Dear TIPSTERS: I'm writing with a "brain pick" for all of you dealing with graduate education in psychology (I hope that questions regarding graduate education are acceptable on this listserv; if not, I apologize). My question was prompted by a recent talk in our clinical psychology program in which a non-tenure track faculty member, assisted by a beginning graduate student, presented the preliminary results of some psychotherapy outcome research. The faculty and students (unexpectedly) encountered a large number of difficult and challenging questions from other faculty, none of which (in my view or that of virtually all of my clinical psychology colleagues) were in any way inappropriate or unprofessional. Nevertheless, a sizeable number (apparently a minority, but a nontrivial minority) of our graduate students were extremely upset by the nature of the questions, believing that it was somehow cruel for faculty to ask numerous tough questions of one of their fellow colleagues (and of one of the beginning graduate students). A few of them even took the steady line of questions as an "attack" or "assault" on the speakers, even though none of the questions was even remotely ad hominem in any respect. In reality, most of the questions were no tougher than one might encounter at a typical high-level professional conference.
In reflecting on this incident, it occurred to me that some of the fault probably lies with us as faculty members. Specifically, I don't believe that we've done as good a job as we could of socializing our graduate students, and in particular of helping them to recognize the crucial difference between tough substantive questions and personal attacks.
So here's my (perhaps naively broad) question...can any of you recommend good readings on the role of constructive criticism
Is this intended for your students or for your colleagues? ;-)
Actually, grad student socialization has typically been accomplished through apprenticeship and modeling. If you can't change the behavior of your colleagues you'll have limited success with your students (there's a parallel with clinical practice here, BTW -- as well as with APA).
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"No one in this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." -H. L. Mencken
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Psychology Dept Minnesota State University * * 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 * * http://www.mnsu.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *
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