Its that time of year again, and my teaching duties have begun for the new academic term. I must confess this always makes me a bit nervous, although I can’t complain too much, I only have some occassional teaching, its not like I’m doing 20 hours a week or more.

Nevertheless, delivering the first lecture of the year is tense, even though I tell myself there is no reason to be. I guess its becasue its a ‘performance’ that you do - I don’t mean that I sing and dance type of thing - but you do walk in and there is an expectant audience, and as with any performance, it can go wrong and you can look really, really stupid! This is what we teachers all really fear, if were honest.

You may not know this if you have never taught, but the great fear is that whilst standing there doing your stuff, you suddenly dry up .. eeekk! Mind goes blank .. what do i say next???

But its an irrational fear - I find the answer is to simply go onto something else and come back to that point at a later stage (and tell the class your doing this without explaining its becasue you can’t remember a bloody thing!) this is what I think of as one of my ‘teaching skills’. Still .. the fear still haunts you in the back of your mind .. what if ..

Touch wood, no disasters this time .. everything went reasonably smoothly, I even got a decent classroom discussion going, and people were volunteering to say things, hands aloft… always a sign that your doing something right.

And what about the all important class size, well there were about 21, a few more than I had expected, but about an average ratio per staff member for a UK university.

What would be interesting to know is the cut off point at which students feel reluctant to stick their hand up and say something - I know this will vary depending upon the inidividual concerned, but reason dictates that there is an optimal size for an engaged discussion to take place. Even though the class went quite well (I have had sessions where resolutely they just sit there, petrified - nobody says anything despite endless promptings from me).

I reckon the number is about 6-10, that way everyone will have the opportunity to not just say something, but develop an argument, be heard, take questions and objections, and this process be passed around, to and fro. I think anymore than double figures this tends to go into free fall and you move from something which resembles a seminar group to a full blown class. There just seems to be a group dynamic that only holds up to a certian number, then it dissolves.

Of course, the contary is also true. I once rememeber teaching a seminar where only 1 lone student turned up! He was petrified, but having said who he was on entering the room he couldn’t just turn heels and flee, as much as he wanted to I’m sure. None of this was helped by the topic that week - a discussion of ‘post-modernism’!