Teaching

You’re reading the latest issue of Teaching, a weekly newsletter from a team of Chronicle journalists. Sign up here to get it in your inbox on Thursdays.

Welcome to Teaching, a free weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This week:

• I share examples of how readers prepare graduate students to teach, along with other feedback on the topic.
• I highlight some new research on teaching at community colleges.
• A reader describes how an interaction with a “courageous” student changed her teaching.

Preparing Future Professors

Recently I described the benefits that one classics department has seen from preparing its graduate students to teach, and I asked if your college or program has a good model for providing such training. The question seemed to hit a nerve. Several readers suggested that there’s nothing unusual about running such a program and wondered why we even mentioned the Florida State University example, while others said they were glad for a chance to discuss their own approach to the challenge.

Here are some of those examples:

• The department of mathematics at the University of Oklahoma offers graduate students who “teach/grade/tutor in first-year math courses” training that includes “lecture practices, discussions about active learning and group work, time management, panels with other grad students, and more,” wrote Keri Kornelson, a professor there. She also pointed us toward CoMinDS, a Mathematical Association of America project that shares resources and models for TA training. “It is fantastic to see this shift from 10 years ago,” Kornelson wrote, “when the norm was a meeting on the Friday before classes started where they hand you the textbook and maybe tell you where the classroom is.”
• Melissa J. Beers is program director of two large psychology courses, “Introduction to Psychology” and “Introduction to Social Psychology,” at Ohio State University. She has a multipronged approach to training the courses’ graduate instructors. Before their first time teaching, they take a summer seminar on “foundational teaching topics.” They also take a related course-specific practicum that includes “microteaching” sessions in which they “practice their presentations to one another in classrooms across campus, and then give each other feedback.” Once instructors begin teaching, she added, more resources are available, including classroom observations and mentoring. The department even offers a set of digital badges that can add up to a teaching certificate. Beers also pointed readers to more information on the program and others like it.
• Brad Coleman, who directs the Harvard Medical School Curriculum Fellows Program, shared the philosophy behind the school’s approach: “Make it flexible so it can reach the most students possible, integrate it into the things the grad students are already doing as TAs,” and “give them course credit for the additional efforts.”

One reader suggested that the issue of preparing professors to teach might be taken more seriously if it were described differently. “The rhetoric around ‘training’ graduate students to teach effectively suggests that a series of exercises...and appropriate rewards (similar to treats that I give to my dogs when training them to sit, stay) will result in high-quality instructors who are able to engage their learners and extraordinary learning outcomes,” wrote Michael Owen, dean of the faculty of education at Brock University, in Ontario.

Training, he wrote, improves performance. But becoming a good teacher also requires “educational and professional formation” that improves the mind. Those two ideas, he said, might be combined into teacher preparation.

Another reader added a note of caution. Steven K. Wisensale, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, wrote that he fears colleges’ increasingly relying on grad students to teach, in order to reduce costs — something that will come back to harm those very students. “Perhaps unknown to the grad students who are often flattered to be asked to pick up an undergraduate course, they are doing what I call building their own coffins,’ he wrote. “The more teaching that is done by grad students, adjuncts, etc. the fewer tenure-track jobs will be available to those once-flattered grad students who are now looking for a full-time job.”

Thanks to everyone who wrote in to answer the question — and to push back on it, too. Hearing your insights and feedback is the best part of producing this newsletter.

**A Message from The Chronicle:

As institutions face increasing financial and political pressures, the emergence of the public-private partnership, or P3, has quickly become more common on college campuses. This issue brief offers an all-in-one primer on P3s, from assessing whether a P3 deal is right for your campus to identifying the right partners and services. Purchase a copy in the Chronicle Store. **

Research on Teaching at Community Colleges

Teaching is a critical part of student success. But historically it’s not something that the Community College Research Center, at Columbia University’s Teachers College, has focused on much. Why not? Well, teaching is difficult to observe and assess, for starters. And even when researchers have a clear idea of how to improve teaching, what happens in the classroom is perhaps the hardest part of higher ed to change.

Now a working paper explores how the instructional methods used in “Start,” a developmental-math program at the City University of New York, connect to its apparent success. The effort “represents an exciting new direction” for the center’s work, writes Susan Bickerstaff, a senior research associate who co-authored the paper, in a blog post. The paper, part of a larger evaluation of the math program, examines four features of its instructional approach: reliance on a “highly detailed curricular document as the primary resource for instructors”; using “real-world contexts” rather than rules and procedures, as a starting point; “a pedagogical approach that elicits student talk and discussion through questioning”; and focusing on students’ study skills.

The blog post is part of a series on teaching and learning that the center plans to run though the summer.

Speaking of CUNY, a new paper out in CBE—Life Sciences Education finds that the university system’s Research Scholars Program, which pairs associate-degree students with faculty mentors for a year, brings a host of benefits. Among them: participants are more likely to transfer to research-intensive universities in the system and beyond. Check out the full paper here.

‘My Students Are People’

We asked our readers to tell us about an experience that changed the way they teach. Flower Darby, an online-faculty member and senior instructional designer at Northern Arizona University, sent in this story:

Like many dedicated faculty, I’ve had numerous interactions with students that have shaped my teaching passion and practice. One of the most impactful occurred a few months ago, in my online graduate course. To establish our online learning community, in the first week I require students to post a 90-second video introducing themselves and stating one learning goal. This student posted a photo of herself and her small son with a written introduction. Thinking she was unwilling to expend the effort on recording and uploading the short video, I docked points and moved on. I never asked why she did that. I just made an assumption about her willingness to engage in my online class. I was floored, therefore, when this student emailed me at the end of class after an uneventful session. She wanted to explain why she hadn’t posted that video, not to recapture lost points, but because she felt bad about shortchanging an assignment. She wanted me to know she wasn’t a slacker. The week before class began, she wrote, her son’s father showed up unexpectedly at her house, lingering outside on the sidewalk. When she asked him to leave, he beat her viciously, wearing a knuckle duster, in plain view of her son and her neighbors. She’d lost a few teeth. Her face was still badly bruised and swollen. She didn’t want to present herself that way to her peers, so she posted a picture instead. My God, I thought, my students are people. She’s a person, impacted by the choices I make in my online teaching. My decision to ask students to record themselves caused her to experience even more shame than she already had. What other teaching choices had I made, albeit with good intentions, that inflicted harm on my students? This single working mom chose to pursue an online master’s degree in a courageous bid to improve her and her son’s lives. Did I really need to add to her challenges by putting her in the position of opting to lose points instead of show her face in class? I realized anew, powerfully, that my online teaching practice impacts lives. For better or worse. I resolved again to value and respect my students, to offer options for meeting requirements. I can flex so they can succeed. My online class isn’t about me. It’s about my students, their learning, their growth. Humbling. Life-changing.

Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us, at dan.berrett@chronicle.com, beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, or steve.johnson@chronicle.com.

— Beckie