2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Student narratives about a course include what they tell themselves and what they tell their friends and family. A fraction of the time this includes a narrative of the form, “I’m struggling to learn because the teacher does {fill in the blank}.” or “The teacher expects us to know {fill in content from prerequisite course}, which isn’t realistic.” These student narratives can either evolve to reinforce attitudes beneficial to student learning or degrade into reasoning that hinders student learning. Unfortunately, one common narrative that is detrimental to student learning is one that blames the teacher or transfers the responsibility for learning onto the teacher. Examples of this attitude include, “I could learn the material if the teacher just worked more examples.” “If the teacher demonstrated more {fill in the blank}, then I would’ve known how to do the problem on the exam.” These are examples of students deflecting the responsibility for the work associated with learning onto the instructor.

How faculty communicate with their classes influences the student narratives. If faculty do not seek feedback and address concerns, there is a higher probability that student narratives will devolve and hinder learning. However, faculty are not often taught how to present and motivate student attitudes. One example that has resonated well in my graduate classes is an analogy of working engineering problems with learning to drive a car. If the student remains a passenger always watching the driver, they can trick themselves into thinking that they know how to drive. However, few of us would trust such a “driver”. Thus, working engineering problems requires the student to transition from watching example problems to doing the problems themselves and getting the point where they are practicing without constantly consulting a pre-worked solution.

This article will compile a review of resources that will aid faculty communication with students. These will then be combined into practical strategies that can be implemented by faculty at any stage of their career to keep shifting student narratives toward a growth mindset.
Explore frameworks for course structure and the syllabus that empower students.
Outline weekly messaging, alongside content, that reinforce beneficial learning attitudes.
Provide versatile example responses and framings to counter student comments of blame.
Guide students to seek to understand concepts instead of searching for the shortest pathway to the correct answer (or points).

This article will draw parallels between existing resources, compile options for grading strategies, and aid in communicating growth mindset attitudes after students receive feedback. These and other supporting tools can help instructors counter the growing narrative that the teacher is to blame for student learning into student-empowered tools for students to take responsibility for their learning and study habits.