Marshall W. Gregory

Escaping the prison of singularity

Marshall W. Gregory — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:22:59 PDT

Few human activities investigate the poverty or richness of human life or describe the mechanisms of ethical formation as fully and particularly as narratives do. In the development of our intellectual views and ethical stances, we cannot do without the guidance and examples of first-hand friends, acquaintances, and loved ones, but neither can we do without the second-hand guidance and examples of narrative friends and loved ones, for these latter supplement our need for sociability and help us fill out the education about the ways and means of being human that we receive from first-hand acquaintances. It would be wise of all of us who spend our lives construing theories about language and literature to remind ourselves daily at least-about the roots of our deep and inextinguishable need for narrative.

THE MANY-HEADED HYDRA OF THEORY VS. THE UNIFYING MISSION OF TEACHING

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:29:42 PDT

A persistent myth in departments of English posits a golden age when tweedy English professors humanized the world with thrice-weekly doses of literary instruction, exchanged witty conversation and recondite literary allusions at the Friday afternoon sherry hour, and generally agreed with each other about which books to teach, how to teach them, and the importance of teaching them. This golden age must have ended right before I entered the field. My whole history within the discipline suggests that getting English professionals to agree in large numbers about almost anything is nearly as difficult as herding cats or training king cobras to hiss the "Hallelujah Chorus" in four-part harmony.

Pedagogy and the Christian Law of Love

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:19:41 PDT

LOVE IS FOUNDATIONAL for all teachers, who need a version of love that evades sentimentality and yet respects its recipients, that challenges students and yet mediates toughness with charity. The law of love expressed in the Judeo-Christian tradition helps teachers critique empty forms of love at the same time that it helps them employ productive forms of love in the classroom. We can choose love only if we humble ourselves sufficiently to look through, rather than at, the tricky lens of pride and passion and see love residing out there, beyond ego. The proper love between teachers and students, the love that Jesus commands us to most fundamentally, is neither eros nor philia but agape, which underwrites all other loves. This love offers three distinct advantages to teacherly practice: it enables us to distance ourselves from the entanglements of personality; it offers us a way of understanding the kinds of challenges we extend to our students; and it gives us a way of positioning our teaching in relation to other professional goals and activities. Teachers who rely on the energy of pedagogical passion sometimes mistakenly think that because agape operates on principle rather than on personality, it must be either cold or uninterested in individual students. However, agapic teaching can indeed be passionate, but its passions derives from a vision of the ends of good teaching and an understanding of human nature - of both teacher and student - because it stems from religious convictions that can be matched with specific Christian doctrines.

Introductory Courses, Student Ethos, and Living the Life of the Mind

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:12:07 PDT

In considering how curriculum and teaching influence education, it is revealing to note that most faculty members treat curriculum the way bankers treat investments. They generally spend much time, planning, and careful thought on curricular matters--reasoning here, analyzing there, relying on experience, and carefully considering both the long-term and short-term dividends of knowledge--but when it comes to teaching, many faculty members operate less like bankers and more like barnstormers, flying by the seat of their pants and guiding themselves primarily by instinct or by repeating whatever worked yesterday. Few teachers feel that they have either the intellectual or professional grasp of teaching that they have of curriculum. Plato's complaint about poets and politicians (as opposed to craftsmen or philosophers)--that they always operate by rules of thumb, even when they are brilliant, and thus can neither explain how they do what they do nor teach the doing of it to others--describes all teachers at least some of the time.

Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos

Marshall W. Gregory — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:28:20 PDT

How Teachers Need to Deal with the Seen, the Unseen, the Improbable, and the Nearly Imponderable

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:12:02 PST

The article offers information concerning the teacher's approach in dealing with the students' issues in Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. Visible, invisible, improbable, and the nearly imponderable issues are the variables of the student's educational growth. These variables include student's classroom participation, emotional struggles, and the teacher's influence with the decision of the students.

Humanities Education Then, Now and Why

Marshall W. Gregory — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:09:10 PDT

The problem of educational metaphors in the humanities is that the metaphors driving the humanities since the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance-metaphors that educators still rely on today-no longer work in the twenty-first century.

How to Become the Teacher Who Makes the Difference-An Anti-Romantic Theory of Pedagogy: Principles, Not Personalities

Marshall W. Gregory — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:30:57 PDT

Note: full-text not available due to publisher restrictions. Link takes you to an external site where you can purchase the book or borrow it from a local library.

Do We Teach Disciplines or Do We Teach Students?—What Difference Does It Make?

Marshall W. Gregory — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:40:44 PDT

The single most difficult notion for graduate students and new professors to grasp about teaching--and, indeed, many experienced teachers never grasp this point either--is that successful teaching to undergraduates has little to do with the degree of one's mastery of disciplinary knowledge.

Real Teaching and Real Learning vs Narrative Myths About Education

Marshall W. Gregory — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:02:56 PDT

All real classrooms are saturated in the fictional narratives about education from TV and movies that swirl about thickly and persistently in western culture, yet the influence that these fictions exert on real teachers and real students is seldom examined. This article argues that since these fictional narratives nearly always deal in recycled stereotypes of both students and teachers, and that since they seldom receive critical attention, the influence they exert on real teachers and real students is to mislead, confuse, and impoverish their evaluations of and expectations about the nature of genuine education.

Why are Liberal Education's Friends of so Little Help?

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:56:24 PDT

Emphasizes the need for college teachers to apply diligence in improving teaching methods towards the achievement of liberal education goals. Potential for teachers to advance knowledge and awareness on liberal education; Factors that can be attributed to the failure of colleges and universities in the U.S. to make progress in their liberal programs and aims; Ways to address liberal education issues.

Junk-Yard Ride

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:33:30 PST

This paper describes the difficulties of being born into an emotionally and intellectually dysfunctional family headed by two child-parents who had neither the skill nor interest nor desire to be thoughtful parents, and who were saddled with all the intellectual and emotional baggage of fundamentalist protestantism that they passed on to their children, forcing the author of the essay to untangle many personal knots of confusion and pain on his path toward autonomy and peace.

Teaching and Learning English Literature

Ellie Chambers et al. — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:49:50 PST

Teaching and Learning English Literature presents a comprehensive overview of teaching English Literature from setting teaching goals and syllabus planning, through to a range of student assessment strategies and methods of course evaluation and improvement. A range of teaching methods are explored, from the traditional classroom, to newer collaborative work and uses of electronic technologies.

Turning Water into Wine: Giving Remote Texts Full Flavor for the Audience of Friends

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:45:04 PST

This essay argues that teachers would be more effective at promoting students' willingness to work hard at course content that seems to them remote and abstract if teachers explicitly presented that content to students more as a means to their education rather than as the aim of their education. Teachers should confront the fact that most of the content they teach will be forgotten by students. Once this fact is accepted, then it follows that teaching content that teachers know will be forgotten as if it should never be forgotten is myopic and perhaps dysfunctional. An alternative teaching model is to use course content to stimulate the flourishing of developmental human skills--rationality, language, aesthetic responsiveness, imagination, introspection, moral and ethical deliberation, sociability, and physicality--in the service of a developmental notion of liberal education that can never go out of date and can never be forgotten because its effects become absorbed as developmentally advanced orientations of life, not crammed into short-term memory for the sake of passing tests.

Note: Link is to the article in a subscription database available to users affiliated with Butler University. Appropriate login information will be required for access. Users not affiliated with Butler University should contact their local librarian for assistance in locating a copy of this article.

From Shakespeare on the Page to Shakespeare on the Stage: What I Learned About Teaching in Acting Class

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:36:02 PST

Discusses the author's experience of teaching an undergraduate acting class specializing in the works of playwright William Shakespeare. Comparison of his experience in taking the class as an actor and as a teacher; Lessons learned about teaching in acting class; Recommendations for teachers in the humanities and science courses.

The Unbroken Continuum: Booth/Gregory on Teaching and Ethical Criticism

Marshall W. Gregory — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:26:27 PST

The author relates the development of his personal and professional relationship with English professor Wayne C. Booth. He became a student of Booth in a literary criticism course at the University of Chicago in Illinois. He states that the qualities and methods used by Booth as a teacher made him realize the possibility of developing into a different kind of person. He mentions that they spent their time examining every aspect of life by applying the idea of intellectuals such as Plato.

Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives

Marshall W. Gregory — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:34:41 PDT

Chapter 9, ‘Ethical Engagements Over Time: Reading and Rereading David Copperfield and Wuthering Heights’ is from Dr. Gregory’s book Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives.