The difficulties in student engagement with tutor-directed reading, both in terms of the amount of reading undertaken and the participation and benefit from in-class discussion
Most of us teaching at the college level like to read. We read professional materials, and we read for pleasure. We know firsthand that much
In my course, the required reading is intensive and extensive. Students must read multiple texts that range across disciplines, genres, history, and culture. The goal of this interdisciplinary course is improvement of critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. My students, like many others, live complicated lives. Add to that the fact that many are not particularly good readers or people who like to read, and the result is students arriving in class not having done the reading. When that happens, the teacher becomes the best student in the room. She talks about the text while students dutifully listen—or appear to listen.