John Walkup

In a recent blog, I discussed a model for improving the odds that talented students of physics and chemistry will choose to teach at the public school level.  This plan focused on improving the pedagogical skill of laboratory teaching assistants. I want to discuss this plan from a new angle — the manner in which it can improve the teaching in college and university classrooms.

College professors’ teaching skills (no matter the subject area) are largely formed by the manner in which they were taught themselves, which is more often than not substandard.  Teaching is a learned skill.  Even those considered “born teachers” are only so labeled because of their inherent ability to make content interesting or clearly understood — the skills needed to reinforce knowledge and overcome barriers to learning so often fail to manifest when faced with adversity.

If we want to understand the problem, we need to address the viewpoint of many (although not all)  college instructors.

I want to be a good teacher, but I was hired to publish and receive grant money. I have a family to feed, so taking time away from research to learn proper teaching strategies places me in a compromising situation. Do I want to take a chance on not receiving tenure and having to seek another faculty position when I had to fight like Hell to get this one?  Simply put, my college doesn’t place much emphasis on teaching because there is no money in it.  It’s “publish or perish,” so don’t blame me. I didn’t write the rules.

If we devote our attention to the professional development of college faculty members, further complications arise.  For one, many of the current college faculty have developed habits that extend far back to their graduate teaching experiences. Breaking old habits requires a concerted effort on part of the instructor each time they teach; such efforts fade when faculty face pressures from their department’s research requirements.

Even greater is the reluctance on the part of many faculty members to allow third parties to observe their teaching and offer formative feedback. Without implementation monitoring, however, newly learned skills fail to gain a toehold as instructors gradually fall back on their traditional teaching habits.

A Shift in Focus

One arena in which the professional development community can intercede and develop adequate teaching skills is in the laboratory.  Student lab assistants do not face the same research pressures as their college faculty counterparts. Furthermore, it is far easier to compel teaching assistants to attend professional development training sessions. Since they have little power on campus, there are few barriers to monitoring their use of newly learned strategies in the lab, a critical component of the professional development cycle.

So, one area we can focus our efforts is improving the teaching skills of graduate students. The skills they learn will remain once they depart graduate school and join college faculties. Over time, the teaching quality of college faculty will rise.  For this reason, we should seriously consider mobilizing a national effort to improve the teaching skill of teaching assistants.

Who’s with me?