I was going to post this yesterday, though I got pretty busy then getting ready for teaching today, going to (at least part of) the CAS meeting, etc., etc., but it seems like a good post for the first day of the school year. From The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Why Teaching is Not Priority No. 1.” It’s behind the firewall, but if you’re on campus, you can read it. Check out this link if you are off campus. It’s as much about “assessment” as it is anything else, really. Here’s a good quote:
Accreditors now press colleges to show that they are teaching what students need to know. And as the Obama administration packs more money into student aid, it wants more evidence of educational quality.
But a roadblock may emerge: faculty culture. Not because professors care little about quality or students—indeed, many care deeply—but because of what colleges tell them is important. “Faculty rewards have nothing to do with the ability to assess student learning,” says Adrianna Kezar, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Southern California. “I get promoted for writing lots of articles, not for demonstrating learning outcomes.”
One of the other things I think is interesting/curious about the article is that it assumes that assessing teaching with the assessment and accreditation tools we’re using actually work– that is, has there been an assessment of the assessment that most faculty (me included, frankly) just see as more paperwork to satisfy the suits?
I can’t read the entire article (not on campus and no my.emich account) but it seems to me that there are three issues that must be tackled sequentially.
1. Should the primary output of university faculty be research, articles, etc. or should it be education of students? My sense (as someone outside academia) is that at most (all?) universities, the primary output of faculty is research, but perhaps a shift is brewing?
2. If the primary output is — or should be — student education, how best to measure that?
3. My sense is that faculty incentives generally center around research, so if the primary output should be student education the incentive structure must change. Assuming that student educational outcomes can be fairly measured (which may be a false assumption), what is the best way to incentivize teaching without a total disruption of the tenure system.
I think the second and third issues are ones that K-12 schools have been struggling with for a while, but because of the emphasis on faculty research, universities haven’t considered them as much, and perhaps are just now considering the first question.
Like I said, however, I can’t read the entire article so I’m extrapolating from the first paragraph and the quote you gave, and my career has always been outside academia, so maybe I’m misreading the current state of affairs.
Hi, Cmandler —
Your comments on the intro to this Chronicle of Higher Ed piece are quite thoughtful and i appreciate them. It’s a very good piece of journalism, and well worth tracking down for anyone really interested in higher ed teaching.
A few comments: First, all college teaching is local, and at EMU, the priority is largely on teaching; that’s because of our heavy teaching load (compared to the elite universities that are the dominate focus of most discussions of higher ed), and because the EMU-AAUP contract defines, and has for ages, the #1 professional duty of faculty members as providing effective instruction for students of diverse levels of ability and prior academic background. At EMU, teaching really is Job 1. Not so at, say, Harvard, or UofM.
All members of the broad EMU community should be proud of EMU’s contributions to the growing fields of “scholarship of teaching and learning,” which is to say, the use of research findings to improve student learning. We as a university are ahead of the national norms in this area, and it’s a foundation on which EMU can build even more. (Self disclosure: I am professionally involved in this SOTL work.)
But also, Cmadler, I’d urge you and everyone who assumes that research and good teaching are unrelated to one another to think again. Active, ongoing pursuit of new knowledge, of contributions to one’s scholarly fields, are very closely related to good teaching. University teaching isn’t K-12 teaching. For instance: Can college students really learn the sciences from people who don’t “do” science? “Doing” science is doing research; and only at a university with active research being done can undergrads and grad students get the opportunity to do research themselves (real research, not a Google search). There are countless ways that active research contributes to active learning by students. That doesn’t mean that at some places the priority isn’t far removed from good teaching; it truly is at many schools. Especially at the “famous” schools or the “big” schools.
But at EMU — there aren’t many incentives in the university’s life that promote research over instruction; and active research at EMU often involves creating opportunities for EMU students.. Of course things may naturally vary greatly from program to program, and we have no coherent overall design to what we want EMU undergraduates to do or learn. Things here can be improved, to be sure. But the EMU faculty, in our programs of study, are intensely engaged in quality instruction. I urge you, and all members of the broad EMU community, to examine what’s the local reality about instruction and research at EMU, and if you do, I think you’ll conclude that EMU has a better balance than the national image of Ivy tower researchers being totally removed from student learning.
Once I had dinner with 10 faculty members in my field, from various institutions around SE Michigan and a few far away universities; it was at a lovely Ann Arbor restaurant. I was the only EMU person there. In conversation, the issue of teaching load came up, and it turned out that I had more students in my classes that semester, and over the years, than did all the others at the table combined. They also have GAs to grade papers and research funding from their home institutions that exceed anything at EMU. My point in telling this story is not to complain (I love my job and love working at EMU), but to highlight the variety of experience in higher education — and to show that EMU takes teaching seriously and faculty here work hard at good instruction.
Look at the local reality at EMU, you’ll find much to be proud of and much that is ahead of the national norms. And there are also local things needing improvement, to be sure. But a lot of skepticism is merited before applying national generalizations to regional public institutions like EMU, with our very capable and dedicated instructional faculty, and with a study body largely eager to learn and eager for active, engaged classrooms with real faculty members who are experts in their fields.