I spent Thursday at Wilfrid Laurier University where there was a one day symposium entitled "Re-imagining the University in a Changing World". It was better than most gatherings of this type because speakers were asked to speak for only 5-10 minutes and then engage with the audience for an extended period. This engagement was most intense after Ian Clark's presentation on the cost effectiveness of universities.
Clark is one of the authors of both Academic Transformations and the upcoming Academic Reform, the former emanating from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO). One of Clark's startling arguments is that teaching only undergraduate universities as envisaged by the current government would cost less than research focused universities and would produce surpluses which could then be reinvested into the hiring and training of more "teaching stream faculty".
Another iconoclastic argument was that there is no reliable research that shows any correlation between excellence in teaching and research productivity. Once the audience regained its collective breath he then delivered the coup de grace: there is some indication in his own research, he remarked, that excellent teaching and excellent research are actually independent of each other and bear no relation whatsoever. Check out the following link to another source: http://www.heqco.ca/en-CA/Pages/Home.aspx.
Talk about deconstructing an academic gospel.
Personally I find the arguments a challenge; even moreso when I realize that this separation of two activities which have long been assumed to be inter-relational is driving both the media coverage of undergraduate education in Ontario and government thinking about the postsecondary sector. Not to mention the shift of enrolments from universities to college training programs Have a happy weekend.
And how are students served by professors who are basically unaware of trends in their respective fields and, by extension, job markets? Not very well, I think. Perhaps there are courses that are very well-served by a teaching intensive (not teaching-only) position, but to have teaching-only instructors for the length and breadth of an undergraduate degree? Seems rather short-sighted. I wonder when Ontario higher ed will hit a middle ground and value teaching AS MUCH AS research. Like St.Francis Xavier? http://www.stfx.ca/academics/research/
ReplyDeleteThese arguments aren't surprising, given the available and valued (but not necessarily valuable) ways of measuring teaching excellence and research productivity. It would be difficult but revealing to conduct reliable research that actually got at learning (I don't mean learning outcomes!), influence, personal change, and career arc (I don't mean job placement) on the part of students in relation to engagement with research in the faculty who teach them. I'm with Sara...would that we could create a climate where one did not seem to take away from the other!
ReplyDeleteHi all,
ReplyDeleteI am also going to suggest that for many career arcs, a focus on research is necessary. For example, try to get into virtually all graduate level programs in psychology without a empirically-based thesis and research experience! Our program is highly respected among graduate schools because our students have been trained and mentored in active research.
I wonder how much of the "research does not beget good teaching" is a convenient reflection of the desire to have fewer faculty teach more students. My critical thinking skills wants to know what is this 'evidence' that the two are separate and independent skills? I wouldn't want my students to accept something profered as 'truth' without scrutinizing the source... However, that may be a result of my TRENT undergraduate training provided by "teachers who research" and "researchers who teach".
I can think of many reasons why there would be no correlation between research and teaching. First, universities rarely hire teachers -- they hire researchers. Skill at teaching, if any, comes with the job, more often by accident than intention. As a graduate student, I remember attending a party where a prominent faculty member was given a special award for teaching. Along with a brass plaque for his office, he got a year of teaching relief. Second, it is the practice of universities to reward good researchers with teaching relief, thus removing top researchers from teaching altogether. (The converse, which might balance things out a bit, would be to reward top teachers with research relief, but no university seems to support that idea). Third, I suspect that few people could agree what a "good teacher" really is. One of my profs passed away recently, which caused me to reflect on his teaching ability. I was very convinced at the time I was in his class that he was rubbish, but upon my reflection, I realized that he probably had more influence on how and what I learned than any of my other undergraduate teachers.
ReplyDeleteFrom a purely economic standpoint, there is a world-wide surplus of Phds, many of whom could teach, but few of whom could secure an ever-shrinking pot of research funding.
To deny that teaching-only and research-only positions can co-exist with researching teachers and teaching researchers at a university is missing an opportunity to improve the quality of education offered.
The "keeping abreast of the field" argument only applies when you teach what you research. There is no one at this university, for example, whose research covers more than a lecture's worth of first-year biology topics, so why not have an enthusiastic biology generalist teacher teach the course, instead of a research specialist who will not be up-to-date with the rest of the course material anyway?
The 'tomorrow's professor' mailing list had a post on this a while back with some links that might be a starting point for a critical check of these claims. The link is http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1037&search=teaching%20and%20research
ReplyDeleteMany 'teaching-only' faculty continue to keep up to date with developments in their field, and may even read more broadly as opposed to the deeper but narrower focus of specialized researchers.
Just as a point of clarification, while Academic Transformation was commissioned by HEQCO, Academic Reform was not and is an independent project.
ReplyDeleteHere is an article on teaching-only faculty. http://www.cou.on.ca/issues-resources/student-resources/publications/papers-by-academic-colleagues/pdfs/ac-discussion---teaching-stream-positions---april-.aspx
ReplyDeleteThe COU document is silent on the relationship between research and teaching. The 'limitations' it cites are only those that are imposed by institutions--that they will make teaching-stream positions a lower tier with limited opportunities for advancement.
ReplyDeleteThe research that finds little correlation, or weak negative correlation, between teaching and research seems to rely on quantitative data (research incomes, number of publications, student evaluations, survey response)that don't give us the whole picture. We also need qualitative research--how do faculty see their research as contributing to their teaching?
I'm not surprised by a lack of correlation between teaching and research excellence- the rely on a different skill set. I've seen excellent researchers do very poorly at teaching and vice-versa. Teaching requires engaging an audience, not only informing them but (hopefully) getting them fired up about the subject, so they want to learn and put in the effort. Unfortunately criteria for hiring new faculty are heavily research oriented, checking how many publications they have of what quality, with almost no attention paid to teaching honours, training and skills. This leads to many faculty hired with poor teaching skills, and yet where do most students interact with our faculty: in class! If you put faculty with less than great teaching skills in front of first year classes, you will likely drive more students away from that class or maybe even from Trent. Teaching quality comes largely not from technology enhancement, but from the training, experience, and dedication put in by the instructor.
ReplyDeleteI would take the argument about "keeping up with the field" one step farther. When I teach undergraduate courses, they are of necessity much broader than my research interests. In preparing my courses, I myself am exposed to new ideas and am forced to make connections among examples with which I would otherwise be unfamiliar. Those ideas and connections have shaped my research; my recent book would never have existed were it not for a course that has stretched my thinking every time I've taught it.
ReplyDelete"Keeping up with the field" is good for my students-- but it's also good for me as a researcher and author.