Skip to main content

Professors as Teachers

In my post yesterday, I pointed out that economists are not trained in pedagogy. But I’ve also been thinking about the fact that most college professors, regardless of field, don’t really get any training in teaching. I wonder if college students are aware of that. It’s actually really weird when you think about it, given that we all know from the first day of grad school that if we want to go into academia, teaching will be part of the job. And yet, most graduate programs (at least in economics) don’t talk much about it. Fortunately, at most schools, teaching assistantships are one of the few sources of department funding so many grad students do get some experience teaching, and I think many departments have at least some kind of orientation or maybe a one-day training session to make sure their TAs aren’t completely inept. But that’s about it.* Students who are interested in teaching, and new faculty in general, are mostly left to develop their teaching skills on their own. Sure, there are resources out there – most campuses have some sort of Center for Teaching and Learning, and many disciplines have their own types of support (like economists have the Journal of Economic Education and the tch-econ email list) – but it’s up to individual professors to seek out those resources. That requires either a deep interest in teaching to begin with, or an acknowledgment that you need help, which often only comes after both a) consistently bad evaluations from students and b) prodding from your department to improve. I just wonder if it would make any difference if graduate programs offered (or even required!) classes to prepare students to be better teachers…

* I should note that there are a few stellar exceptions, such as the teaching seminar at Indiana University.

Read more: Where is the demand for good teachers?
Labels:

Comments

  1. DispersemosMay 31, 2008 at 8:40 PM

    Yes, I think more training at the graduate level would be helpful, but this is not likely to happen until employers (institutions) demand that graduates demonstrate strong teaching skills in order to be hired on the tenure track.

    I've been disappointed in my own institution, which claims excellence in teaching as the highest priority for its faculty, for allowing student evaluations to drive review of faculty teaching. For a primarily teaching college, we have yet to develop a culture of visiting one another's classes or even of sustained conversations on teaching. We let students tell us which are the good teachers and then take their word for it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jennifer ImazekiJune 1, 2008 at 9:00 AM

    A great segue for a follow-up post I'm working on - hope to get that up by tomorrow...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roomy NaqvyAugust 16, 2008 at 9:59 PM

    I liked your post so much that I simply wrote about it on my new blog: http://issuesinacademics.blogspot.com/2008/08/issue-teaching-in-academia.html --> without even asking you about it! I am sorry if that offended you but I felt that you spoke about a very pertinent problem in the profession. I have another blog at http://roomynaqvy.blogspot.com and I'm an academic from India.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

When is an exam "too hard"?

By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu
3 comments
Read more

What was your high school economics experience like?

As I mentioned in my last post , I am asking my Econ for Teachers students to reflect on their reading by responding to discussion prompts. It occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to share my thoughts on those issues here and see if anyone wants to chime in. For this week, the students were asked to read the California and national content standards , an article by Mark Schug and others about why social science teachers dread teaching economics and how to overcome the dread, an article by William Walstad on the importance of economics for understanding the world around us and making better personal decisions (with some evidence on the dismal state of economic literacy in this country), and another article by Walstad on the status of economic education in high schools (full citations below). The reflection prompt asks the students to then answer the following questions: What was your high school econ experience like? What do you remember most from that class? How do
2 comments
Read more

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne
Post a Comment
Read more