Do We Value Teaching?

This week I would like to share a recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Ed entitled, "Americans Value Good Teaching. Do Colleges?" by McMurtrie (2023). I have been sharing these articles on research in higher ed teaching for the past five years. I believe this [rather lengthy] article laser focuses on why even those with the best intentions to support our students' learning encounter seemingly impossible challenges. I will try to summarize the teaching research data in this article and encourage you to read the entire article as there are multiple underlying processes and sub-cultures that contribute to the on-going issues with effective teaching.

First, the author reminds us that "the vast majority of professors at most colleges received almost no training on how to be effective teachers. Once hired, we quickly learn that teaching is rarely examined, or rewarded." This fact is the origin for the many hurdles that we face to become and maintain effective teaching. The following represent some of hurdles from the article:

"Annual reviews claim to evaluate teaching, but typically lack meaningful methods - student course evaluations — notoriously unreliable — often form the foundation.
Centers for Teaching can help, but according to a new study, only 26% of institutions have one.
Decades of research have shown that high-quality teaching is fundamental to student success. Students perform better when they feel academically challenged, connected to their professors, and engaged.
No easily digestible measure of teaching effectiveness exists.
Research on how students learn reinforces that effective teaching is interactive, connects with students’ prior knowledge, and provides regular feedback. Rarely does someone walk into a classroom, untrained, and know how to create such an environment.
If the public knew which were the better teaching colleges - that might shift enrollment patterns.
Shift in spending has created the “other university," which does not have a faculty; it has a staff with professional degrees and doctorates in higher-ed administration. It does not have a curriculum; it has programming: health and wellness, multicultural awareness, community outreach, personal enrichment, and career counseling.
Colleges don’t reward teaching.
Early career faculty can struggle because senior colleagues don’t understand their more progressive approaches - some early career professors have been told to raise their student evaluations if they want to secure tenure - students don’t know the work that goes into course design, or the learning science behind a classroom strategy they find uncomfortable. Active learning has been shown to be more effective than lecturing. But students don’t like it as much. Decades of research has shown that evaluations are higher for courses that give less work, while women and faculty of color are rated lower.
We have a whole culture and structure built around the evaluation of research productivity - but we don’t have the equivalent to teaching. People say quality teaching is hard to measure - quality research is hard to measure, but we do it.
Many leaders might not see it as their problem to fix. After all, they have not only survived, but thrived, in the existing system.”

References

McMurtrie, B. (2023). Americans value good teaching. Do colleges? Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/americans-value-good-teaching-do-colleges.