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IWAS asked to write this piece from the point of view of a department chair and to consider the tensions between the roles of nurturer and judge and between the need to encourage growth in faculty members and the need to reward merit. I was also asked, however, to reflect on the larger context of intellectual changes in the study of English and on adverse commentary about the neglect of teaching in the reward system in higher education. In my remarks, I seat myself as firmly as I can in the departmental chair, but I call on two other points of reference that I think bear on the topic. The first is my five years' experience directing a multidisciplinary program in women's studies before becoming chair of the department, in which I frequently engaged in team teaching. The second is a review I conducted in 1991, as chair of the college governance committee at Vassar, of a recently installed procedure for posttenure review of faculty members, the key issues of which turned out to be the definition of faculty development and the adequacy of the evaluation of teaching. I shall sort out my reflections on teaching from these several perspective.
I confine my remarks as much as possible to practical questions of evaluating, improving, and rewarding teaching, although departments of English have recently been engulfed in a lurid and acrimonious debate over the very nature of our discipline, and my modestly reformist suggestions may seem like building a rowboat to navigate in a typhoon. In 1990, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Partisan Review sponsored a symposium at Boston University titled The Changing Culture of the University, which, if the transcript of its proceedings can be trusted, was devoted largely to a denunciation of the “children of Caliban”—that is, feminists, deconstructionists, and multiculturalists—who have infiltrated departments of English and dedicated themselves to the destruction of Western civilization. Against the organ tones of Old Humanist wrath, demurring voices could scarcely be heard. The writer Mary Gordon, for example, who teaches at Barnard, took mild exception to the fantasy of a Golden Age of the University, circa 191064, and its paranoid twin fantasy of a guerilla curriculum preventing students from studying Homer, Sophocles, and Plato and pointed out that colleges and universities all over the country have been moving toward core curricula ( Changing Culture 389, 391). But she was ignored. Nevertheless, as she said, “the sophomore survey is back. This is the nineties” (398). A member of the audience, Leslie Epstein, who teaches at Boston Universities, spoke across the generations about changes in the academy. Epstein had studied at Yale in the 1950s, and he had recently gone back to visit because his daughter was a student here. “It is an infinitely better place now,” he said, “than it was when I was an undergraduate—partly because my daughter can be a student there. There were virtually no Asians then, virtually no blacks, exactly ten percent Jews. It is an exciting and diverse and rather wonderful place now” (402). He was also ignored.
Both Gordon's and Epstein's observations speak as well to the situation in English at Vassar. On the one hand, the sophomore survey has never gone away; the department offers historically organized study of all periods of English and American literature, multiple sections of Shakespeare, and intensive exercise in the reading of texts and in the writing of correct English. On the other hand, though, the college has been influenced by demographic changes—coeducation as well as racial and ethnic diversification—and by curricular change, in particular the growth of multidisciplinary programs on the campus. In what follows, I look at prospects for improving teaching, as well as at practical constrains on change, and then discuss ways in which the opening up of disciplinary boundaries may have produced not only ideological controversy but also possibilities for the renewal of our profession.
I take up first the question of rewarding teaching—if only to show that underneath the administrator's mantle beats the heart of a rank-and-file teacher. Teaching is in the news. Lynne Cheney's 1990 report Tyrannical Machines , denouncing the emphasis on publication in the reward system of higher education, has gotten wide play. Stanford—which has been more in the news than it wants lately—was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education for its plan to elevate the status of teaching (Mooney). The New York Times ran a story on Ernest Boyer's new book for the Carnegie Foundation, Scholarship Reconsidered , under the headline “Study Urges Colleges to Return to Original Mission” (DePalma). But the practical remedies for the disbalance between rewards for teaching, on one side, and rewards for research and publication, on the other, remain meager. Vassar is an undergraduate college with a long tradition of strong teaching, and its criteria for promotion and for salary improvement stress the importance of teaching, yet faculty members stubbornly insist that the system rewards publication, above all. This attitude exasperates the dean, who argues with good reason that the college does recognize excellence in teaching. The problem, I think, lies in the ethos of faculty members; peer judgment in our profession attaches greater prestige to scholarly recognition than to teaching, not only because a national reputation at a scholar is gratifying but also because one can market oneself as a scholar but not as a teacher. Until this situation changes, colleges will have to content themselves with trying to improve internal measures for rewarding teaching. How can this be done?
First, how not to do it. It seem to me that the practice in the California and Arizona systems of reducing the teaching loads of highly productive scholars carries the implicit suggestion that teaching is a burden and a punishment for unproductive scholars. Many universities send a less discouraging signal by conferring recognition on outstanding teachers, I recall a spellbinding young philosopher at Cornell, praised for his dedication to students, who was selected to be honored. But what was his reward? a year of sabbatical leave from teaching.
More promising, it seems to me, is the proposal announced at Stanford of broadening the definition of scholarship to include work related to teaching. This proposal, however, includes a limit on the number of papers that a candidate for tenure can submit. The intent, of course, is to separate quality from quantity in scholarship, but this plan reinforces the intellectually dubious opposition between scholarship and teaching. In general, I would argue, we cannot improve the dignity of our profession by imposing constraints on legitimate scholarly pursuits. Another approach, recommended by Ernest Boyer, entails what he calls “creativity contracts,” aimed at forestalling faculty burnout. Under such a contract, a faculty member would pursue a varied pattern of professional activity; several years of intensive research, other years of increased time in the classroom, and yet others spend in professional consulting work. Boyer also recommends “teaching circles” of faculty members who gather to review and assess teaching practices (50, 38). Though attractive on paper, these measures may or may not prove feasible, adding as they do further layers of bureaucratic procedure and committee service to a system of higher education already groaning under the weight of administrative process.
The experience of posttenure review at Vassar, however, suggests that some notion of a written faculty “contract,” or statement of professional aims, may prove valuable. Posttenure review at Vassar is really two reviews rolled into one: the first, based on an assessment of the work of the past three years, sets the merit rating for salary increments for the next three years; the second, based on the professional record and a personal statement, to which the dean writes a formal response, is aimed at stimulating professional growth. Writers of personal statements are encouraged to place their immediate goals as teachers and scholars in the context of their whole careers. In our survey, we asked faculty members to give their opinions of the various parts of the review, and—somewhat to my surprise—most said they found the personal statement useful. For some, the discursive statement offset the stark record of the vita, allowing them to discuss how for example, their research fed their teaching or vice versa, and it also allowed them to put the statistical summaries of student course evaluations in the context of teaching aims. Such a statement could form the basis of the sort of contract Boyer advocates, especially when the dean has real knowledge of the faculty and is in a position to offer tangible assistance in shaping or redirecting the career. I should mention, however, that the same questionnaire elicited strong grumblings from the faculty about the time spent on reviews in relation to benefits gained from them.
Instead or perhaps in addition to some of these proposals, I would suggest that we turn the question around. Rather than ask how to reward teaching, we might ask instead how to make teaching more rewarding. Here it is important to remind ourselves of what all teachers know: that the successful teacher is not one who can give a single dazzling performance but one who can stay the course, so to speak, who can guide students through the whole learning process. And as Howard Bowen and Jack Schuster write in American Professor: A National Resource Imperiled , “The most important enemy of continued vitality and productivity is sameness of environment, monotony of tasks, and lack of challenges” (41). To their list, I would add intellectual isolation and suggest that the creation of intellectual community as part of teaching itself might offset to some degree what Gerald Graft call the “course fetish”—that is, “the assumption that the natural unit of instruction is the autonomous course,” Graff would like to see colleges implement the concept of learning communities, as described by Faith Gabelnick and her coauthors. He would like to see faculty members coordinating clusters of courses across disciplinary lines, to be taught around some common theme or issue. Creating such clusters would cost time and effort in bringing teachers together, but would provoke discussion about issues of moment related to the practice of teaching. The hitch in this scheme, as I see it, is the presupposition that student have plenty of room in their schedules, allowing them to elect several coordinated courses in a semester, and that they don't have their own ideas about how to put course elections together. But students do have interests, and they are also subject to conflicting demands on their time—to fulfill requirements, prepare for graduate school, and so on. My guess is that the cluster-course scheme would work best at an institution having a highly prescriptive curriculum, in which student electives could be controlled and a place for the cluster would be built in.
More manageable, I think, is another recommendation Graff makes, of symposia on topics synchronized with courses. Such a symposium might address a theme or issue being pursued in several courses, or it might bear on questions of “approach” or on premises governing the teaching of the material—in short, the very short of question that is producing so much hear in the academy toady. Another variant, I would suggest, is the faculty seminar. In my experience as the director of a multidisciplinary program, it is possible, with relatively small sums of in-house grant money, to get faculty members together to discuss new scholarship and conceptual issues or to plan curricula. In the Women's Studies Program, for example, faculty members meet annually to revise the syllabus of the introductory course. These meetings become the occasion for debating feminist issues, for comparing notes across the disciplines about current scholarship and theory, and—perhaps most important—for building a sense of intellectual community. The “course fetish,” which traditionally has prevailed in the disciplines, still largely holds in my department, but faculty members who have taken part in multidisciplinary-program development, I observe, go back to their home bases with a heightened interest in collegial exchange and with fresh thinking about the curriculum in English.
Returning to Bowen and Schuster's warning against a monotony in the tasks of teaching that saps intellectual vitality, I would argue that the heightened intellectual concourse that attracts faculty members to multidisciplinary teaching might be encouraged as well within the discipline of English. The virtue of these exchanges is that they stimulate intellectual growth while allowing teachers to get on with the daily work of planning and renewing courses of instruction. Here I see an overlap between making teaching more rewarding and providing the means to improve it.
We are all, I'm sure, aware of many ways in which institutions try to help teachers improve: through mentoring, workshops, demonstrations by “master” teachers, video-taping, and so on. Again from my own experience in multidisciplinary studies, I want to put in a good word for team teaching. When one pairs up with a peer or with a senior or junior colleague or joins with several faculty members to teach a single course, it is almost impossible not to become more aware of one's own premises and habitual methods of presentation—not to mention one's personal mannerisms. Any hint of dogmatism that may have crept into a teacher's exposition is almost certain to be checked in a team, if only because such a tendency will run athwart the dogmatisms of another teacher. In team teaching, one must tackle texts and issues one may not have thought of, or felt comfortable with, and all kinds of half-buried ethical and political assumptions are dragged out for critical scrutiny. The proposition that changing what you teach changes how you teach is well known, but I think that the reverse is true, as well, and that those who have taught in teams find themselves reconsidering the syllabi even of courses they teach alone. Faculty members accustomed to teaching by lecture can also find themselves more inclined to encourage regular discussion in their classrooms.
Needless to say, these fine things do not always occur. In team teaching, it is extremely tempting to show off in front of colleagues, to turn teaching into a competitive virtuoso performance. Such practice warps team teaching into serial lecture, and, as Parker Palmer, quoting John Dewey, remarks, an “objectivist display of superior knowledge turns education into a spectator sport for students.” Avoiding this temptation may require a conscious commitment to the ground rules teachers in feminist and multicultural studies adopt—a stress on cooperation and the importance of listening, on process and project rather than the closed box of a finished intellectual product—and and I would admit that keeping faith with these admirable aims requires a lot of self-discipline and self-criticism. But making the effort produces the situation in which one can—almost must—think constructively about teaching while doing it. To save time, I skate over the institutional costs of team teaching, though I do not think they should be minimized, and instead close by mentioning a neglected benefit. And here the question of improving teaching converges with the question of evaluation.
In the poll of the Vassar faculty's opinions about review procedures, respondents expressed greatest dissatisfaction with the evaluation of teaching, especially with the heavy reliance on student questionnaires. Paradoxically, although it seems that assessments from other sources do not differ markedly from those obtained by means of student questionnaires, researchers usually recommend that several instruments be used. 1 These additional resources include alumni polls, faculty portfolios, and of course the observation of classes. The most obvious objection to having observers attend any but the large lecture class is that the presence of a visitor changes the behavior of students and teacher alike. Moreover, if others share my belief that the real work of teaching consists only in putting on a good performance but in sustaining the progress of the class over the whole term, then the occasional classroom visitor cannot observe what is hardest and most important in teaching. I would argue, therefore, that the only way in which one faculty member can observe another under normal conditions is to teach in a team, and I would urge that evaluations by team teachers, which might be largely description, be given a place in faculty reviews.
In sum, I am suggesting from a number of angles that teaching become more collaborative. 2 Whether through faculty seminars, curricular planning, or teach teaching, collaboration puts teachers into dialogue about the intellectual content of their discipline and about resources, methods, and teaching styles. It can also breed rancor, I would grant, but we gain nothing by repressing our differences, especially in a season when critics of the academy are claiming that we—not they—promulgate dogma in the name of scholarship. If there is dogma in our teaching, by all means let it be subject to criticism, preferably that of well-informed colleagues. Probably we do lose some gifted teachers who are discouraged by acrimony within the academy as well as by the denial of respect from outside, but I would not underrate the enemies of professional vitality named by Bowen and Schuster: monotony of tasks, sameness of environment, lack of intellectual stimulation. And I would offer that the expense in effort and resources required to make collaborative teaching a regular feature of our work will be worth the benefit, which is cultivation of the elusive aim of all our endeavors—namely, intellectual community.
The author is Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Vassar College. This paper was presented at the 1991 ADE Eastern Summer Seminary at Skidmore College.
1 For a bibliography on research concerning the evaluation of teaching, see Stevens.
2 In models of collaborative learning, one important aim is the achievement of consensus. This is not necessarily true of collaborative teaching, although in other respects the two processes bear comparison. For a critique of collaborative learning, grounded in discourse theory, see Trimbur.
Bowen, Howard, and Jack Schuster. American Professors: A National Resource Imperiled . New York: Oxford UP, 1986.
Boyer, Ernest. Scholarship Reconsidered . Princeton: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.
The Changing Culture of the University . Spec. issue of Partisan Review 58.2 (1991): 185410.
Cheney, Lynne. Tyrannical Machines . Washington: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990.
DePalma, Anthony. “Study Urges Colleges to Return to Original Mission.” New York Times 5 Dec. 1990: B15.
Gabelnick, Faith, et al. Learning Communities . San Francis: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
Graff, Gerald. “Colleges Are Depriving Students of a Connected View of Scholarship.” Chronicle of Higher Education 13 Feb. 1991: A48.
Mooney, Carolyn J. “Stanford Unveils Plan Designed to Elevate Status of Teaching.” Chronicle of Higher Education 13 March 1991: A15+.
Palmer, Parker. “Good Teaching: A Matter of Living the Mystery.” Change Jan.-Feb. 1990: 12.
Stevens, Joseph J. “Additional Sources and Information.” Techniques for Evaluating and Improving Instruction . Ed. Lawrence M. Aleamoni. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987. 8391.
Trimbur, John. “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” College English 51 (1989):60216.
© 1992 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
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