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Oct. 8, 2007
The Educrats’ Attack on Teaching
On a warm Tuesday at the very end of summer, my college held its twice-yearly faculty “in-service education” day. The theme: “improving student learning outcomes” as part of the transition from a “teaching institution” to a “learning community.”
Related stories
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- ‘You Can’t Measure What We Teach’, Dec. 4
- Follow the Leader, Dec. 1
- Teaching and Learning: In Search of a Metaphor, Nov. 24
- Vigilante Justice on Plagiarism, Nov. 13
For the last decade, the administration has been eager to impress upon the faculty that we are not merely teachers but “learning facilitators.” Learning, we are told, is a collaborative process, more rich and democratic than the top-down method of traditional teaching. Few of us unblessed by graduate degrees from Schools of Education have any real idea what that means, and so the powers-that-be decree that we have these regular indoctrination sessions. The untenured faculty among us are advised to attend and feign earnestness, while the tenured folk hang around to see what sort of a free lunch will be put on. Rarely are either the workshops or the meals memorable.
As Inside Higher Ed has reported, the Department of Education last week gave a $2.4 million dollar grant to three different college associations to help them figure out how colleges could measure “student outcomes.” The goal is seemingly noble; all of us in higher ed are, one presumes confidently, concerned with student learning. The problem, of course, is that for a very long time the vast majority of us have been doing an outstanding job of assessing student outcomes: We call it testing and grading, and for most of us, it’s worked splendidly. But of course, we who teach students haven’t always had the benefit of an education in Education. (Those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t teach get education degrees and become administrators — it’s an old and not unfair maxim.) And in order to demonstrate “reform” and “improvement”, the educrats must first convince the faculty that our time-tested methods of evaluating our own instruction and our students’ work have been entirely inadequate.
As part of teaching the teachers that they don’t really know how to teach, last Tuesday at our “faculty education day” I was handed a little yellow binder stuffed with handouts of articles from various education journals. I got a free pencil (alas, already sharpened) which had “PCC Flex Day 2007: The Passion for Learning” emblazoned upon it. In my folder was a little self-survey, so that I could discover my own unique learning style, and then share it with my colleagues during the stimulating “breakout sessions” that were sure to follow. After all, the educrats opine, we can’t really be effective “learning facilitators” until we become aware of our own learning styles — and how our own “ways of learning” may be obstacles to understanding the needs of students (sorry, “fellow learners") who have different styles.
On the agenda for the day, the following:
—Lunch (12:00-1:00)
—Turn in your program assessment form at your food station to get your meal!
The Ed.D.’s were on to us! They knew we came for free food, and so a crackdown had been implemented: no ticky, no lunchie. No self-assessment, no stir-fry over rice. Luckily enough, I had packed some trail mix, a nectarine, and a vegan protein bar, so the blackmail didn’t work on me.
Seriously, of course, the real reason for all of this wallowing in self-congratulatory edu-speak is that the community colleges, like most public institutions, are worried about accountability. Accountability is the buzzword of the decade; the taxpayers (and their duly elected representatives) want to know that they’re getting something in return for their billions. That’s not unreasonable. But as anyone who has taught the humanities with passion for any length of time will attest, the most enduring outcome of our work as teachers emerges over the course of a student’s entire life. The educrats have decided that the best way to prove accountability is to create measurable, testable, “student learning outcomes” (SLOs). The problem is, they expect that outcome to be manifest by the end of the semester in which the student was enrolled and evident in the form of a test that can be given at many colleges to allow for comparison. Evidence of authentic learning almost invariably takes much longer to emerge and its value for the student is independent of whether the student down the road or across the country had a good learning outcome.
The longer I teach, the more convinced I become that worrying too much about assessing learning is one of the chief enemies of inspiring our students to want to learn. Look, I want all my students to pass their final exams, get good grades, and remember what it is that they’ve learned. But I’m teaching history, not providing a certificate in refrigerator maintenance. My final exams assess the ability to construct coherent arguments as well as what, on one given day, a student has managed to memorize. But that doesn’t mean that even the most carefully crafted exam can assess learning because the real learning happens long after the student has left the class.
Especially in my humanities and gender studies courses, I know full well that it will take many of my students years and years to connect what they’ve learned in class to their own lives. Often, the epiphanies and break-throughs that matter will happen long after students have left this campus, long after they’ve moved out of reach of the educrats and their assessment tools. I always compare the job of a good teacher (I’m not a learning facilitator) to a gardener or a farmer. I know it sounds patriarchal, deeply Western, and unfashionably hierarchical, but there it is: I sow seeds in the soil of students’ hearts and minds. (Some of the time, my seed falls on rock, other times it ends up in the thistles, but some of it ends up in nice, loamy earth.) And here’s the thing: I don’t often get to see what blossoms and what doesn’t, because whatever flowers do bloom will generally do so months or years after the student has left my class.
All teachers love it when their students report an “a-ha!” moment. We make a great mistake, though, in assuming that if these epiphanies are going to happen to our students at all, they will happen during the term we happen to be teaching them! Some of the most vital lessons I learned from my professors as an undergraduate only became clear to me a long time after I had left their classrooms, after the seeds they planted had had time to undergo a very lengthy germination.
So if the politicians and the educrats want to assess my skills as a teacher, they need to do more than look at my students’ test results. We all know that students can cram in information for a December final — and most of the facts they memorized will have vanished from their heads by Super Bowl Sunday. But a new way of seeing the world, of seeing, say, gender roles and relationships in a new light — that may well endure even though there are no reliable ways of assessing that sort of internal transformation. The most important things my students learn in my classes can’t possibly be measured by any government-provided instrument. I’ve been teaching long enough to have students come back years and years after taking a class; some just mouth platitudes such as “I really liked your class” but a few say wonderful, heartening, reassuring things; they tell me in detail how something I taught them helped change the direction of their lives. Most of the time, they’ll say something like “I didn’t realize it at the time, but when you said X, it started a whole new way of thinking about the world.”
There’s no SLO that can measure that.
Look, I know who pays my salary. If the state legislature and their Ed.D. flacks want me to tweak my syllabi to emphasize the vocabulary of accountability, I’m happy to do it. But I’m still going to teach — primarily through lecture in an ancient, top-down, one-sided way. I’m going to pour out my enthusiasm and my passion, laboring in a field filled with rocky soil and pockets of rich earth. And for the most part, I won’t be around to see the harvest. That’s what it means to teach.
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Comments
And, the choir said with great enthusiasm, “AMEN!” I think you must have been a colleague of mine once upon an assessment time ago. Been there, been through that, hear whisperings of the “a” word again, but this time not cringing; the ed-heads are not in charge!
lived through it, too, at 7:55 am EDT on October 8, 2007
KWT, Pennies, Nutballs
KWT doesn’t tell us who — or what group — is doing a better job than faculty of minding the “pennies and the “random nutballs.”
Bob Schenck, at 8:35 am EDT on October 8, 2007
Yet more evidence for the need to privatize HE
” .. Look, I know who pays my salary. If the state legislature and their Ed.D. flacks want me to ..”
Ah, the voice of tenured unionism in the public sector. Stepping up to the plate, with miles of smiles and loads of intrinsic motivation.
IMHO, this brings new meaning to the phrase, “no significant difference.” As in, most students find their own way in life. Any reasonably competent teacher could have created the same effect.
In private colleges, there is more discipline. There’s no mandated tax-millage to pay the overhead. Expectations are much higher and faster, as are graduation rates.
As long as there are tax mandates, “edu-crats” will be there. Count on it.
L.L., at 9:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007
Amen Brother, Amen!!!
Sad to say, KWT is correct ... we have only ourselves to blame.
Although I knew about this phenomenon back in my graduate school days, my first real experience with it was in 1980, my first year on the faculty of North Carolina’s public liberal arts university. There the scholar/teachers were outnumbered by at least five to one by the self-serving educrats who were intent upon politicizing the academic waters. A few of my colleagues promised me I was viewing the wave of the future in higher education ... and of course they were right.
I walked away five years later hoping I would never ever have to think about postmodernism, poststructuralism, or the AAUP again. Fat chance!
I’m thinking about moving to either Australia or New Zealand.
Frizbane Manley, at 9:15 am EDT on October 8, 2007
Well, I have to say I was a little put off by the tone here. The essay comes off as an attack on Ed.D’s and teacher training more than it does educrats who like to impose systems that don’t work. Personally, I don’t think anyone should be teaching in postsecondary education without having SOME background in teaching. We have all experienced the prof. who was a genius in his/her field but couldn’t communicate that to the class one iota.
This is crucial, however: “So if the politicians and the educrats want to assess my skills as a teacher, they need to do more than look at my students’ test results.” VERY true! Much of what we see in college is project-based learning, an assessment rarely considered important now days in K-12. Is it any wonder, in this day of NCLB that Feds want to see standardized testing in postsecondary education when our kids are saturated with it in K-12? They want it all to match...testing from the crib on up. Some people don’t want to acknowledge there ARE more ways to assess learning other than through standardized tests. Sure, standardized tests should have their place. But not in the “make or break a school” column.
As to educators that become administrators because they can’t teach, I will say I have had some excellent Chair people who WERE teachers. I’m sorry if you have not had this experience.
Too, I certainly have had the reverse: the presidents of career schools who insisted the teachers weren’t teachers. They were “techies” or something else. I am still not sure. These folks needed a big boot.
Mr. Schwyzer, you sound like a dedicated, effective teacher. You also sound frustrated as hell. Please, just don’t take that out on people who sincerely are trying to learn to teach better and train others to do the same. It does nothing but promote the perception that higher ed doesn’t really care about teaching or student learning.
kgotthardt, at 10:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007
Straw man
Terrifically fun to read as a polemic, but like all terrifically-fun-to-read polemics, it attacks a caricature, rather than addressing the underlying issue.
There are many who approach the issue of assessing SLOs ham-handedly. But I doubt whether the best counter to such attempts is elitism and snarkiness.
I think most reasonable people in the academy would agree that you can’t assess what is most important about a liberal arts education directly with a standardized test. Fine. But the more serious argument is whether you can develop reasonable assessments of the ENVIRONMENTS in which such ineffable transmissions — the seeds of later epiphanies — are likely to occur.
They are not likely to occur, for example, when students sitting in our classes are hung over. They are not likely to occur in environments where students busting their butts earn an “A” and look over their shoulders to see their peers coasting and earning a “failing” grade of B+. Not likely to occur in environments where faculty do not model the behaviors they want students to emulate (taking stands on issues of importance to the college rather than feigning powerlessness and pointing fingers at “unfair” administrations and trustees; using their tenured positions to take responsibility for defending and articulating the values of the liberal arts against commodification rather than using it as an excuse to NOT engage and provide an answer to broader societal pressures toward accountability; valuing the life of the mind over the life of the granite-topped kitchen). They are not likely to occur in environments where students do not ENGAGE with the material in class.
Engagement — essentially “time on task” — CAN be assessed, and pretty easily. Do we really want to be making the argument that engagement is unrelated to the “ineffable” truths we teach? Do we really believe that the likelihood of an “a-ha” moment occurring in later life is unaffected by the amount of sweat produced in the classroom long ago? Enlightenment itself is ineffable — but it’s more likely to happen in the presence of specific behaviors and in specific communities than CAN be measured.
In sum, at least in the domains the author describes — the ineffable humanities — I am in agreement that ham-handed attempts to assess SLOs may well do more harm than good. But if the only rejoinder is sarcasm, elitism, and ridicule of the accountability crusade’s often ham-handed practitioners, rather than an honest and open effort to engage with the very real and pressing ISSUE of accountability, who will be most responsible for that harm?
A more helpful debate would focus not on WHETHER to be accountable, but on HOW to be accountable. Faculty fail to engage with sincerity in this debate at their peril. Or more precisely, at the peril of the liberal arts they profess to defend so vigorously. And even more precisely, at the peril of the NEXT generation of faculty, who will have to deal with this generation’s lack of real leadership on this issue.
Mark Freeman, at 10:05 am EDT on October 8, 2007
Assessment
Hugo makes some good points. But the main provocation for his essay, the new multi-association assessment program, is not (so far as I can see) about “government-provided assessment tools.” It’s about colleges themselves, working together, to provide the kind of accountability for public funding that Hugo agrees is important.
Hugo also asserts that current assessment by faculty is “outstanding.” That may well be true in the humanities. But in science, there’s reason to take a second look, as was done in this famous video, “A Private Universe,” which begins as graduating Harvard seniors are asked the question “Why is it warmer in the summer than in the winter?” The question is of some interest to anyone concerned with the possibility of global warming. But few seniors had a clue. One source of the problem, as this short video illustrates, has to do with the ways teachers learn (or fail to learn) what their students are thinking. http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.htmlThe video was produced by the Harvard Smithsonian Center
If you like that video, you might also want to take a look at their “Minds of Our Own.” It’s illustrated with more Harvard (and MIT) graduation day footage, and explores both the problems and some strategies in far more depth.http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html
Steve Ehrmann, Dir. The Flashlight Program at The TLT Group, at 10:10 am EDT on October 8, 2007
It sounds like your assessment gurus are singularly unimaginative in failing to suggest meaningful avenues for you to pursue in assessment. Further, they apparently want you to violate the #1 maxim of best practices in assessment, “don’t ask if you don’t want to know.” If tests don’t enable you to ask questions about your students’ learning about which you have genuine curiosity, choose another method. In my college, faculty members ask assessment questions that truly interest them and assess students in ways that match their broader learning goals. For humanities degrees that take years to ripen, assessment can include written alumni interviews and alumni focus group discussions (alums can talk to current students too about the value of their degrees while they are back on campus — which sells liberal arts goals to the current generation!). In our gender studies senior seminar, students create portfolios that enable them to share with faculty in their own way and in their own words the transformative learning they have experienced (and rubrics enable faculty to reflect systematically on links between their students’ observations and gender studies program goals). In religious studies, faculty members will assess student learning when students write newspaper articles that will enable students to draw on their learning to explain and analyze current political hot spots in which religious conflicts feature. A key goal of that major is for students to be able to “take their degrees on the road” in order to explain religious beliefs and practices of the world religions to the public. At the graduate level, a rubric for a comprehensive exam, created by faculty, is removing the mystery of why one professor gives a student a high pass and another does not. Faculty members actually appreciate the opportunity to discuss their criteria for graduate student success with each other and thereby promote greater rigor and fairness in the program. That assessment is no longer the province of educrats but of faculty is evident too in recent publications on assessment. Increasingly, assessment resources are written by faculty in the disciplines, e.g., Barbara Walvoord, Professor of English at Notre Dame. Their insights come from the trenches we know well; not surprisingly, their advice and suggestions are increasingly relevant to all of us.
Martie Reineke, University of Northern Iowa, at 10:10 am EDT on October 8, 2007
assessment
The assessment craze seems to have two elements.
1. When we assess our classes, we know what we want students to learn and do; the Assessment preachers ask that we articulate these elements to our students and outline how we will grade them. This process makes sense to me since it just asks us to articulate what we already do/know. It clarifies the courses for ourselves as well.
2. The second part, however, asks that we assess the value of what happened in the class and at the university and asks for concrete, countable measures. Since what we do in the liberal arts is already socially devalued (see the NAAL, ACT and National Endowment for the Arts literacy reports) it is hard for me to visualize any measure that does not include that devaluation.
Moreover, quantifying outcomes assumes that education is simply a collection process..and not the “ah ha” moment the article mentions. The very request to justify education itself assumes that education is/must be tied to a measureable outcome like higher salary, gpa and the like.
I would much rather look at the inflated demand for 4-year degrees, why so many students seem unhappy and uncaring in their classes..and SO surprised when we suggest they take their own questions and concerns into their classrooms. For a large number of students at my 4-year, urban, public university, courses are disconnected boxes to be collected and added up to equal a diploma...a certification they need to get on with their lives.
The final point: like the act of reading, education takes an engaged student AND a challenging course to work; it does not always rest with the instructor to “learn them.”
theron, at 10:35 am EDT on October 8, 2007
Whether we know it consciously or not, our public schools, from the “enlightenment” of Thomas Jefferson forward, are in place to provide workers for commercial interests. The idea of a liberal arts education that has an impact beyond the job training aspect of public education is a romantic notion, a rationalization, we teachers (trainers) use to give us restful nights’ sleep. On the other hand, private colleges educate the elite, the wise leaders, the intelligentsia, who have the finely tuned reasoning skills and deeply imbued moral sense to use these publicly educated workers in the most humane, efficient and profitable manner. Since these public school learners need to be trained to follow obligingly the ever-changing rules of the workplace, rigid and ever-changing assessment techniques must become part of their lives from the earliest point. Remember, our education system is mostly socialization: stand in line, follow schedules, and listen to those more enlightened than you.
jstack, at 11:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007
assessing the factory
I have to agree with quite a bit that was written, except maybe the maxim that is old and tired. As a teacher of writing I can and do write, I just can’t make a living at it. :-) Teaching is something I fell into as a way to both eat and write, but that’s another story.
I whole heartedly agree that much of what we do, particularly in the humanities, is not at all measurable. One of my common jokes is that “I took this diversity course, and while I was racist/sexist at the beginning, I no longer am” or “I know I am now at least 20 percent racist/sexist than I was at the start of the class.” How in the heck do we measure this sort of thing? Truth is, I doubt we can in any meaningful way.
I think a lot of assessment movements are an attempt to stave off federal intervention in higher education of the sort Sec. Spellings thinks a good thing. If we do it to ourselves, then we won’t have the federal government doing it to us. Hardly the best reason for doing something of dubious value. So, yes, much of what is learned only becomes an “aha” moment, if it ever does, somewhere down the road, and to expect such things to happen only within the confines of the classroom is silly at best, dangerous at worst.
The long and short of it (like the cliche?) is that colleges and universities are being held to the factory model, that we can measure outputs right away, that students are widgets to be measured as outputs or outcomes, rather than complex human beings, who sometimes are loam, sometimes sandy soil, sometimes rocky soil wholly inhospitable and maybe even resistant to the seeds that are planted.
bradley bleck, instructor at Spokane Falls CC, at 11:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007
assessment
Almost every point made in this essay is amendable by experience except one: that higher education is a long term enterprise. The empahsis on semesterly outcomes is, therefore, a misplaced but inevitable expenditure of resources and stems from the application of a business model to an entirely diffeent engagement. Over the years I have been interested to note how analogs are used in describing what we do and in justifying systems to manage what we do. The most common, after busines, are the criminal justice analogy, in which all students and, ironically, all faculty, are potential malfeasors and the systems are designed to contain or compensate for the offending activities, and the medical model, in which students exhibit a pathology or two or three which we cure or at least treat if not the causes then the worst symptoms. Each of these lend themsleves, to one degree or another, to the same misapprehensions about the measuarability of outcomes as does the business model.
I actually like the agricultural model, the “constant gardner” approach, if only because it reminds me of something I heard one of my instructors say way back in the day of my youthful military service: After a smoke break, the sergeant in charge of map reading turned to his assistant, a coprporal in charge of maintaining discipline among us troops, and said, ‘Well, time to go back and shovel a bit more shit on the roses.”
Indeed.
jon-christian suggs, at 12:05 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
Oy Vey
Y’all need to quit taking advice from the lowest third of the SAT scores so seriously, namely, ed school grads at any level.
JWS, at 12:05 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
FLACK TO FLACK
Let EdD flacks confer on Hugo, PhD flack, a Hugo Science Fiction Achievement Award for the year’s best reiteration of the delayed learning smoke screen ("Evidence of authentic learning almost invariably takes much longer to emerge..."). Let’s hope that down the road the assessment mavens develop an advanced faculty-DNA learning tracking mechanism that will accurately credit Hugo for “whatever flowers [that] bloom...months or years after the student has left my class.” Only then will Hugo be able to validate the myth whose current uncertainty drives him to avoidance behavior, tenured polemic, and vegan protein bars—and me to frivolous ad hominem postings.
Philoctetes, at 12:10 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
Who done it?
What a breath of fresh air to know we are not alone and unable to articulate the injustice done to faculty by the Educrats. The one mystery to me in all this is how those of us who have tenure and the protection it entails have allowed this cancer of education speak and education values slip into the Humanities. It is no doubt true that while we were so busy articulating the value of humanistic inquiry we got usurped by the bureaucrats and their minions. I just wonder if there is still time to fight back or do we simply bury ourselves further in the sand until retirement!
Patrick Quinn, Chair at Ole Miss, at 12:25 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
tirade
Every protected group becomes outraged when asked to justify its protection. The tone of offended honor bespeaks a person who is either too insecure to tolerate honest inquiry or too arrogant to tolerate honest inquiry. Which is it?
socrates, at 12:30 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
I do appreciate the comments immensely, folks.
I do take evaluation very seriously. Having a colleague sit in on a class every once in a while, having student evals run periodically — these are important ways of measuring what it is that I’m doing. I don’t believe I have nothing left to learn, just that I believe I have very little to learn from those who claim to have made “learning” their area of primary expertise.
And if someone does want to develop a really good longitudinal way of measuring student success, I’m all ears, especially if a free lunch is involved.
Hugo Schwyzer, Pasadena City College, at 1:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
Former students vs. Educrats
Brilliant, Hugo!
So long as the emails from long-forgotten students keep coming in saying things like, “Just thought I’d drop you this note to tell you that what you said back in 1992 just sunk in,” I know I’m doing just fine.
Diana Relke, Professor at U. of Saskatchewan, at 3:40 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
re: assessment
The hog doesn’t get bigger just because we weigh it more often.
cgb, at 5:00 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
So. . . . ?
So if one can count all the emails, phone calls, or letters thanking the professor for the educational experience provided as proof of the quality of teaching. . . Must one also count all of the comments made between students before, during, or after (or long after) a class describing it as a “blow off class” or “a waste of time", or describing the professor as “arrogant” or “boring” as evidence of one’s failings as a teacher?
Of course, this is a foolish question to pose. One probably never hears enough praise when something is done well, nor enough valuable critique if it is done poorly.
In the end, I am not sure that either one of these measures tells you very much.
Unfortunately, this column (and many of the responses) seem to say as least as much about the authors as it does about attempts to assess learning — both of which are probably valid points.
Aspiring Educrat, at 5:00 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
Not so, administrators know so much more...
Ahh, another defensive article written by a lousy professor who cannot, will not, and will never be able to article what his or her students are learning. Why? Because the simple fact is that they are not. I googled this professor and found no evidence anywhere students learn anything in this person’s “college class.”
Like a vast majority of college courses, students could learn just as much by checking out a few books and watching a few episodes of the history channel than they ever could in this instructor’s “class.” And, even better, at no expense to taxpayers and much less expense to the student.
It really doesn’t matter, though, because in several years all college syllabi will have to conform to government standards and all instructors will have to utilize similar student learning evaluation techniques. (If the professors cannot do it, someone will else will have to). In fact, professors won’t even be able to write their own syllabi or do their own tests — these materials will be provided for them. Don’t like it? Then go find another job. That will be the choice the professor of the future will have to face.
As an aside, professors don’t really know that much about learning (as the author freely admits). Administrators know much more and, if they did teach, our students would actually learn. Too bad. What a lost opportunity that our professors care so little about learning that they feel it is a more of an administrative perogative than an instructional one.
Patience is the strategy for professors like this who care so little about learning. So little, in fact, that they wear it as a badge of honor that administrators know more about it than they do!
PS, at 5:50 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
Public and Private schools
In private colleges, there is more discipline. There’s no mandated tax-millage to pay the overhead. Expectations are much higher and faster, as are graduation rates.
As someone who just started teaching a private college, ll, and has had scores of meetings and orientations with various educrats, and who is staring at a year-long calandar of department meetings about “assessment” with a representative of the deans office present, let’s just say I’m pretty far from convinced you know what you are talking about.
I think it has more the mission of the school. At the big public RI where I got my PhD, there are hordes of Educrats but they are generally kept an arms length from the faculty, lest they encourage them to spend too much time thinking about students and teaching rather than grants and publishing.
djw, at 5:50 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
Educrats Attack on Teaching
Hugo S.: Dude, wherever you are, whatever you do, I am so sorry your wrote this and not me. Hang on! The jargonistas lack self-confidence and really, really believe that change trumps over a thousand years of successful tradition. How wrong is that? Keep flinging it, brother. Thanks!
Jeremiah, Pompous Mandarin Old Jerk, at 9:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
another way to think about
This author appreciates when his students are open enough to grasp another perspective on gender. But he himself is not open minded enough to think there might be another way to think about teaching and learning. It is sad when teachers think they don’t have anything to learn.
RA, at 9:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
Full response with hyperlinks is at http://educationpolicyblog.blogsp...2007/10/poor-excuse-for-teacher.html and http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/author/dbutin.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against lecturing per se. Research has shown it to be useful in specific situations (not many, but there are some). And I certainly know that college students sometimes come to class in, shall we say, not quite the perfect condition to learn. And I too have had my share of edu-jargon that can make insomniacs go to sleep. But Schwyzer’s tirade is demeaning and just plain arrogant. Let me put it as bluntly as possible at first: if your students aren’t learning, then you’re not teaching. You may be spouting, pontificating, lecturing, sowing, seeding, PowerPointing. But you’re not teaching. Now let’s go step by step: First, faculty such as Schwyzer assume that knowledge is just transferred from their mouth to the student’s brain. Sorry. Doesn’t work that way. Read the research. Second, few faculty understand how to align objectives to assessments. Put otherwise, they just spray knowledge out there shotgun style and hope that something sticks. If they in fact actually tried an informal assessment, such as the 1-minute exit survey, they’d realize that little actual stuck. But then they’d have to go back and re-teach something. Third, the “gardener” metaphor presumes that students are just passive entities such as “rocks” or “ loamy earth.” Please. If there is one thing that the field of social psychology has taught us, it is that context matters. Teaching is always a two-way dance that consists of literally thousands of minute actions and reactions in the course of a one-hour class. So if Schwyzer’s students don’t get it, don’t blame them or those pesky educrats. Blame him. I’d suggest he go visit one of his colleagues in the education department and actually learn something.
Dan W. Butin, at 9:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007
I am the guilty one!
1. Of course, all people who hold the Ed.D. are of the same mind. I say that with exaggerated sarcasm.
2. Jargon? My brother is a biologist. He uses that crazy jargon all the time; words like chromosome, photosynthesis, and molecules. (Language games, anyone?) I’ll stop using the words “constructivism” and “epistemology” in my classes if I must avoid jargon.
3. Don’t give education scholars all the credit. Psychologists have also participated in the destroying of education. Those cognitive psychologists are particularly guilty. And don’t get me started on the educational sociologists!
David Ayers, Ed.D., Assistant Professor, at 5:10 am EDT on October 9, 2007
let’s look at those assumptions, Hugo
Well, Hugo, you certainly touched a nerve. It’s pretty clear there are a lot of BAD faculty development sessions going on out there (at least from the faculty’s point of view) and frankly, the stir fried lunches are probably not much better. But I’d like to take a look at three of your assumptions. Assumption 1: “Grades measure learning.” This one is pretty thoroughly discredited by now. Grades measure how students perform in relation to one another, not what they are learning, and as extrinsic rewards they actually take students attention — great big gobs of it — away from their learning and fasten it on the race for A’s. Assumption 2: “I am in this by myself.” All of your remarks assume that you are operating as a teacher entirely by yourself, and you and many other faculty members do continue to see things this way. You assume that your impact on students can be measured discreetly, individually, in isolation from the rest of the experiences in the curriculum. How much more power to help students learn (I am assuming you and most of the other respondents still seek this) would you have if you thought of yourself as working on a team, being part of a corporate faculty whose shared responsibility is student learning. This would require you to talk with your collegues often and productively about what you are doing in your classroom and whether or not it’s working. I suspect you would not go for this... Assumption 3: “There are ineffable things (or at least long-term things) that happen in students as a result of what you do that can never be measured.” Hey, I am a philosophy teacher — I kinda like this one myself. But I know from my practice with students that they can reflect on the impact their education is having on them in a way that gets at some of this ineffable stuff. For starters, we could try asking them if they see any connection between what they are learning in our courses and other courses they are taking and in life in general. And if we ask them to self assess their learning frequently and systematically — I mean like in every course they take — it turns out that they take more responsibilty for their own education — what a bonus!These may be assumptions you’re not interested in changing, but you can’t change an assumption until you know you are making it — hence the need for the nasty stir fry, I guess.
Donna Engelmann, Professor of Philosophy at Alverno College, at 10:20 am EDT on October 9, 2007
I’m noting where Hugo “teaches” so I make sure my daughter doesn’t get him for a prof. So, if I’m reading this right, grades are all we need to make sure students are learning? Really? In a day and age where grade inflation is rampant, where a 75 on an exam could be an A, and where faculty are assessed by how well their students perform? Teachers, or facilitators, or professors, are all in the same line of work, helping students learn. Look out, it may require more work than just showing up and putting all of the responsiblity on the student. Heck, if that theory worked out, you just might make teachers obsolete.
Bartleby Asment, at 11:05 am EDT on October 10, 2007
Thanks Hugo!
I especially appreciate the phrase “I am teaching humanities, not giving a certificate in refrigerator maintenance.” In the culture at large, there seems to be no appreciation of the difference between wisdom and skill aquisition. But educators are forced to work within the conflation. Why is everyone so eager to blame teachers alone when an entire society fails to fund, value, and prioritize education from Kindergarten to college?
Anna Jensen, at 11:30 am EDT on October 10, 2007
Are you as good a teacher as you think? An article from NEA
Read Paul Price’s article in NEA’s journal from Fall 2006. He is a prof. at CSU Fresno.
http://insidehighered.com/views/2...nea.org/he/heta06/images/2006pg7.pdf
Being the solitary souls that we tend to be in our efforts to prepare for our courses, it becomes very easy, he states, to get caught up in our efforts rather than assessing how effective we are, in assessing our weakness as well as our strengths.
As humans, we tend to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.
I recommend the read. It is not related to student learning outcomes per se, by the way.
How do we find our blind spots?
CMD, at 4:10 pm EDT on October 10, 2007
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We have ourselves to blame
Thanks for the morning chuckle, Hugo. I think many of us are familiar with the kind of non-events you describe, although I have to confess that unlike you, I’m easily persuaded to turn in my Survey of The Moment in exchange for a free lunch.
While many of your observations are bang-on, we do well to admit that the from-an-acorn-grows-a-mighty-oak analogy (yours was a seed, I believe) is basically just our self-validating hope that what we do will matter as much to our students as it does to us. It’s a point of faith, not fact, and for that reason, it’s about as useful as a security blanket.
In an era when the cost of college is outstripping inflation year after year after year, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the present scrutiny of learning outcomes. You’re right. The picture is not as simple as some people apparently believe, but the assessment madness sweeping higher ed is a logical consequence of our collective failure to mind the pennies (and the random nutballs in our midst) along the way. We can’t blame that on the educrats, no matter how hard we try.
KWT, at 6:10 am EDT on October 8, 2007