THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF TEACHING (Revision of text is currently underway)
Authors: Drs. Fred Howe and Joseph Moran
There has been a movement in American Higher Education to view scholarhip as more than a matter of publishing monographs and research articles. In particular, many institutions have taken steps to include successful teaching within their definitions of what constitutes scholarship. Colleges and universities that recognize teaching as an aspect of scholarship make a significant contribution to improving teaching. By casting teaching as an aspect of scholarship they go far beyond merely rewarding faculty members for devoting time and effort to their teaching. They open up a way of conceptualizing teaching that enables faculty members to pursue the improvement of their teaching with the same vigor, creativity, and rigor that they exercise in conducting research in their disciplines.
Likewise, faculty members who have a genuine interest in teaching do well to join in this initiative to connect teaching with scholarship. By attending to the similarities between teaching and other types of scholarship such as publishing research, editing journals, presenting at conferences, writing textbooks, FRED I THINK YOU HAVE A LIST OF OTHER TYPES OF SCHOLARHIP, they will gain insight into how they can effectively analyze, publicize, and ultimately improve their teaching. As they demonstrate the advantages of viewing teaching as a scholarly activity they become leaders in the effort to improve teaching at our colleges and universities.
This chapter provides a brief overview of the concept of the scholarship of teaching and a more detailed description of how faculty members can address teaching as a scholarly activity as a means of improving their teaching.
DEFINING THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING
Fred, I hope you have something for this section.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING
Fred, I hope you have something for this section.
USING THE CONTEXT OF SCHOLARSHIP TO IMPROVE TEACHING
The premise of this chapter is that looking at teaching as an aspect of scholarship provides insights into how to study and subsequently improve one’s teaching. We begin with a sense of what constitutes scholarship. It seems clear that in order for any activity to be considered a scholarly achievement, that activity should:
be carried out within a conceptual framework,
be a matter of ongoing inquiry,
be of practical and/or theoretical significance,
be made public in the sense of being subject to critical peer appraisal.In the following sections we will draw implications from each of these four
criteria for individual faculty members who are concerned with improving their teaching.
FRAMEWORKS FOR CONCEPTUALIZING TEACHING
It is beyond the scope to review in anything like a comprehensive fashion the literature on teaching in higher eduction. Instead, we will try to describe a limited number of examples of frameworks that college teachers might want to consider as possible ways for conceptualizing how they will study their teaching. We will make reference to two chapters in a book that seems to be an excellent compendium of recent approaches to teaching in higher education. It is the edited volume by Perry, and Smart (1997), Effective teaching in higher education: Research and practice. Readers who are not familiar with this literature may find this a good orientation to the field.
Empirical Approaches
Marsh, H. W., and Dunkin, M. J. (1997) completed quantitative study of teaching behaviors and concluded that how teachers perform on the following nine the factors pretty much accounts for their effectiveness with students.
“1. Learning/Value. In essence in this factor denotes subjective feelings of success obtained through participation in a course and/or at the hands of a particular teacher. Students who are challenged and stimulated, who consider their learning through the course to have been worthwhile, whose interest in the subject was increased, who are conscious of having understood the subject-matter, and who generally rated the course highly are clearly expressing feelings of accomplishment on challenging learning tasks.
Instructor Enthusiasm. A minimal of condition for learning is that attention bearoused…teachers who impressed students with their enthusiasm, dynamism, and energy and who make judicious use of humor will have students who are interested and attentive. Moreover, teacher enthusiasm can vicariously induce enthusiasm for the subject in students.
Organization/Clarity. The essential ingredients of this factor are structure and clarity. By cueing learners about the organization of subject-matter, by providing advance organizers, by scheduling students exercises, and assignments appropriately and by inducing appropriate cognitive schemata, teachers assist students’ memory retrieval and formation of linkages between new material and material previously learned. These principles of teaching and learning are time honored and widely accepted elements of information processing theories of learning. While clarity is clearly an expected outcome of careful preparation and organization, it can be important as a correlate of teacher knowledge of the subject, with teacher uncertainty producing vagueness which inhibits student understanding. Students who perceived instruction as being well organized and clear are thus, likely to enjoy enhanced knowledge and understanding of course material.
Group Interaction. …This factor refers to verbal interaction in classrooms in the form of questions and answers facilitating the expression and sharing of ideas and knowledge. Higher ratings on items comprising this factor suggests that the motivational potential of social interaction with others in learning contexts is being capitalized upon and also in that the classroom contexts is being exploited as a venue for activity and practicing and testing ideas and obtaining feedback…
Individual Rapport. Opportunities to provide for individual differences in capacity and to take account all of learners’ presents knowledge and attitudes in higher education depend heavily upon individual contacts with instructors. Furthermore, individual tuition and guidance are available to the extent that instructors are interested in and accessible to individual students. Students who feel welcome also have greater access to motivationally significant opportunities such as face-to-face reinforcement and encouragement…
Breadth of Coverage. This factor reflects students’ responses to items concerning the contrasting of implications of various theories, the provision of the backgrounds of ideas and concepts, the presentation of different points of view, and the discussion of current developments…
Examinations/Grading. The instructional value of examinations and grading lies in the quality of the feedback and in the stimulus to study they provide. The items comprising this factor fall specifically to feedback and less specifically to motivational issues. Students’ perceptions of fairness and relevance of assessment procedures are probably associated with their motivation to learn…
Assignments/Readings…(assigned) and supplementary readings and the other assignments probably …(are) found to be valuable and that the learning experiences involved were meaningful. Assignments provide students with opportunities to practice new knowledge and skills. Furthermore, learning tasks that constitute assignments are often presented in learnable units even if they are not always completed in an appropriately paced sequence…
Workload/Difficulty. Work that is seen by students to be too much or too difficult is almost by definition given without consideration of learners’ capacities and prior learning’s. Moreover, such work cannot be appropriately paced or presented in desirable learnable units. Overloaded students find it difficult to experience subjective feelings of success and receive little or no reinforcement. They are likely to be forced into adopting learning strategies that minimize their ability and to understand and generalize from the specific learning situation. On the other hand, students for whom success is too easily won lose motivation to succeed and are unlikely to value such learning highly. (pp. 251-3)”Teachers might very well decide that it is useful to study their teaching by assessing how well they do on each factor. They might identify areas of strength and weakness and experiment with changes in they way they teach.
Active Learning
Other teachers might prefer to take a more theoretical approach. They might be interested in some of the teaching techniques that promote active learning. Active learning refers to the extent to which students exert control over their learning activities and over how they process the information they acquire during those learning activities.
Perceived Student Control
On approach to active learning stems from the research on students’ perceived control of their learning. Perry (1997) found that students who perceive that they have little control over their learning activities are often unable to profit from instruction even competent. He offers a number of suggestions for increasing the percieived control of college students. Covington, and Wiedenhaupt (1997) also present suggestions for increasing students’ perceived control as well as for adapting curricula to stimulate students’ interest in learning. Faculty can implement their suggestions and gather information regarding their success in improving student attitudes and/or learning.
Co-operative Learning
A global approach to active learning is co-operative learning. The literature on co-operative learning has been summarized recently by Johnson, Johnson, and Smith (1998). They claim that, “Co-operative learning is the heart of problem-based learning.(p. 28)” Furthermore, they report that 30 years of research have demonstrated the effectiveness of co-operative learning at all levels of education including colleges and universities. They summarize meta-analysis of studies comparing co-operative, competitive, and individual goal structures indicate that college students learn more at higher and lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy under co-operative goal structures. The benefits are found across academic disciplines. Co-operative learning is also found to produce greater liking among students even when the students are from different ethnic, cultural, language, and social class groups. Co-operative groups tend to promote higher self-esteem and better social skills as well as more positive attitudes towards college and towards learning. The more time students spend in co-operative learning the greater are these effects.
The authors set out five steps for faculty to take in creating co-operative learning activities:
” First, you (the instructor) ensure that each student perceives that he or she is linked with others in such away that the student cannot succeed unless the others do…
Second, you structure individual accountability so that the performance of each student is assessed by a) giving an individual test to each student, b) having each student explain what he or she has learned to a classmate, or c) observing each group and documenting the contributions of each member…
Third, you ensure that students promote one another’s success (helping, assisting, supporting, encouraging, and praising one another’s efforts to learn) face-to-face…
Fourth, you teach students the needed social skills and ensure that they are used appropriately…
Fifth, you ensure that students take time to engage in group processing.” (pp. 31-2)
Faculty members who have not planned co-operative learning activities or done so on only a limited basis probably recognize the opportunity to test out each of these claims with in the context of their own teaching. They could develop quite an agenda, but they would need a system for gathering information about their teaching and the responses of their students in order to assess that agenda in a scholarly fashion.
METHODS OF ONGOING INQUIRY
It is beyond the scope to review the various methodologies for inquiring into one’s teaching. However, we do make some reference to three established systems and encourage readers to explore them further. We begin with an example of action research in order to highlight the importance of conducting structured inquiry into all aspects of teaching.
Action Research
It is probably unwise for teachers to assume that they consistently implement exactly what they intend. In fact, there is considerable evidence that very considerable slippage occurs. For example, Rorschach and Whitney (1986) reported an action research project which grew out of their attempts to introduce new teaching methods to different sections of the same course at a community college. From their discussions they thought they were using the same teaching methods, but getting very different reactions from their students. They decided to investigate the situation by serving as participant observers in each other’s class. During the observations it became clear that they were in fact teaching very differently from one another. The senior author was teaching from a learner-centered perspective and her students were responding positively. The junior author, although claiming to be teaching from a learner-centered perspective, was actually asserting a great deal of teacher control, and his students were responding negatively. On the basis of his observations and his discussions with the senior author, he was able to bring his teaching behaviors into line with his intentions to run a learner-centered classroom.
The report from Rorschach and Whitney (1986) is a single journal article. It does illustrate a feature of action research that many faculty members find appealing and a feature that highlights the scholarship of teaching. Faculty members who conduct action research into their own teaching do so by employing established techniques of social science research. In other words they employ the tools of scholarship and therefore they have every reason to expect valid information about their teaching. Elliot (1991), Greenwood and Levin (1998), and Moran (in press) are sources of detailed information about action research.
Coaching
Coaching relationships among peers provide excellent opportunities for teachers to inquire into their own teaching. In coaching, two teachers form a relationship in which they alternate in the roles of 1) the teacher who is inquiring into his or her own teaching, and 2) the coach who is providing nondirective support to the inquiring teacher. The key features of the coaching process developed by Costa and Garmston (1994) are:
The teacher decides what aspect of his or her teaching will be examined and how.
A coach must observe a teacher teach, and collect information regarding that teaching in order to coach effectively. For example, a teacher might specify that his or her coach record the number of learners who participate by talking to the teacher and by talking to other learners, and that the coach also record selected comments from learners that characterize interaction patterns among the learners.
The teacher and the coach reflect independently on the information that the coach collected during the observation.
During a conference, the teacher uses the information collected by the coach to assess his or her own teaching strengths and weaknesses. In terms of the example from above, the teacher assesses how well learner interactions are functioning, and whether changes are needed.
If a teacher does not do so spontaneously during the conference, the coach invites the teacher to reflect critically on his or her teaching with probes such as, “You thought that…. was effective. What in particular do you think made it effective?” “Why did that technique work so much better (or worse) than the last time you used it?” “What evidence supports your view?” “What does your choice of teaching method say about your assumptions about the students?” “If what you say is correct, and I think it probably is, what would you do differently next time, and why?”Teachers who keep journals of their coaching relationships have a useful information for analzing their teaching. They have the data that their coaches gather during observations and they have a record of their thoughts. Coaching may be the most powerful method for making a study of one’s teaching. However, it too complex to be covered within this chapter. Interested readers might consult Dantonio (1995), Costa and Garmston (1994), Moran (In press, 2000), and
FRED I THINK YOU HAVE A REFERENCE TO COACHING AT THE COLLEGE LEVEL.
for additional information on coaching.
Small Group Instructional Diagnosis
Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (Coffman, 1991; Diamond, 1988; and Moran, 1997) is a third technique for gathering information about one’s teaching. We describe it in some detail because it is relatively simple to use, and yet it yields large amounts of useful information. The Small Group Instructional Diagnosis proceedure calls for one teacher to interview the class of another teacher. During the interview the students describe how the class is taught, how they experience the class, and how they would like to see the course changed if at all. These interviews are especially useful for investigating the learning value of a course for the students, and the interpersonal relationships within a class including teacher-student relationships. We have found most college students value the process because it enables them to express their opinions freely, and in a way that can be of immediate benefit to them.
The interview is normally conducted toward the middle of a course. On the one hand, conducting the interview toward the middle of the course gives the learners sufficient experience with the teacher to develop informed opinions about his or her teaching. On the other hand, it also enables the interviewer to encourage the learners to be conscientious during the interview by assuring them that the teacher has scheduled the interview in order to make immediate changes in the way the course is being conducted if changes seem warranted based on their comments.
The teacher should inform the students one or two class meetings ahead of the interview that one of his or her colleagues would be coming to interview them about the course. The teacher should stress that the students are not going to be evaluated, that the learning program is being evaluated, and that changes in the way the course is taught may well be made on the basis of their comments. The teacher should explicitly encourage the students to think about how the course is being taught.
At the time of the interview, the teacher and interviewer should enter the room together and interact casually with each other. The teacher should introduce the interviewer as his or her partner and state explicitly that the two teachers chose to form a partnership to study their own teaching, that they regularly interview each other’s learners, and that the learners will find the experience rewarding. The interviewer might mention when his or her learners were last interviewed, or indicate how long the two teachers have been partners.
No matter how well the learners know the interviewer, the teacher should to take time with the introduction to demonstrate his or her comfort with the process, and to elaborate on the potential worth of the interview. One way of doing so is to explain that the interviewer will keep everything the learners say confidential in the sense that no one will be quoted or paraphrased in a way that the teacher could guess who might have said what. The interviewer and the teacher should stress that they will meet to discuss on the recommendations the students make for enhancing the remainder of the course. Finally, the teacher should explain that the next time the group meets he or she will talk with them about the changes that they may have recommended. The teacher might ask if the learners have any questions. The interviewer might take part in answering the questions.
When the teacher leaves the room, the interviewer should take a few moments to establish rapport with the students and then begins by asking the class to brainstorm a list of criteria that they could use to evaluate any course. In addition to generating a list of criteria, the interviewer needs to encourage the learners to express their thoughts and feelings freely. With both goals in mind, the interviewer asks everyone in the group to call out the criteria that they use when they evaluate the learning programs they participate in. As soon as someone states a criterion the interviewer records the criterion on a chalkboard or some similar device. The interviewer continues to record the criteria until the students indicate they are finished.
Our experience is that there will be 20 or more suggested criteria from the students, and that the suggestions can be condensed readily. For example, “Teacher is friendly.” and “Treats you like an adult.” could be grouped under the heading Learning Atmosphere. A useful method for condensing the initial list of criteria is to start a new column on the board labeled Super Criteria. The interviewer would then place Learning Atmosphere first in the column and number it 1. Next, the interviewer would place a 1 in front of “Teacher is friendly.” and all the other suggested criteria that are to be grouped under Learning Atmosphere. If the learners decided that criteria such as “Puts outlines on the board.” and “Doesn’t keep changing things.” could be grouped under Well Organized, and then Well Organized would be placed in the column for super criteria and numbered 2. All the suggested criteria grouped under Well Organized would be numbered with a 2. The interviewer would want the suggested criteria to remain visible so they serve as definitions of the Super Criteria. The interviewer can ask the students if they would like to include a criterion that he or she thinks may have been overlooked. However, the interviewer should not pressure the group to adopt additional criteria. The list is to be the students’ list, and accepting that list will encourage continued discussion. On the other hand, if the teacher wants feedback on a specific aspect of his/her course or teaching which may not have been explicitly mentioned by the students, the interviewer could ask permission to add the name of the aspect of the course by explaining that the teacher requested that feedback. We have never known a class to resist such an addition.
Once the condensed list is completed, the coach asks the learners to form groups of approximately five. Within the groups the students take up discussion of the course vis a vis each of the Super criteria. They try to reach agreement on a written description of how the instructor performs vis a vis the super criteria, how they rate the instructor’s teaching on the super criteria, and what they suggest for improvements vis a vis the Super Criteria.
We have found it helpful to give each group a form on which to write their conclusions about the course. A sample form is in Figure 1. As soon as the small groups finish filling out the forms, the interviewer collects the forms and calls the learners into a large group discussion to reach the consensus on how to make their learning program the best that it can be. The interviewer might fill out another form for each super criterion as a way of recording the consensus. If so, the coach would read what he or she had recorded to the learners as a way to be sure that their opinions would be conveyed accurately to their teacher.
The last step is to ask the students to critique the interview process. This is a final check that the group was able to say what they found most important about their learning program. It is also a way of having them reflect on themselves as learners. Often the learners express their appreciation for the opportunity to offer their opinions and to discover what others think about teaching and learning. It is also a way to identify ways to improve the interview process. The coach ends the interview by thanking the students for their cooperation, and then notifies the teacher that the interview is completed.
Teachers can make whatever use of the forms that they wish. Some may decide never to look at them and simply rely on the interviewer to give them an accurate and/or palatable summary of the interview. Others will want to examine all the forms carefully. In either case, the teacher and the interviewer should have a conference to analyze what the students said.
The teacher should take the lead by summarizing what about the class is going well and what seems problematic. Normally, that summary dissipates any defensiveness on the teachers part, and the interviwer can begin to help the teacher analyze the suggestions that the students made for how the teacher might alter the remaining portion of the course.
As soon as possible the teacher should discuss with the class.
DEMONSTRATING SIGNIFICANCE
Therefore, faculty members who wish to cast their teaching as a scholarly activity should make their teaching public in a variety of ways, document its effectiveness vis a vis studnets, demonstrate its influence the teaching of others, and establish a record of professional development as a teacher.
Although not part of the original description of SGID, if the inquiry is a matter of scholarship, it is recommended that a follow-up interview be held to assess the implementation of suggestions made by students.
Student products are a form of evidence of teaching success.
Assessments of teaching from peers, students, administrators
Record of SGID
Internet courses are comparable to textbooks not only intellectually, but also from a business standpoint. The university is like publisher who does well when its authors prove popular.
PUBLICIZING THE SCHOLARHIP OF TEACHING
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Some of what was described as application involves critical appraisal.
Teaching circles
Organizing coaching communities
Submitting for critical peer review
Symposia on teaching
Local, regional, national
Publication should not be necessary. Impact on particular students in particular institution should be sufficient as an form of action research.
Publications of textbooks and related materials
Publications on teaching
REFERENCES
Coffman, S. J. (1991). Improving your teaching through small group diagnosis. College Teaching, 39, 80-82.
Costa, A. L., and Garmston, R. J. (1994). Cognitive coaching: A foundation for renaissance
schools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.
Covington, M. V., and Wiedenhaupt, S. (1997) Turning work into play: The nature and nurturing
of intrinsic task engagement. In Perry, R. P., & Smart, J. C. (Eds.) Effective teaching in higher education: Research and practice (pp. 63-). New York: Agathon Press.
Dantonio, M. (1995). Collegial coaching: Inquiry into the teaching self. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa.
Diamond, N. (1988). SGID: Tapping student perceptions of teaching. In E. C, Wadsworth (Ed.) Professional and organizational development in higher education: A handbook for new
practitioners (pp. 89-93). Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press.
Elliott, J. (1991). Action research for educational change. Philadelphia: Opening University Press.
Greenwood, D. J., and Levin, M. (1998). Introduction to action research: Social research for
social change. Thousand Oaks: Sage
Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., and Smith, K. A. (1998) Co-operative learning returns to college. Change. pp. 27-35.
Marsh, H. W., and Dunkin, M. J. (1997). Students’ evaluations of university teaching: A multi- dimensional perspective. In Perry, R. P., & Smart, J. C. (Eds.) Effective teaching in
higher education: Research and practice (pp. 242-320). New York: Agathon Press.
Moran, J. J. (In press, 2000). Collaborative professional development for teachers of
adults. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing.
Moran, J. J. (1997). Assessing adult learning: A guide for pratictioners. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Co.
Perry, R. P. (1997) Perceived control in college students: Implications for instruction in higher
education. In Perry, R. P., & Smart, J. C. (Eds.) Effective teaching in higher
education: Research and practice (pp. 11-60). New York: Agathon Press.
Perry, R. P., and Smart, J. C. (1997) Effective teaching in higher education: Research and
practice. New York: Agathon press.
Rorschach, E., & Whitney, R. (1986). Relearning to teach: Peer observation as a means of professional development for teachers. English education, 18, 159-172.
Figure 1.
Sample Form for Small Group Instructional Diagnosis
Name of course Date
Instructor_____ Interviewer____
Criterion Name__
Description of the teaching in this course vis a vis this criterion:
Rating for this course on this criterion from 1 to 5 (with 5 as the most favorable score) _____
Suggestions for change in this course vis a vis this criterion: