The Myth of Coverage

Myth: A teacher’s job is to “cover” material, and ends there; students can reasonably be expected to know whatever has been “covered”.

Evidence of myth: How often the verb “I taught” is used interchangeably with “I presented to my students”.

Fact: “What the instructor covers” differs from “what the students learn”, often drastically.

Evidence for fact: Stop teaching and check for understanding. If you really pay attention, you can’t miss it.

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Why is this so difficult for people to get?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to explain this. Usually, I’m extolling instruction that focuses on developing students’ understanding and ability to reason with ideas, rather than simply rote-learning and regurgitating facts and procedures. I’m getting into the importance of earnestly probing to see what students actually understand, and not proceeding until they “get it”. Of taking the time to build a solid foundation, rather than building on sand. And then, almost inevitably, a teacher says “But in reality, that’s too slow. We have a certain amount of material to cover. If we don’t finish the syllabus, the students won’t be prepared for the [exam/next course/whatever]“.

What good, I ask, does it do to “cover” something if students don’t actually learn it? I usually get dead silence at this point. The person I’m talking to doesn’t have an answer, but doesn’t like the conclusion either.

I think the reason this is a difficult idea for many instructors to swallow is that swallowing it leads to a very uncomfortable line of thought, one that challenges their very role as a teacher.

If what my students learn cannot reasonably be assumed to match what I present, and my responsibility is to teach (i.e., cause or facilitate learning), then I have to stop focusing on syllabi and lesson plans and lecture notes and beautiful PowerPoint slides, and start focusing on my students’ knowledge and learning and difficulties and pre-existing conceptions. I have to get out of my own head and into my students’ heads. And that requires a whole new set of skills, a whole new role.

It’s much less threatening to think my responsibility stops at summarizing the contents of a textbook, assigning homework, and setting exams. And if the students aren’t meeting my expectations, then obviously they’re either lazy (their fault), stupid (nobody’s fault), or underprepared (their previous teachers’ fault or “the system’s” fault).

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Coverage does not necessarily imply learing, and therefore does not necessarily imply teaching. I keep “covering” this point, and yet, somehow, my listeners don’t learn it.