Quite a number of you responded, some with bleak assessments and anecdotes from your own campuses. Others sounded a more hopeful note, pointing to initiatives they’re involved in to elevate good teaching. I want to share a few of those responses here, especially the ones I think may resonate most with readers.
“Higher education will value good teaching more when students demand it,” wrote April Crenshaw, an associate professor of mathematics at Chattanooga State Community College, who has been teaching for 19 years. “We will continue to deliver the bare minimum for as long as our students continue to pay tuition and fees for the bare minimum.” She noted that nothing ties revenue and funding to good teaching, which makes this a particularly challenging problem.
Another reader, who teaches at a highly selective liberal arts college that he asked not be named, pointed out the disparities in the rewards system for teaching and for research.
“We talk a lot about valuing teaching. However, there is a big difference in how we compensate excellence in teaching and research,” he wrote. “We have a college-sponsored teaching award that comes with a generous one-time payment. Like many other schools, research excellence is rewarded with endowed chair positions that provide a significant salary increase, not a one-time payment. It is striking the message this sends to the faculty about the value of teaching versus research at a college that is focused almost exclusively on undergraduate education.”
I also asked readers how to measure good teaching. The traditional method — student course evaluations — is problematic. The questionnaires are often not designed to effectively measure teaching quality and are subject to bias. Several readers said this presents a serious problem, particularly for adjuncts. They learn not to demand too much of their students lest they get dinged on evaluations and their contracts are not renewed.
Crenshaw suggested using multiple gauges, noting that no single measure can capture the complexity of good teaching. Her list:
- Peer review
- Teaching portfolios
- Inclusive teaching practices
- Short- and long-term student success
- Student evaluations
That’s a big lift. Defining, evaluating, and supporting good teaching requires a culture change on campus to do well, several readers noted. Penelope Adams Moon, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Washington, described a process underway at her institution to explore the “core characteristics” of good teaching.
“But whatever list of criteria we adopt,” she wrote, “it won’t be impactful if those criteria don’t inform the questions we ask students to answer in course evaluations, our peer-evaluation processes, and the professional development offered by centers for teaching and learning.
“In addition to the alignment of criteria and evaluative mechanisms, there needs to be a cultural shift that jettisons the notion of ‘master teacher.’ Aside from the problematic dynamic implied in the term, good teaching is not a statistical destination. It is an iterative process of reflection, experimentation, and adaptation. No one finishes learning how to teach.”
In the coming weeks I will share more reader thoughts on the difficulties higher education has in valuing good teaching. If you want to weigh in, please write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your ideas may appear in my future reporting.
Advice guides for teaching
As the fall approaches, we want to remind readers that The Chronicle offers a range of free advice guides designed to help improve your teaching. They’re written by experts for instructors who want to gather ideas on creating a syllabus, teaching a good first day of class, making your teaching more engaging, improving classroom discussion, making your teaching more inclusive and being a better online teacher.
If you’re interested in diving into our Advice archives further, you can use our Advice Finder and then search by topic. Click on “Teaching” and you’ll find dozens of pieces written over the years on topics such as grading and burnout.
ICYMI
- When drafting your course policy on students’ use of tools like ChatGPT, what should you consider? Kevin Gannon provides some ideas in this Chronicle advice piece.
- What should you do when your students would rather be lectured than participate in active learning? Jeremy T. Murphy tackles that common challenge in this Chronicle advice piece.
- If you’re not yet concerned about ChatGPT’s effectiveness, read this Chronicle essay by a Harvard University undergraduate who did an experiment to show how well GPT-4 performed on some freshman-year assignments.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
— Beth
Learn more about our Teaching newsletter, including how to contact us, at the Teaching newsletter archive page.
