"It's about connecting with your humanity"

Dennis Phillips

Dennis Phillips has been teaching courses in neuroscience in the Department of Psychology since 1985 and has been a full professor since 1994. In 2004, the Faculty of Science appointed him Killam Professor in Psychology. Recently, Professor Phillips received the Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award is presented annually to a professor who, in the eyes of his or her students and peers, has displayed the qualities of superior teaching, enthusiasm for the subject, and interest in the needs of the students.

In the following interview, Professor Phillips discusses his approaches to teaching neuroscience and his belief in the importance of creating a humanistic environment that encourages students' learning in the classroom and beyond.

What do you think makes a good teacher?

I think that what makes a good teacher falls into two categories. The first category is the technical one of knowing your stuff. You have to know the material. You also have to know what technology is available and how to use it and you have to be very organized. These are the things that are always true.

But a second category is also important, and it's the one that doesn't get talked about as much. Really good teachers, and certainly the teachers who have inspired me, have brought to the classroom what I believe are the very best features of their humanity (see sidebar).

I want students to take away two things from my course. One is the obvious: I want them to leave the classroom with a body of knowledge they did not have previously. I also want them to have uncovered for themselves in some way the best features of their humanity, their sense of inquiry, their sense of fearlessness in asking questions about things that they would not otherwise have asked questions about. By behaving in a very accommodating, thoughtful, compassionate kind of way the teacher aids this process. As students uncover their own best qualities they take them through their whole life, and that includes in the conduct of the science they are doing.

How do you encourage students to bring their humanity to psychology?

Verbally. For example, there is a section in one of my courses where we talk about the biological basis of mental illness. Students who have never been depressed often don't have the slightest insight into the experience of depression. One of my jobs in that class is to give them a sense of what its like to be depressed. It's really hard. You remind them that it's not the business of being blue, it's the overwhelming feelings of "I'm not good enough," "this will never work," "I can't do it," that penetrates every moment of your day, and it's heavy. It is a tremendous burden, and it is not something external that is loaded on you like a weight you are carrying on your shoulder. It is you, and it's relentless and unforgiving. I try and use language like that to help them really feel it. It's penetrating.

How do the students respond to this approach?

They go very quiet and that's very good. I want them to do that. It's a very powerful communication. They take some time for reflection and then a thoughtful discussion follows. Talking with students is so important. They begin to learn how to articulate their questions, how to ask them, and what are the right words to use. They learn to express complex ideas precisely and unambiguously.

How do you integrate your scholarship into your teaching?

I started out as a very quantitative neuroscientist, someone who does detailed quantitative studies of how the brain works. In my case it happened to be in the domain of hearing. I got to the stage where the kinds of questions I was asking about the role of the brain and hearing could no longer be answered by the techniques available to neuroscience. I experienced a paradigm shift and went into psychophysics. Then I became very sensitive to the mental experience of hearing as opposed to the biological experience and expression of hearing.

When I get to teach about neuroscience or about perception, I'm sensitive to the issues that one encounters when you actually do the lab work as opposed to read about it in a book. There are many things that happen in the lab that never make it into the textbooks. The kinds of mistakes you can make and the kinds of wrong inferences you can make that no one else sees because they don't have access to the methods that I do. I can talk about all of that, and I do talk about all of that in class. Students need to develop sensitivity about how poor use of data can misrepresent what's actually going on in the brain. Students leave the classroom quite excited about that, that they had been able to see errors in scientists' perceptions. I'm simply bringing out students' best features, getting them to practice their own best skills, and starting to create scientists, which is really just encouraging them to be good human being.

What is the most difficult challenge you've overcome as a teacher?

Failure. Fear of not being able to do it. You are hired on the basis of your research credentials, not on the basis of your teaching credentials. I'd never taught a class in my life when I was hired, and I was suddenly dropped into a class with a hundred students, teaching a topic I knew very little about. There's a lot of fear and resentment around that, and overcoming that I think is the biggest challenge. Instead of thinking I don't want to do this and being resentful about it, I had to sort of just relax into it and think "this is actually fun". That takes a little bit of effort. I think that's one of the biggest challenges. In fact, that would be my advice to new faculty: bring the best side of your humanity to teaching, and enjoy it. All the effort goes out of it when you do that. But you have to get to that mental state.

Do you find that the fear of failure is still an ongoing challenge for you? Are there practical ways in which you try to overcome this challenge?

I think that it is an ongoing challenge. The domain in which the fear of failure expresses itself changes a bit. I see a lot of students now that individually will come to me with terrible problems in their lives. I'm not a counselor. Once again the barriers go up and it's a matter of relaxing and letting it be what it is and then just knowing where to draw the line. There are some things you can do and there are some things you can't do. Sometimes you just have to say, "I'm really sorry but this is not a conversation which you should be having with me. You should be having this conversation with". Sometimes you can guide them to the professional.

It goes into administration too. You think, I don't want to be on this committee, and all the barriers go up and the resentment comes in again but I've learned that sometimes these committees are a place where you can make a difference. It's a bit overwhelming sometimes, because we are so busy. There is a fear of not being able to do it all and that's where again this sort of wisdom comes in and you say "well, I can't do it all, and I'm going to say 'no' to this one but 'yes' to that one."

Can you describe a unique technique or activity or assignment you have designed for your class and how well it worked in your class?

Yes I can. I have this experience every year in one of my senior classes involving 20-30 people. At one point in the course, the subject matter is how the inner ear works. Over the course of a lecture or two I set up a problem to be solved to demonstrate what the ear does. We can measure it. But what the physics of the ear and what the ear suggests it should be capable of and what the ear actually is capable of, don't match. It is as if the ear is doing something that is not possible for it to do. How do we resolve this?

I don't just tell them how we resolve it. Over the next two or three lectures, I start giving them bits of the puzzle. Some of the bits are biology; some of the bits are physics; and some of the bits are neurochemistry, biomechanics, and biophysics. Over the course of the next few lectures they begin to put the pieces together. They are solving it. I can look around the classroom and see they are building up their analytical skills, their creative skills, their problem solving, and that's wonderful in its own right. They're also really happy to solve the puzzle themselves. There is a sense of fun in the classroom.

What accomplishments are you most proud of as a teacher?

I am very happy when students leave my classroom happy for having learned something. We were in a seminar class the other day and we went right up to the last minute and the next class was fighting to get into the room, and I heard one of my students say, "I have never previously wanted a class to go even longer than its scheduled for." I'm very happy when students leave my class having learned something and being happy that they've learned something.

I'm also very happy to have won the Alumni Teaching Award. In part because I think it's not a small thing. The existence of the award and the fact that it comes to this classroom setting is amazing; it's a wonderful thing.

I am inspired by the fact that there are people in my classroom who want to be there, who want to learn from me. There's a real synergy there between the teacher and the students. It is as if they bring to the classroom the best of their humanity, and what that accomplishes is that the teacher gives back the best of their humanity. It's a wonderful, wonderful feeling. Teaching is not only about objective things like the number of bums in seats or the number of A's you give. It's about connecting with your humanity.

Interviews are conducted by Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Associate Director (Programs), Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT), Dalhousie University. The CLT works in partnership with academic units, faculty members, and graduate students to enhance the practice and scholarship of learning and teaching at Dalhousie University. CLT takes an evidence-based approach to advocating for effective learning and teaching practices, curriculum planning, services to support the use of technology in education, and institutional policies and infrastructure to enhance the Dalhousie learning environment. For more information on workshops and programming, please visit http://learningandteaching.dal.ca/ If you would like to nominate an instructor to appear in this series, please contact: Suzanne Le-May Sheffield at suzannes@dal.ca or call 494-1894