Susanne C. Monahan
Sociology
MSU-Bozeman
One of the ironies of higher education is that instructors enter their jobs woefully ill-prepared to teach effectively. Although well-trained in content (usually specialized rather than broad content, however), they have little if any training in pedagogy and frequently are so expert in their knowledge that they have forgotten what it was like to not know what they teach. This does not result, thank goodness, in uniformly bad college-level instruction. Instead, instruction tends to be a hit-or-miss proposition: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and we are left wondering why.
In Effective Teaching in Higher Education: Research and Practice, Raymond Perry and John C. Smart offer some answers as to why some college-level teachers are more effective than others. Educational researchers are the intended audience of this edited volume of literature reviews, and the book's methodological and statistical detail is both demanded by such an audience and one of the volume's strengths. The conclusions drawn by the researchers are well-documented, and exceptions and problems in the literature are carefully noted. For example, the contributors note where the literature does not allow us to draw strong conclusions about the relationship between teaching interventions (e.g., seminars, consulting sessions) and improvement in teaching performance. Buried in the reviews are some very useful insights on teaching, but the reader not trained in statistics and research methodology could quickly become overwhelmed by the technical language. The executive summary, at the end of the volume, is where most teachers should start reading; topics of further interest can be pursued in the full chapters.
What are some of the more useful insights? First, students who feel that they have no control over the learning process do not benefit much from instruction, even exemplary instruction. This implies that the state of the student is as important as the performance of the instructor, and encourages us to think about how students can be empowered as active learners rather than passive sponges.
Second, the competitive setting of schools directs students towards extrinsic rewards (e.g., grades) rather than intrinsic rewards (e.g., the joy of an intellectual breakthrough); extrinsic rewards typically hinder rather than enhance learning. In their chapters on internal motivation, Covington and Covington & Wiedenhaupt properly identify the problem as being largely structural: schools set up an extrinsic reward system where there is a limited number of winners and all eyes are on the same scarce prize. The reward structure then generates undesirable responses in most students (e.g., failure-avoidance, overstriving, and failure-acceptance), responses that are not conducive to learning for learning's sake. Their observations are discouraging yet coincide with my teaching experiences. How do we get students to want to learn out of curiosity and wonder instead of for extrinsic rewards (e.g., the grade, the degree)? Based on experimental research on internal motivation, Covington & Wiedenhaupt make some suggestions: (1) design engaging and challenging work assignments, (2) use absolute grading systems instead of curves, and (3) link course materials to things students are already interested in. The authors fail to note, however, that these adjustments do nothing to address the underlying source of the problem: that society expects schools to sort winners from losers.
Third, as Murray notes, certain teaching behaviors (e.g., organizational clarity, instructor expressiveness, student-teacher interaction) are consistently linked not just to positive teaching evaluations but also to student learning outcomes. Organizational clarity helps students to encode and retain information, expressiveness enhances student attentiveness, and interaction encourages students to be active learners.
Organizational clarity is linked not only to better student learning but also to students feeling more in control of the learning process (which, in turn, makes them more effective learners). Kiewra suggests ways to increase organizational clarity by shifting from linear presentations of material (e.g., texts, outlines) to matrix presentations that focus on the structural (e.g., super-ordinate/ sub-ordinate, temporal, within-topic, across-topic) relationships among pieces of information. This chapter provides very useful suggestions to teachers about how to organize lecture and visual material, and is worth reading in its entirety.
Student evaluations of teaching are the focus of a substantial part of the text. Abrami et al. and Marsh & Dunkin conclude that teaching is a multi-dimensional task; that is, it is made up of a variety of parts and each of these parts needs to be evaluated to fully understand teacher performance. One strength of the chapters on student evaluation is their consideration of how biasing factors and structural features of teaching settings affect student evaluations of teachers. Somewhat surprisingly, March & Dunkin report that researchers have found a positive correlation between higher workload/difficulty and course evaluations. Additionally, there is little evidence of a causal relationship between higher expected grades and better course evaluations. Although students who expect higher grades rate courses more favorably, both analytic and experimental studies indicate that the relationship between expected grades and student evaluations are best understood as a valid reflection of teaching quality or as a spurious relationship. For example, students who expect better grades may learn more and thus the favorable course evaluations may be valid. Alternatively, students who expect better grades also tend to have higher levels of interest in the subject, and this level of interest likely drives course evaluations. March & Dunkin also address the contentious issue of how student evaluations of teaching should be used by faculty, students and administrators. In particular, they caution that student evaluations of teaching should be used for promotion and tenure decisions with great care and only as part of a more comprehensive evaluation process. For those interested in the political aspects of student evaluations of teaching, these chapters are well worth slogging through. Overall, the volume is a useful read. It brings to the forefront aspects of the teaching enterprise that I either had not focused on or had lacked a language to think about clearly. But to read and grasp the whole volume requires a grounding in statistics, and that may unfortunately put this volume out of reach of some readers.
Bess's edited volume on teaching focuses less on the relationship between the teacher and the student and more on the structural conditions under which university teachers work. The basic premise of the volume is that teachers as well as students are motivated to perform well but are structurally constrained by the settings within which they teach. Bess's volume is less about how to teach well and like it, and more about the ways in which our social context enables, and often constrains, good teaching and our enjoyment of it. And, although it is oriented around the central theme of motivation to teach, the volume, especially chapters that focus on social structure and context, provides an engaging and valuable overview of the state of the academy as a whole.
The volume distinguishes between internal and external sources of motivation to teach well. There is probably no more powerful intrinsic motivation to do anything than pure enjoyment. The chapter by Csikszentmihalyi dissects enjoyment in teaching and learning: its sources, its structure, and its effects on students. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that the product of good teaching is not necessarily a knowledgeable student, but instead an intrinsically motivated student, one who believes that knowledge is worth pursuing. This chapter is a pleasure to read, and brings to mind those too rare moments where I am completely certain that I have taught and a student has learned.
External factors also affect motivation to teach. These factors are to a large extent out of the direct control of faculty members: the courses we are assigned to teach, the conditions under which we teach, the climate of the university wherein we teach, our relationships with those who hold us accountable, and the structure of rewards for which we strive are increasingly controlled by administrators. That is a reality (see chapters by Beyer on the cultural conflict between faculty and administrators, and Trow on hard and soft managerialism in British universities). Self-determination theory (Deci, Kasser & Ryan) suggests that such a lack of control is detrimental to intrinsic motivation among faculty members. Alternatively, theories such as behavior modification (Nord) and goal-setting (Latham, Daghighi & Locke) suggest the value of using such administrative controls to achieve organizational ends. A larger issue is implicit in this conflict among theories: who controls the work and, yes, the emotional orientation of the worker towards his or her work? One implication of behavior modification and goal-setting is that not only can the organization control technical work but it can manipulate the emotions of the worker for organizational ends. The sacrifice of the emotional self to the god of organizational effectiveness frightens me. These chapters are thought-provoking and their implications controversial; they should be read by teachers (since they will probably also be read by administrators).
A major strength of this volume is its attention to the broader structural factors that influence workers. Bess's volume explicates multiple facets of the social contexts within which we teach. Beyer orients her discussion around cultural conflict in universities, arguing that disciplinary differences as well as conflict between faculty and administrators result in a differentiated rather than integrated culture in university settings. Hall & Bazerman focus on how organizational design affects motivation to teach, telling us things we probably already suspect but at the same time providing a useful framework within which to think about the contradictions ever present in modern academic settings. The effects of technology (Dunlap), leadership (Hunt & Rapo), student diversity (Smith) and assessment and evaluation (Stumpf and Rindova) on motivation to teach are also considered.
Bess's treatment goes beyond the university setting, however, to also consider the effects of system-wide conditions (e.g., faculty background, career phases, the academic job market, and public policy and politics) on motivation to teach. Especially relevant to faculty in Montana is Trow's chapter on the politics of motivation. Trow describes the evolution of the British system of higher education, and the drastic changes in governance that occurred under the Thatcher administration. The changes in England, in particular putting universities under the direct control of the political order at the expense of academic autonomy, are analogous to the recent proposal in Montana that control of the university system be removed from an autonomous Board of Regents and placed instead in the governor's office. This proposal was defeated by voters in 1996. Trow argues that governance structure affects faculty motivation for teaching, and that any changes in that structure should first consider the impact on such motivation.
Overall, the two edited volumes provide a comprehensive and thoughtful review of teaching in university settings. They address concrete issues such as the nature of effective teaching, the relationship between teacher and classroom characteristics and student evaluations of teaching, and the effect that our social context has on our teaching performance. But they also raise important questions about the motivations of students and faculty, the techniques used to stimulate and manage those motivations, and the overarching question of who controls what goes on in universities.