off as a dick, and you opening this thread is also indicative of that. I would focus on what the majority of the students say. You can't win everyone over, nobody can.

[pedant]
The youngest millennial is now 23 (according to Pew Research), and the oldest is pushing 40. It is more likely that the TAs and assistant professors are millennials than their students.

[/pedant]

A great deal of what comes across as condescension or contempt is in manner and tone, rather than in the actual words. I can easily imagine a situation in which Hegemony's perfectly reasonable script is delivered with indescribable scorn for the student's misunderstanding, regardless of how kind and encouraging the words. Probably it's not the actual use of the word 'actually' but the manner in which the entire correction was delivered that came across as condescending. It's harder to describe how to correct a mannerism than it is to describe problematic vocabulary, which is perhaps why the vocabulary was singled out.

I agree with Hegemony and Mamselle that a good way to avoid condescension is to make it clear that you understand why a student might come to the conclusion they came to, and in that way validating their thought processes.

[Aster]

Two of my senior teaching mentors use "actually" all the time to correct student mistakes. It's not a problem for them to use that word with their students. I don't use the word because I find it unnecessary, but that's just me.

If students are fixated on grammar choices, I would argue that those students are more interested in shifting blame than they are in correcting their mistakes. Edu-wonks will have their flavour of the year good and bad vocabulary to peddle onto professors, and you keep or discard whatever advice they give you as you see fit.

#1 to what ergative said about manner and tone.

The only *actually* useful advice that I might give when correcting student mistakes is to avoid sarcasm. Graduate students tend to be salty and spirited in their speech, and that can sometimes be a liability when you move into the classroom. Especially lower division classes.

[polly_mer]

1) Urban Dictionary has a definition of "Well, actually" that includes "the battlecry of the mansplainer".  The top definition of "the word you hear before a big lecture" also rings true in my experience.

2) Many times, the problem is the students don't want to be corrected to learn, but instead want to be acknowledged for going through the motions.  I read through Hegemony's case and I can see the discussions going a multitude of ways including something along the lines of "Just tell me the answer you want, because it's condescending to speak to adults as though we're preschoolers". 

3) In my experience, one of the hardest classes to teach was literature research methods when students just wouldn't do the literature review sufficiently to be able to bring a variety of well-supported viewpoints to a discussion that has multiple, reasonable interpretations.  Reading only one paper is usually insufficient to know enough about the topic to be able to see where the authors may have gone more with their pet theory than what the data support and to be able to draw additional conclusions based on evidence that other parts of the literature used to support valid conclusions. 

I routinely saw that even reading every word of a single article was often insufficient for the novices to summarize the question, the evidence, and the authors' conclusions because the students just didn't have enough background to make the information their own.  If the students couldn't lift individual sentences that had key words like "the scientific question is" and "the evidence supporting our conclusions are", then the students were lost. 

Students who had had an undergraduate research experience that included doing an extensive literature review resulting in a report on the state of the literature relevant to the given problem were much better than the students who approached each article as though it were an authoritative text instead of a report by a couple humans.

4) Aster suggests avoiding sarcasm.  The question is then to what degree is one helping avowed novices acclimate to how interactions work in the community so that community standards for sarcasm for practitioners are relevant and to what degree one is trying to get newcomers to select one's field as a one of the many choices open to them and what fraction of those newcomers experience sarcasm as off-putting. 

As the student, I go all ways depending on why I'm in a given circumstance, how far on the novice side I fall, and how I can see others at about my rank being treated.  If I can see that other members of a mixed-ability group get sarcasm, then I don't want a "That's really interesting, why do you think that, Polly?" because that indicates I'm a relative child who needs protecting and I'm getting a shit sandwich (insincere praise, correction, and encouragement to keep trying at something where I'm failing so badly that no one has the heart to just tell me how I'm wrong).  On the other hand, if I have been voluntold to be in a workshop for which I have minimal interest and even less background, I want the most supportive environment ever as I flail to come up to speed because that is my job on the line and I'm working hard to come up from an H to a C.

[Hegemony]

I think avoiding sarcasm is a good policy for getting along with people in general, not just in class.  Sarcasm is mocking, and mocking people almost never wins their agreement. Mocking people you have authority over is especially problematic. In a conversation between friends, at least the friend could mock you back. If a student responded to your answer with sarcasm or mockery, I doubt you'd be pleased, and I don't think the discussion would be advanced.

[LibbyG]

I often preface an activity like that, with, "Let's work together to clarify the main points of this article." I'm trying to convey here that the article isn't immediately clear; we need to make it clear.

I tend to phrase the right-or-wrong questions like "What did you figure out about the research question driving the study?" Then partial but not patently wrong answers get a kind of verbal full-credit.

When it's time to correct someone, I'll say, "You're on the right track that the it has to do with [X], but it's not quite [what you said]." Then I'll break it down and ask of everyone:  "Remember the concept [Y]? How did they measure [Y] in the study?"  And then, if it doesn't feel like too much pandering, acknowledge the first (wrong) answer as a step toward the right one.

It's a lot of emotion management for sure.

[bopper]

"ActuallY' is also a meme
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ackchyually