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  • We Need More Teachers

    By Joshua Kim March 10, 2010 10:07 pm EST

    I'm a huge believer that as many people as possible involved in higher education should teach. Administrators should teach. Librarians should teach. Technologists should teach. People who work in companies should teach. Journalists, editors, and publishers covering higher education should teach. I think more companies should follow Wimba's lead in encouraging their employees to teach.

     

    Getting more of us into the classroom will result in a better understanding of the challenges faced by our faculty and students. For technologists, our tools and platforms (and how we support them) will improve through the process of "eating our own dog food".

     

    Students will also benefit from a great range of instructors. They will get to learn from people who have other full-time jobs beyond faculty members, seeing that the facts, concepts, and ideas covered in our courses are applicable to a range of jobs. More instructors also means smaller courses and more experimentation. This approach also has an economic logic, as I'm betting that for many people the professional development opportunities that would come with teaching would amount to equitable compensation. As long as teaching was built into their regular jobs, and not structured as extra work, than I don't think there would be a need to pay them.

     

    The thing is, good teaching can be synthesized. As we learned in Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas, the median time to receive a doctorate in the humanities is 9 years. Nobody needs 9 years of graduate training to teach a course. What is needed is faculty development, mentoring, peer review, assessment, and continuos improvement. Bringing administrators into the ranks of instructors would have the side benefit that this group is likely to be amenable to being required to participate in structured training, supervision and evaluation.

     

    It is also true that people should teach only in areas in which they are qualified. A graduate degree is a necessity. Demonstrated expertise in the subject matter that they would be teaching is a prerequisite. This means someone who is participating in adding value to the knowledge in whatever discipline they would teach. This could take the form of writing professional articles and presenting at professional conferences. Participation in social media around the discipline should also count. Good teaching and research are bound together - we just need to expand our conception of research to include actively participated in the conversations in various disciplines.

     

    Schools should also be open to expanding the types of courses are offered. Perhaps not all courses need to have a theoretical foundation, but can be more practically oriented. This does not mean that we are moving towards vocational approach, only that there should be room for courses connected to professional jobs beyond the professoriate. Learning design, project management, and mobile application development are three examples that come quickly to mind.

     

    Is anyone experimenting in offering 1 credit courses, or hybrid courses, some other format that can accommodate an expanded instructor base and a more diverse set of course offerings? Are there any examples of institutions that have developed programs to train, supervise and support a wider range of instructors drawn from professionals throughout the university?

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Comments on We Need More Teachers

  • Posted on March 11, 2010 at 9:30am EST

  • Librarians do teach -- it is core to their mission in academic librarianship.

  • Yes, but....
  • Posted by Mid-level Admin on March 11, 2010 at 12:45pm EST

  • I agree with you in theory, and I, too, am convinced that having staff members of all kinds in the classroom would add new levels of understanding of the challenges/joys/frustrations/excitement within higher ed. But you lost me on two points:

    (1) Building teaching into the jobs of FT employees: With staff members at many colleges already feeling strained by trying to fit all of their responsibilities into a 40+-hour work week, this just isn't possible. If I taught (which I've done in the past and which I love to do), I'd be working 9-5 (with occasional nights and weekends) at my "normal" responsibilities, and teaching tasks would then take over my nights and weekends. If I wanted that kind of life, I'd be an adjunct.

    And that leads into my next point...

    (2) Not paying FT employees to teach: Teaching responsibilities (prep work, in-class time, grading, grading, grading, meeting with students, answering frantic student emails, etc.) are never contained within the walls of a 40-hour work week, which is the framework on which my salary is built. Renegotiating my hours and job responsibilities means renegotiating my salary, which may sound too pecuniary in the context of the "higher concerns of higher ed," but no one wants to be taken advantage of. What your plan would do is require overtime hours without overtime pay. Doesn't sound fair to me. Particularly when faculty members (at least at my institution) get extra pay for all kinds of extra things they do (e.g. "merit pay" for attending sports games).

    So, nice idea, really nice idea, in fact, but......Find a way to fit teaching responsibilities into my ever-growing administrative job, and I'm all over it.

  • Teachers come in many different forms...
  • Posted by TW , Independent College Counselor on March 11, 2010 at 1:15pm EST

  • Dr. Kim's arguments are a great start to this conversation. I agree that we "need more teachers" in society. However, I strongly believe that credentials don't necessarily trump competence.

    Yes, people should only teach in areas where they are qualified, but I don't believe a graduate degree is a necessity.

    For example, a look at the country's workforce, or rather, those currently unemployed, would show some very competent people in their fields who have probably been "teaching" for many years in their various roles in life. How many of them have graduate degrees? I would wager that there are many people who would be incredible resources for any school to use.

    I think there is often-times a heavy bias in this country favoring people with the "right credentials" when there are plenty of qualified people who could instead be considered for teaching, or any line of work for that matter... who may simply have their bachelor's degree, or 'gasp!' an associates degree... or dare I say it? A high school diploma!

  • teaching AND learning
  • Posted by mid-level-prof , psych at St. Cloud State Univ. on March 11, 2010 at 6:00pm EST

  • I was at Dickinson College for a year, and at least back in 1999, all administrators, from the Pres. on down, taught a course a year. I thought this was really great requirement, and so I agree with the author of this opinion. I'm sure it had its problems. Still, it is an ideal worth striving toward.

    In addition, I've always dreamed of an institution that also required its faculty to periodically take a course, out of their professional field, at their own institution. What a great way to see what colleagues are doing in the classroom (and out of it), and perhaps, to be a bit humbled by the difficulties of learning much different material. It would also be "interesting" for the teaching faculty to know that their work was being observed by a faculty member in a way much deeper than any standard peer evaluation (of which very little is done anymore). Of course, there would be the workload issue.

  • more teachers
  • Posted by Mike on October 26, 2010 at 5:15pm EDT
  • I agree with you that administrators need to spend more time in the classroom, however, I'm not so sure that they need to teach in order to understand some of the issues that teachers face. Thanks for the post!

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