Inciting Interest and Augmenting Autonomy

In Bridges to Autonomy Alison suggests that we, as teachers, ought to only wield our paternalism in a way as to ultimately increase the autonomy of our students. It is difficult to ascertain, though, which of our paternalisms will serve to this telos.

So how are we to foment interest while increasing (or at least not hindering) autonomy? It is slightly paternalistic, yes, to force students to create questions on the assigned reading, as Professors Johnson and Silliman both do, but this satisfies the above mentioned maxim. By having prepared questions the ease to exercise autonomy by class participation is significantly increased. Also, there is no force that will better drive interest than curiosity, and the creation of questions, if done with sincerity will raise just such curiosity.

Question: What other concrete techniques satisfy this maxim?