I Psychology and the Teaching Art

In this first talk of Talks to Teachers on Psychology, William James (1899/1962) touches upon the subject of psychology and how it could help teachers.  He discusses how some instructors may have inflated hopes for what psychology can do for teaching, and that psychology can only work alongside the art of teaching, rather than being superior or prior to it. 

One passage that really struck me in this talk is where James (1899/1962) explains that “psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.  An intermediary inventive mind must make the application, by using its originality” (p. 3).  Later, he also mentions that teachers have “that ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation . . .  to which psychology cannot help us in the least” (James, 1899/1962, p. 4).  I do agree that there is something about a good teacher that enables him or her to really see with what their students are struggling or enjoying and adapt their teaching method to match this observation.  However, the existence of this trait, and the fact that many would agree that it is necessary for a “good” teacher to possess, worries me since I plan to work mostly in Distance and Online Education.  In many asynchronous online courses or training programs, there is no direct contact between student and teacher, and even in synchronous courses where these is no video-based contact, it can be impossible to discern what is happening on the other end.  It seems that in these kinds of settings, the scientific aspect of psychology, pedagogy, and course design must come into play to try to keep students on track without having the possibility of changing content or pedagogy on the fly.  That leads me to ask, how can the fluidity of face to face instruction be incorporated into a fixed, asynchronous online course?  Can a course designer have the same artistic ingenuity to assess how students are receiving the information, without actually seeing the student?