Teach Talk 2 -- Preparing the Professoriate
As you may have heard, in early June of this year U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige issued his first report on teacher quality. In that report, which focused on ways in which K-12 teachers are prepared for their careers in elementary and secondary schools, Paige calls for a decreased emphasis on "pedagogy or education theory courses" and an increased emphasis on "content knowledge."
This report sparked a number of debates about how best to prepare our nation's teachers, but similar questions about the preparation of our nation's professoriate were not often raised. Perhaps this is because traditionally, doctoral programs do, in fact, concentrate exclusively on "content knowledge". However, in recent years many doctoral programs have been debating the extent to which they also have the responsibility to prepare their students for the realities of the job environment today, where teaching loads are heavier than ever and junior faculty, in particular, face increased pressure to perform "excellently" in the classroom as well as in the realm of research.
Although we don't offer any doctoral programs at Berry, we are all products of graduate programs that prepared us in certain ways for our current jobs, and that preparation has a lasting impact on us at many stages of our careers. So, the question is this: Did you feel your degree program adequately prepared you for your role as teacher? Were any of your degree requirements related to pedagogy rather than content?How much responsibility should graduate programs have for preparing candidates for careers as teachers, if any? Should graduate programs dedicate more course requirements to pedagogical concerns, find other ways to address issues of pedagogy, or concentrate on ensuring graduates are experts in their fields or disciplines?
From Todd Timberlake, Physics:
I just wanted to relate my experiences on this matter, being a very recent product of the graduate education system. During my years in the graduate physics program at the University of Texas (1994-2001), there was very little done to prepare graduate students to become teachers. We were required to take a 3-credit course entitled "Supervised Teaching in Physics", but this course was a joke among the graduate students. I specifically recall being in that class with a Chinese student who barely spoke English and had a horrible stutter. He was brilliant, as I soon found out, but the thought of this guy trying to teach a class of American college students (and at Texas, no less) gave me the chills. I'm sure he got an "A" in the course like the rest of us.
Most of what we learned about teaching came from other graduate students. Many of us (at least those who weren't working for professors with big-budget research grants) taught physics labs for several semesters. These labs had faculty supervisors (in theory) but those supervisors rarely took any interest (the one I taught was actually the exception, but many supervisors didn't even show up for the lab instructor's meetings). Mostly the labs were run by senior graduate students who had taught the lab for several years. If your "Head Teaching Assistant" was a good one, you got some good advice on teaching. If not, too bad. I later became a "Head TA" myself and I would like to think that I helped others become better teachers, but mainly I was focused on getting them through the labs so I could get back to my research.
All in all, I don't think that even 11 semesters of teaching physics labs prepared me to teach college courses. What really prepared me was the 3 years I spent teaching high school math (1998-2001). The fact that I got that job was an accident of circumstance (well, it resulted from my getting married which was no accident, but landing that specific job was accidental). Without that experience I don't think I would have been prepared to teach at Berry last year. I do think more needs to be done to prepare graduate students to be teachers. It doesn't have to be mandatory. Many people in my field will never teach, and will be content with their high-paying jobs in industry or national labs. But there is still a significant fraction of us who will teach and need to learn how. I think people in some fields (like physics) have traditionally looked down on teaching as a nuisance that researchers must "put up with". I wonder how much of that attitude derives from the fact that they were asked to teach without anyone telling them how. Maybe if graduate programs provided some real training we would end up with a bumper crop of Ph.D.'s who are as excited about teaching as I became after my experience teaching high school.
From Marty Cipollini, Biology:
An absolute PRE-requisite to teaching is knowing the subject you are asked to teach. We are all exposed to different forms of pedagogy from the time we are in pre-school all the way through graduate school. Through this exposure, we all have a basic working knowledge of the uses and purposes of different forms of teaching and evaluation. What is really necessary for the education of potential teachers is a thorough knowledge of the content of courses they will eventually teach. I don't care how good you are at leading group discussions and fostering student self-confidence in their ability to learn -- if you don't know algebra you cannot teach algebra. While I don't think blindly ignoring issues of pedagogy is a good thing, I agree with Rod Paige on his point of prioritizing content.
Look, for example, at SACS requirements for teaching courses here at Berry. We are required to have 18 hrs of graduate course work in the subject area (content). Yet, there are no requirements stating that we need to have x number of hrs of course work in education. This suggests that the education people themselves (SACS folks) have recognized for years the priority of content knowledge.
I do not know of a Ph.D. program in the natural sciences which requires education courses. I suspect that English programs might do this because teaching is one of the most likely career choices for an English major, but not necessarily so for the sciences.
From Kristen Diliberto, Psychology:
My answer to your question is, in short, yes and no. Yes, I received some training, but no I didn’t think it was enough training to prepare me for my role as a teacher. My graduate program offered a one credit teaching practicum course (very informal) which involved learning to develop a syllabus, a lecture, exams et cetera. We attended every session of a particular course that our practicum instructor as well as had the opportunity to be observed teaching. The instructor gave us feedback on our teaching (content and style). In addition, most graduate students taught 1 or 2 courses each summer. Yes, I do think graduate schools should devote more time to training teachers. However, many of us come from large research universities where research is the focus. And, the teachers from whom I learned and initially modeled after used lecture as the primary (and sometimes only) teaching method. [I am not saying that lecturing is a bad thing, but we were often passive listeners.] In addition, the class sizes were on average much larger than at a smaller college or university. Thus, through attending many teaching institutes, WAC, and brown bags since my employment at Berry, I have learned new styles of teaching and ways to incorporate more active learning in the classroom. However, I must admit that it is difficult to fight off old habits and to try new approaches - but teaching is a development process.
From one who wishes to remain anonymous:
So much, if not all of my class instruction is primarily content, but the applicability is there as much as one wishes to make it so -- more pedagogy. Applying the way to teach, using the content, is the key. I don't think one can learn the art of teachign as much as one must be, act, and encompass the art of teaching. Teaching is a verb...an act, but putting the word into action is a lifelong process.
Classes don't teach us this. The discovery of self and how the self works will help us learn about ourselves and develop the "art" of teaching. But purely methods and content is useless without heart. Perhaps this is what we should introduce more often to our future leaders and teachers, because without the journey to self discovery, the knowledge is just knowledge, but with purpose, it has passion.
Tom Smith, Music:
I was very fortunate to be able to take a course at the Florida State University in Tallahassee at the end of my master's program called Music Teaching In Higher Education. The course was taught by Cliff Madsen, one of the true heavyweights in Music Education. The course was exceptional and covered a vast amount of useful info about college teaching, not just in music. In fact, there were several non-music people taking the class. This was the only course that I have taken (or heard of) which specifically addressed college teaching.
Gary Breton, Chemistry:
The focus of most graduate schools in chemistry is to make headway in research. Most chemistry professors at Universities are pre-occupied with their research endeavors and give as little of their time as possible to the "required" teaching they must do. This is often quite obvious when attending their courses. I actually had one professor that would photocopy the pages from the textbook onto transparencies, and simply read the book to us during class!
However, there are usually at least a few professors that enjoy teaching. I believe that graduate students that think they might eventually teach tend to seek these professors out. Usually those particular professors are generous with tips and advice about teaching. This I found to be true both as an undergraduate as well as a graduate student (both were research universities).
Most graduate students in chemistry eventually go into industry. Only a small fraction end up teaching at a College as I (eventually) chose to do. There was, therefore, no desire on the part of the graduate school to teach graduate students how to teach. I certainly never had any formal training in teaching and never attended as much as a single education class. But the little teaching experience I had both as an undergraduate (I taught a recitation section) as well as a graduate student (where I taught several recitation sections) served two purposes: 1) It made me realize that I really enjoyed teaching, and 2) it served as a teaching "boot camp" where initially I was pounded hard (maybe even shell-shocked), but eventually found my own way and created my own style.
I guess the bottom line is that if you still want to teach after getting through a graduate experience like that then you certainly must have the desire for it. And if you have the desire for it, then you seek out all that is available to make you into the best teacher you can be.
Jack Vespa, English, Rhetoric and Writing:
Like many recent Ph.D. graduates in English, I've taught a lot of writing courses while studying a select literary genre or period (in my case, British and American Romantic poetry). I'm happy to say that I received considerable pedagogical instruction from my teachers and mentors at the University of Utah--at least when it comes to the teaching of writing. The faculty coordinator for each writing course conducted an orientation at the beginning of the school year for graduate students or adjunct instructors, and continued mentoring teachers throughout the semester in weekly colloquia. ... The orientation introduced grad students to the various schools of thought associated with the teaching of writing as well as the goals and objectives of the particular writing course they had been assigned, and assisted them in the process of devising a course description/policy statement and a syllabus. The weekly colloquia guided new teachers through some of the minutiae associated with teaching composition, such as facilitating class discussions, preparing writing assignments, evaluating student work, etc. Most of the course coordinators supplemented colloquia with a textbook or two devoted to pedagogy as well, which became the subject of class discussions. ... You might say these courses mixed "content" as well as pedagogy, though, because they often provided material about essay genres, rhetorical strategies, the writing process, etc. for us to integrate into our lectures. Faculty also offered graduate-level courses in composition pedagogy now and then--at least once a year, if memory serves--for grad students specializing in rhetoric and composition instead of literature.
As for courses devoted to the teaching of literature (and creative writing, which is fast becoming a major or minor at many colleges and universities), Utah offered no such courses, and very little informal counsel, unless you asked a mentor or were among the very few chosen as teaching assistants for English or Creative Writing faculty. I am not quite sure of the rationale for this approach; the English department seldom chose to explain the particulars of their policies, which may not come as a surprise to many graduates with Ph.D.s in the Humanities who are reading this account. ... Some of my fellow grad students successfully "lobbied" to teach lower-level lit courses now and then, however, including myself, and we experimented accordingly, drawing on the example of our mentors as well as our previous experience as writing teachers. ... I guess the irony should be apparent by now; there were no courses in pedagogy for grad students specializing in literature, just content, but several courses for grad students teaching writing as they studied literature. The approach is def. pragmatic, I think, given the extent to which graduate stipends entail the teaching of writing courses. I'm not sure how helpful a course in pedagogy for the teaching of literature would have been, in retrospect, given the importance of teaching itself. But I find it hard to draw apt conclusions now about the lack of courses in literature pedagogy, because there must have been some cross-pollination between the courses in composition pedagogy and the examples of my mentors who taught literature that informed my teaching of literature. I would probably be less sanguine about it all if I hadn't had the courses in composition pedagogy, however.
So I'm thinking that graduate programs devoted to literary study and other humanities should include a course or two on pedagogy, esp. in light of hiring trends and teaching loads in the Humanities. There is more than one way to deliver the content, it seems to me. ( I guess this means I think it's a little disingenuous of our Education Secretary to divorce content and pedagogy.) I've preferred interactive or inquiry-driven approaches over straight lecture, because I think it engages them more effectively. I've taken some classes were the prof lectured exclusively and I've learned a lot, to be sure, but while doing so I found ways to make the content engaging, too. Not all students perform as well when left to their own devices. Courses in pedagogy can help bridge that gap.
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