Great (Learning) Expectations

Today I want to talk about expectations, and how the concept of expectations affects instructors and students within HigherEd. Learning is filled with great expectations. There is always some kind of mystical understanding of expectations with everything we do, but I am going to try to reflect on what would happen, really what would happen, if we got rid of those expectations, or at least lowered them a whole bunch. As a modelling practice, I am writing this with absolutely no expectations on how this will turn out. 

This post is inspired by a lot of the tweets I was seeing from folk as they returned to in-person teaching this week for the first time. Some had not been to campus in over 2 years. There was a lot of expectations to say the least! Some didn't know what to expect, where would I park, where can I eat lunch, what will the classrooms be like, will tech support be available if I don't remember how to do this? I am sure some of these questions really resonate. And of course none of the expectations one did have in one's head really aligned. Navigating that space was either more difficult or less difficult than what instructors and students expected. 

Some who had been working through Zoom now have to think of different classroom expectations now that everyone is in the same space but with masks. The pedagogical strategies for each of those spaces is different, and there is a certain expectation for each. If you are teaching a hybrid delivery course there are even more expectations. The students who are on Zoom will expect that everything will stay as it was when everyone was online, the students who are in person in the classroom will expect that learning will now be completely different. But the real expectation is actually somewhere in the middle, where both students and instructors realize that chat backchannel on Zoom was pretty fantastic and there needs to be a way to bring that to the in-person space. 

What a lot of these expectations reflect that is that a dual view of learning spaces is not tenable. There is no way that in-person learning cannot use some sort of technological support to the pedagogy, just like there is no way that teaching online will not incorporate some contextual practices that also work in-person, around activities, community building, and feedback. Expecting a clear division between the two is a great expectation that we see a lot in discussions in higher ed. The reality is a lot more liminal. 

Another great expectation is that everything will be "back to normal." And I am here to tell you that is impossible and I am sorry. Normal, or whatever your individual conceptualization of normal was, no longer exists. The reason is because memory is a thing and it embeds and informs what we do going forward even if it is not readily apparent (I wrote a whole dissertation and book on this so this is kind of my area). Memory becomes a tactile residue, and that residue is part of the learning process. It is present virtually (I will not get into how that manifests exactly as I am working on an article on this exact thing so more soon) and it is present in physical interactions. The example that I have given in my book is our keyboards and how our fingers know the "feel" of our keyboards and when we buy a new computer or use a friend's computer we need to re-adjust that feel, re-learn the tactility, in order to type at the same speed that we are used to (Gagne, 2021, 94). This is learned muscle memory, but if there was ever a positive or negative thing attached to you typing, there is also an additional residue in that memory. The residue of the pandemic is still being built (because, reminder, the pandemic isn't over) and still shaping learning and will do so for many years. 

The biggest problem with "going back to normal" expectations is that they cannot align with our reality no matter what your positionality. Expecting people to be able publish in the same way they did before 2020 is impossible, expecting people to respond to your email in 2 hours of even 2 days is impossible. To have those expectations is a gap in learning. You are not taking the residue into account, as it cannot be readily erased (Gagne, 2021, 15). And that residue comes from trauma. 

I suppose this is a call for us to really pull back those great expectations and not think the sky is falling when we do. Have conversations with students to see where they are at. Learning will not happen if the ability to make connections are not there. Don't fall into the "learning loss" trap which is not proven with data that has any of the context we are in (we do not teach K-12 for one). Have conversations with yourself about what you are expecting from yourself and others and the difficult part of that conversation is stopping the comparisons. I know academe forces comparisons and it's hard not to as they are built into the promotion systems, but honestly, that comparison and setting up of great expectations is also really harmful and not trauma-aware. You need to feel empowered over your choices and with your work, just like the students do. Do what feels right to you, listen to the residue that you are carrying from these last 2 years.

Great expectations can also become sites of great disappointment. We need to care for ourselves and create spaces of care for the students. If we don't, we are going reaffirm doubt in our pedagogical practices (even if they are fantastic) because we are expecting the same outcomes as "normal." Students will also have that doubt as they try to find a new path towards learning that works for them. Remember that the etymology of "expectation" is from the French for to wait, so let us all reframe, be patient with ourselves and with students, and wait to see the exciting new paths that learning can take.  

Reference 

Gagne, A. (2021). Embodying the Tactile in Victorian Literature: Touching Bodies/Bodies Touching. Lexington Press.