Susan (S L Forsburg (forsburg at nospamsalk.edu)) wrote:
> But there are times for traditional pedagogic methods, and there
> are times for instruction in the ugly underbelly of how
> science works. This is the hard, painful stuff to learn. The point is,
> you have to recognize that people are trying to help you to
> learn it!
Janet (Janet Hart (janet.hart at medecine.unige.ch)) writes
> I think that not challenging a third or
> fourth year PhD student in a seminar is doing them a disservice. Of
> course, it is not constructive to call someone an idiot, or berate them
> for not doing an experiment properly...but I don't have the impression
> that anyone here is advocating that.
Actually, I do think that students need to deal with this as well --
agressive, confrontational, unpleasant questioning does happen in
seminars. My feeling about an advisor's responsibility is that you have
to first lay the groundwork of trust. Your student has to trust that you
have her best interests at heart. This trust has to be developed by
other concrete actions taken by the advisor (explaining scientific
concepts, helping with experiments, discussing ideas openly, allowing
the student to contribute intellectually, advocating the student's
interests, when appropriate, to others), Otherwise, there's no way to
tell the difference between agressively questioning for training (or to
understand the science, but that needn't be confrontational in the same
way) and just being a jerk.
Bharathi
