By Gerson Moreno-Riano, Aug 7, 2009 in Musings, Pedagogy and Teaching
In previous blog posts, I have commented on Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard, 2004). Bain's book, in my opinion, is a well-documented, evidence-driven, and hard look at excellent and effective college teaching. It gives one much to think about and challenges one to look deep into one’s own teaching.
Bain's work raises five important questions about excellent teaching. For our edification, it may be worthwhile for us to consider these as the new academic year quickly arrives. In this post, I will consider the first two questions and answers. I have also added some discussion questions after each answer that will hopefully lead to more discussion on these issues.
Question 1: What do the best teachers know and understand?
Answer: Without exception, outstanding teachers know their subjects extremely well. They are all active and accomplished scholars, artists, or scientists (p. 15).
Discussion: When we are asked to teach courses outside of our specialty, what do we rely upon to assist us in getting to know this material "extremely well?" How do we prepare for such a task? What resources do we use? What insights can we give to each other in this regard?
Question 2: How do the best teachers prepare to teach?
Answer: Exceptional teachers treat their lectures, discussion sections, problem-based sessions, and other elements of teaching as serious intellectual endeavors as intellectually demanding and important as their research and scholarship (p. 17).
Discussion: Is it appropriate to consider teaching on par with research and scholarship? Is this a problematic argument or practice? Is research/scholarship separate and non-related to teaching? What things do we do to ensure that our teaching is on par in terms of moral importance and daily practice with our research and scholarship? What should we avoid to keep us from considering one more or less important than the other?
Question no. 1 is difficult particularly when faculty are hired in small departments and colleges in which they are expected to be generalists and even to teach outside of their expertise. Question no. 2 is also difficult because there indeed does exist an entrenched bias in many places of the academy that considers research/scholarship to be much more meaningful and fruitful exercises than teaching. How can we as faculty address these issues?
4 Responses to "Five Important Questions About Effective Teaching"
Phil Hamilton on Aug 8, 2009
Regarding Question 1, Bain is correct that the best teachers do know their subjects "extremely well." But, Gerson, you're exactly correct that many of us are at institutions where we need to stretch beyond our areas of expertise. That's just the real world of being at a small college or university.
At my former institution I had to be a generalist. In fact, for several years I was the only Americanist in the history department. And to prepare for such courses as "Vietnam and America" and the "Westward Movement"(a course on American expansionism), I read, read, read; mainly good general histories, some monographs, and one or two primary document collections (in part, to look for excerpts to use for student reading assignments). I also looked at how colleagues at other institutions approached the subject. Although prepping for these classes demanded lots of work, they helped deepen my understanding of American history beyond the revolutionary and early national periods (my areas of focus). Moreover, my colleagues within the department appreciated my willingness to take on these courses. This was important because their support was vital in terms of whether or not my annual contract was extended each year!
I think Question 2, like Question 1, depends on where you are. If one is at a small or mid-sized institution (i.e., not a R1 or R2 university), teaching is more often treated as a "serious intellectual endeavor" because success in the classroom is vital to one's tenure candidacy. That is certainly the case at my current institution. Indeed, those who gain tenure are those who take this part of the job very seriously.
However, do we treat teaching as seriously as our scholarship? Quite frankly, the answer is no. Although good teaching is extremely important, it is still regarded as not quite at the same level of seriousness as research/scholarship. Perhaps the reason for this perspective involves the attitudes many of us internalized at graduate school, where scholarship was always paramount and teaching was clearly secondary.
Lee Trepanier on Aug 10, 2009
I agree with Phil that the academic culture favors scholarship over teaching, especially in graduate school. I can't even recall having a class or discussed teaching, whereas scholarship was always talked about.
There is a lot of trendy talk about how scholarship feeds into teaching, which is true at the graduate level. However, I can't see how it works in practice at the undergraduate level, even with advanced students (of course, this may vary depending upon the subject).
RJ Snell on Aug 21, 2009
On the intellectual endeavor of lecture preparation: There's a relevant prior question, it seems to me. Namely, is teaching primarily (1) the transmission of information, or (2)inculturation?
If a professor works primarily to create and transmit knowledge, then the intellectual endeavor of a lecture seems largely limited to questions of clarity--how can I help students to engage, to understand, to remember, etc.
But if a professor works primarily to bring students into an adult culture of tradition and freedom, those questions of clarity and engagement, hugely important as they are, take second place.
I tend to think of the classroom as a space in which to think aloud with students. So my lecture preps are my doing philosophy--questioning, arguing with myself, reading, debating, wondering, correcting--so that I can be prepared to go and philosophize with students. But that's an activity they are involved with.
Maybe that doesn't translate to other disciplines as well, but I think less about data and more about habits.
Lee Trepanier on Aug 21, 2009
It seems to me that the two tasks are interconnected: in order to discuss subjects intelligently students require the data first. For example, the biggest obstacle I confront when teaching Introduction to World Politics is that our students have little historical or comparative knowledge of politics. Thus, any discussion of democratic institutions or political economy is only confusing to the students because they have no context to understand and explore these questions. Perhaps this is a problem for those who are in the social sciences, as opposed to the humanities where the subject studied is not as data-dependent.