Communication and Persuasion in Psychology Professoring

Sorry you guys, another post about an educator. Hopefully I'll be able to make this unique so it will be an asset to be able to compare the educationally-based posts instead of mine just sounding repetitive.

I have always been interested in going into education. As I have gotten older I have changed from wanting to be a fifth grade teacher, to a high school AP teacher, to finally wanting to be a college professor, either at a junior college or at a university. (Notice I never wanted to be a middle school teacher... for a reason. Those teachers definitely have my respect because I would not be able to put up with middle-schoolers every day.) I am still technically trying to choose which subject to teach, but for the purpose of this assignment I chose psychology. Most of the information in this post comes from my own observations, things my psychology teacher has mentioned, and information I gathered in a career explorations class last semester.

So a professor has a slightly different job than a teacher because they deal with adults instead of children or teenagers. This means they relate to their students on a different level. When teachers get respect from their students it is often because they are older and in the authoritative position. As the students get older they tend to respect their teachers less and less because they start to think of themselves as being intelligent. This perception is usually crushed freshman year of college when students realize they do not know as much as they thought they do. Professors are respected because they are knowledgeable in a field the students are usually interested in and because the students actually want to be in school. A professor just has to be fair and students will usually respect them. Professors also usually work with a different class size than a normal teacher; either much larger or much smaller. The size of the class will affect how a professor addresses his students and whether he/she will often work with students one-on-one.

Psychology adds a different twist because some of its concepts are theoretical. A psychology professor has a couple of options for what they could persuade their students; and the decision between them is often subconscious. The professor can either persuade the students that his/her option toward the theoretical side is accurate or he/she can try to be as impartial as possible and let the students decide for themselves. Most of the rhetoric a psychology professor does would fall under the epideictic and legislative forms of oratory since a professor is either exposing students to new information or defending why scientists have come to the conclusions they have about certain things. 

Professors are also unique in that they also have to communicate with the intellectual world through research, discussions, and publishing. Researching and publishing, since they are written down, add an aspect of persuasion that teachers do not have to experience. The audience also changes since a published work is addressed to people who are just as competent in the field as the professor is. In some ways that makes it easier, the professor doesn't have to rely on definitional rhetoric and can instead focus on interpretation. However, defending an interpretation in the intellectual world can be difficult in and of itself. Especially for a psychology professor who has slightly different views than other psychologist; such as a Mormon who believes in altruism. (Religion and self-sacrificing natures do not mix well with popular psychology.)

Feedback and research studies are important to psychology professors in both of the above sides to their jobs. As an educator, a professor should try to improve his/her teaching methods by listening to both what the students and the grades say. If many university students complain about a single professor then that professor is usually doing something to warrant such wide-spread dissatisfaction. If grades are too low or too high then either the professor's grading or the teaching style needs to improve. Among the intellectual community professors have to pay attention to how they are perceived by their peers to make sure they are still seen in a respected light because a discredited psychology professor will have a hard time keeping his/her job.