A presentation to the annual meeting of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
(STLHE), St. Catharines, Ontario, June 16, 2000

Often students are absent from the classroom, and even when present in body, sometimes remain absent in mind and spirit.  The paper considers alternative conceptions of this lack of engagement and suggests methods of creating meaningful dialogue in its place.  A central idea of the paper is that both students and instructors make assumptions about the meaning of their activity, their setting and their interactions within it, assumptions that can put students and instructors at cross purposes.  These differences regarding the meaning of a university course and its elements may lie behind much classroom absence.  Opening professor-student dialogue about mutual purposes may lead to some negotiation of the meaning of specific educational situations and, in turn, to increased classroom engagement.  A few techniques for promoting such dialogue are considered.  These techniques share the characteristic that they invite students and professors to consider the immediate tasks and opportunities of a course against a background of their broader purposes.

University students are often absent from the classroom, and even when present in body, may be absent in mind and spirit.  Of course, absence of the latter sort is not unknown among their instructors.  The purpose of this paper is to consider alternative conceptions of such lack of engagement as well as methods for creating meaningful dialogue in its place.

Physical absence from a class and/or pro forma participation in it can sometimes be so extreme as to give the appearance of an intentional resistance to learning.  How should one conceptualize this absence, this lack of engagement with a course, this apparent resistance to learning?   Typical responses include attributions of laziness to students behaving in such a manner.  One often hears complaints among faculty members about large numbers of unmotivated students.  Another common attribution is to lack of intelligence, students too weak to appreciate the value of university courses.  Somewhat more generous to university students, if not to their high school teachers, is an attribution of ignorance due to poor preparation.  The unfortunate feature of each of these conceptions is that they offer instructors few suggestions for drawing absent students into the course.
Are there alternative conceptions of student absence more suggestive of means for moving towards presence, towards engagement?  A general approach might be to construct a longer list of potential obstacles to participation in learning-undeveloped analytic and critical skills, fear of making errors publicly, feelings of exclusion by virtue of race or gender-and then to imagine means of adjusting one’s course or classroom to help overcome them.  Undoubtedly the list of plausible origins for absence and resistance could be extended considerably and doing so would be a valuable exercise for undermining any tendency towards simplistic attributions of laziness, stupidity and ignorance.  Attempting this exercise myself I have considered one way of thinking about absence that particularly intrigues me, and I would like to use this paper to reflect on that conception and its implications.

The conception I wish to discuss was prompted by the coincidence of simultaneously considering the student absence problem and reading a book on Symbolic Interactionism (Hewitt, 2000).  The Symbolic Interactionist approach to human behaviour suggests that one seek understanding of actions by examining the meaning of the actions for the actors.  Thus, in the case of absence, lack of engagement or resistance one might consider the meaning for students (and instructors) of these actions and the meaning of the objects towards which they are directed.  One could explore, for example, something as grand as the meaning of university attendance generally, or something as particular as the meaning of a specific homework exercise.  In general, one might even speak of a student’s (or instructor’s) “meaning space,” a multi-dimensional set of the meanings attributed to the university and all its associated elements and activities.  An understanding of a particular university student’s meaning space might give considerable insight into their university behaviour, specifically, into choices regarding their degree of engagement with course meetings, assignments and other elements.  It may be, for example, that from within certain meaning spaces, a lack of engagement is a very rational way to approach certain courses or elements of them.

Before considering further this meaning-space conception of absence, it may be helpful to consider briefly what some of the factors imposing organization on a university or education meaning space might be.  Purpose is surely one of these; one’s sense of purpose will not only render some elements of the university experience more meaningful than others, it will also render some elements meaningful in their own right and others only instrumentally meaningful.  Also one’s beliefs about what constitutes knowledge would seem a likely factor. Along this line Baxter Magolda (1992) discusses how such instructional practices as group discussion might differ in significance for a student who views knowledge as absolute in comparison to one who views knowledge as contextual.  In addition to one’s purposes and beliefs, one’s interests and anxieties also seem likely factors in the structuring of that person’s meaning space.  Depending on these factors an activity or assignment may mean something quite different-an opportunity to meet someone interesting, a potential source of peer ridicule, an intrusion on more significant activities, the occasion to practice an important skill-to different people or to the same person at different times.

Most importantly, differences in the perceived meaning of an activity are likely to result in varying judgments about the appropriate action for the situation, and that judgment may very well be that absence, pro forma engagement or resistance are perfectly appropriate.  Certainly instructors, too, must recognize and view as reasonable the process of absenting oneself from tasks judged relatively meaningless.  Therefore, it seems necessary to reconceptualize the implicit complaint here about a student’s lack of engagement as instead a complaint about the appropriateness of lack of engagement for a given activity, assignment or other element of a course.  Or following the analysis back one more step, we should say the complaint is really about the meaning assigned to the course element.  Put somewhat differently, I am suggesting that concerns about a student’s absence sometimes result from the instructor working in a meaning space that differs substantially from the meaning space of the student.

Consider for a moment the situation evidenced by the following comment on a student-evaluation form for a recent offering of a course in Educational Psychology that I directed:

The instructor of this course is very enthusiastic and dedicated to the students.  He honestly cares if they understand, and he wants them to learn. … Although I appreciate his dedication, I was not as fond of his teaching methods.  I understand why he uses them and how they facilitate learning, but I highly recommend that they be clarified in the course description.  Students like myself (who have to place marks first for graduate school purposes) may not adapt well to his teaching methods and therefore, their marks suffer.  I realize that such an attitude does not stress the learning process, but for most graduate programs marks come first.  If the style of teaching was laid out beforehand, students could decide if they wanted to take part. … Although I very much admire the professor for his effort and originality, I would not have chosen this course if I had known the way it was going to be taught.  (Anonymous, personal communication, March 26, 1999).

 It is not my purpose to prove that teacher-student meaning-space discrepancies always result in absence and resistance, nor that all such absence stems from this source.  Rather I simply wish to reflect on such discrepancies as a plausible way to conceive of some cases of absence (see Pressley (1999) for some interesting examples to consider), a way that might also offer suggestions to instructors about how to reduce the incidence of absence where they deem it inappropriate.  The anonymous student’s comment implies one such suggestion-the instructor should take pains to describe the course, its purposes and the meaning of its various elements as clearly as possible and as early as possible.  Doing so allows the students to make comparisons to their own meanings as determined by their purposes, beliefs, interests, etc. and decide whether or not to proceed.  Such decisions might at least foster a better match of students and instructors along these dimensions and thereby increase the likelihood of engagement.  Other students, better informed about the instructor’s meaning space, might then be better able to move in that direction and thereby gain a better sense of how to engage with the course.

 One question that is raised by the concept of discrepancies between the meaning spaces of particular teachers and students is whether it is legitimate to consider one of these meaning spaces, presumably the teacher’s, more appropriate or correct than the other.  Put another way, having identified the prime dimensions of meaning in a course, is it legitimate for the instructor to then demand adherence, perhaps punishing any signs of absence or resistance?  Or rather, should each student’s meaning space be considered equal in legitimacy to that of the instructor, simply different?  The latter alternative, though I don’t entirely accept it, suggests the possibility of “dialogue” (Taylor, 1991) or “conversation” (Applebee, 1996) between instructors and students about meaning and purpose. Borrowing again from Taylor (1991), my sense is that in most cases an instructor will have a “broader horizon” against which to formulate the meaning of the course and its elements than will the student.  To be sure, there is much for an instructor to gain by speaking directly with students about the meaning they attach to various aspects of a course and university education in general.  My own minimal initiative to contact students each time they were physically absent in the first three weeks of one course led to a much greater appreciation of the role of work and family responsibilities in their lives.  However, my feeling is that the horizons within which most students form the meanings they attach to specific course elements is relatively narrow.

For example, Runté, Dunn and Jonas (2000) have suggested that instructors, unlike many of their students, generally recognize the importance of taking ownership of ideas, being comfortable with ambiguity and adopting an exploratory, risk-taking attitude.  These values are a portion of the horizon that informs the meaning such instructors attach to their courses and various elements of them.  Dialogue aimed at a broadening of such horizons, dialogue which permits and encourages students to locate themselves vis-à-vis courses and fields of inquiry seems to me a valuable goal, one that may offer considerable opportunity for increased engagement in courses.

 Taylor (1991) considers the notion of broad horizons in the context of dialogues about individual and cultural identity, that is, about what is significant in one’s difference from others.  He argues that only in extensive dialogue with others does one gain sufficiently broad horizons to meaningfully locate one’s self.  Perhaps then, we could imagine student-teacher dialogue as aiming at identity formation with respect to the subject matter of our courses.  Thus, students’ questions about their relation to the field’s concepts and practices, about its relevance to them, would be encouraged.  Students’ tentative hypotheses about connections between elements of their personal experience and aspects of their courses would be supported.  As suggested by Runté et al. (2000), instructors’ feedback to students on assignments would point explicitly towards what I am calling broader horizons, not just to narrow error.

 Various pedagogical practices have a dialogical form and provide an opportunity to acknowledge and open up exploration of discrepancies among the meaning spaces of the participants in education.  For example, an exchange of course journals (Nirula, 2000) among students and with their instructors, or an exchange of writing portfolios (Katz, 2000) could well fit this description, particularly if the exchange were ongoing.  Instructors could select course readings and arrange them in a manner that suggests a conversation within the field, often heated, about purpose, meaning and importance.  Constructing assignments in stages that allow students to discuss and build a point of view would fit if there were conversation and feedback at each stage.  Repeated reference by instructors to the purpose and meaning of their course activities, even to the point of including these on assignment handouts, could facilitate discussion of broader horizons.  Although simulations, the case method and class debates might not address meaning and purpose directly, they could offer excellent opportunities to make meaning and purpose visible and therefore subject to dialogue.

None of these techniques offers a perfect solution to the problem of absence, lack of engagement or resistance, nor do these techniques exhaust the possibilities for dealing with the problem.  In the moment, I only wish to suggest that a greater cognizance by participants in the educational environment of variations in the purposes and meanings associated with its elements, and some explicit dialogue between teachers and their students about those variations might lead to less absence from that environment.

Applebee, A. N. (1996). Curriculum as conversation: Transforming traditions of  teaching and learning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baxter Magolda, M. B. (1992). Knowing and reasoning in college: gender-related patterns in students’ intellectual development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hewitt, J. P. (2000). Self and society: A symbolic interactionist social psychology (8th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Katz, S. (2000). The portfolio exchange. Positive pedagogy: Successful and innovative practices in higher education [electronic journal], 1 (1). Available: <http://www.mcmaster.ca/learning/posped/current_issue.html>

Nirula, L. (2000). Dialogue journals: Investigating collaborative learning between teacher and student.  Unpublished B.Sc. Honours thesis. Department of Psychology, York University.

Pressley, M. (1999). Motivating students to engage in school: Qualitative findings.  A presentation to the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. Boston. August 22, 1999.

Runté, R., Dunn, T. & Jonas, B. (2000). "Feedback they can use: Understanding the undergraduate’s frame of reference." A presentation to the annual meeting of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. St. Catharines, Ontario. June 15, 2000.

Taylor, C. (1991). The Malaise of Modernity. Toronto: Anansi.