One could argue that given the same syllabus a teacher would approach it a different way than a colleague. Consequently, this may impact on the way students perceive what is required, and how they approach their learning. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.
I'm sure that there are subjects that are intrinsically more popular than others - within my discipline (psychology), I remember the undergraduate courses that were popular were the more relatable subjects of social psychology, personality psychology and abnormal psychology. On the other hand, few students were eager to take cognition, perception or statistics (the latter is a course I now teach).
Nevertheless, I think that the role of a good educator can be to spark enough of a sustained interest in a subject that the student then continues to learn for their own sake, so how an interest is initially fostered is I think less important than the fact that the student is now genuinely self motivated to continue studying this topic. That for me is the real win for education.
Subject matter is object of learning and a teacher is a facilitator in this process of learning. Of course, a teacher has his impact on his students, but these are students who decide. In a class all students are not equally gifted and have different interests or imposed what they have to study at higher level.
I think that the attitude of the teacher and the learning environment created by the teacher are vital to the student's motivation and learning outcome.
I do not forget that American student on TV who was asked why she voted for Mr. Bill Clinton & her answer was: “I like his smile”!. She did not speak one word about his election’s program. In the past years, we used to have students joining the faculty of science to study general subjects in (Math, Chemistry, Physics, and Biology) in their first year. In the second year, successful students will go for one of the 4 departments. As students’ advisor, I was usually given 20-30 students to guide each year. One of my repeated questions was “Why have you specialized in chemistry?” . Few of them said that it was because they liked the subject, some of them said that they had no alternative “their marks were low in the other 3 subjects”, and the majority of them were like the American girl “ I admired (X) who taught me Chemistry (I) or I was impressed by (Y) who taught me Chemistry (II)". My follow-up question was usually: You judged the chemistry department through one person, is this scientific? …No answer from them.
I'm sure that there are subjects that are intrinsically more popular than others - within my discipline (psychology), I remember the undergraduate courses that were popular were the more relatable subjects of social psychology, personality psychology and abnormal psychology. On the other hand, few students were eager to take cognition, perception or statistics (the latter is a course I now teach).
Nevertheless, I think that the role of a good educator can be to spark enough of a sustained interest in a subject that the student then continues to learn for their own sake, so how an interest is initially fostered is I think less important than the fact that the student is now genuinely self motivated to continue studying this topic. That for me is the real win for education.
The teacher is vitally important. You can have the same textbook and two teachers: One is teaching the course because no one else was available; the other because she/he loves the topic. The impact on the students will be poles apart. The students of the former will simply meet a curriculum requirement. The students of the latter will be inspired to, at least, appreciate the subject, if not to take more classes in this subject.
I believe the instructor is a very important factor in stimulating interest and engagement in a subject matter particularly if the subject matter is difficult
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