Return
to Spring Innovator The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning
Call it “teacher research.” Or “classroom inquiry.” Or “ action research.” Or, if you are a college level faculty member, call it “the scholarship of teaching and learning.” The principles hold across widely varying contexts, although the end products
may differ. By systematically studying your own teaching practice, you’re
holding yourself accountable for student learning. Lee Shulman, President
of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argues that “an
educator can teach with integrity only if an effort is made to examine the
impact of his or her work on the students.”
The concept of studying one’s own teaching practice is not new. Thoughtful teachers have written about the act of teaching, carefully recorded their observations, collected their students’ work and reflected on it in order to improve their practice, for at least a couple of centuries. Still, in 2004, there is a new impetus to this kind of study. In fact, we seem to be engaged in a redefinition of teaching at all levels. This new definition accepts the complexity of teaching and learning, while insisting that teachers become informal researchers, asking hard questions about what is and isn’t learned, and why.
Why Study One’s Own Practice?
Lesley Rex, associate professor of English Education, explains why she studies her own classroom and practice, in addition to studying the classrooms and practices of secondary English teachers: “I study my teaching practice in order to keep myself honest. Education is one of those strange academic fields where you’re expected to be an expert at something you’re engaged in actually learning in an ongoing way. I have to hold myself to the standards I am teaching toward. If we take our work seriously, how could we do less?” At the same time, Rex acknowledges that such reflection is not necessarily comforting: “It’s humbling to look closely at one’s teaching.” But for Lesley Rex, as for Lee Shulman, there is an ethical imperative behind self-study: “Where do we assign responsibility for student learning, or the lack thereof? I was fortunate to have good mentors who taught me to look closely at my own practice.”
Rex has empathy for her pre-K-12 colleagues, acknowledging the range of responsibilities public school teachers now hold. But that doesn’t deter her from arguing for the importance of the teacher-researcher role:
“In the current climate, teachers are asked to be parents, advisors, counselors, instructors, and political leaders. The demands on teachers have grown. But they haven’t been given more time, fewer students. If anything, the teaching load has grown. The thought of adding another role, “being a researcher,” seems as if it would be a burden. When you think about it, though, research is what terrific teachers do anyway. By learning the language and the tools, teachers can be put in the driver’s seat. Instead of shooting blindly, research strategies give you a way to test why something may or may not have worked.”
Higher Education Initiatives Highlight Scholarly Dimension of Teaching
Recently, Rex was one of four School of Education faculty members (others included Valerie Lee, Nancy Songer, and Charles Peters) and thirty-nine other University of Michigan faculty members who participated in the Pew National Project on Course Portfolios. Rex explains, “The Pew Project called for structured self-assessment, for attending to certain aspects of our teaching. We were asked to analyze what we taught—why and how did we come to teach that way? What activities did we structure and why? We were also asked to look closely and analytically at our students’ work. We also generated 'memos' about our teaching—written reflections that pressed us to consider important aspects of practice.”
Constance
Cook, Director of UM’s Center
for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT), and a School of Education faculty member, explains why
CRLT encourages UM faculty to engage in classroom-focused scholarship: “Our
faculty are superb researchers. If they apply their research skills to
their teaching, then teaching begins to be seen as more of an intellectual
activity. What is particularly useful about studying their own practice
is, first, it focuses their attention on their students’ learning. Are
their students learning what they think they are trying to teach? A second
powerful aspect is peer review—having other faculty reflect on, and respond
to, one another’s teaching plans, rationales, and student work. Peer
review makes the teaching process open and public, in the same way that other
faculty work is reviewed.”
CRLT which was founded in 1964 and has been recognized as one of the first and most successful university centers drawing attention to and studying, college-level teaching and learning, has followed and supported foundation-sponsored national initiatives, such as the Pew Project and the Carnegie Foundation efforts. At the same time, Cook notes, such initiatives must realistically fit into the demanding lives of faculty:
“We’re on a research campus, and faculty have incredible demands on their time. You tell them you want to see evidence of growth in their students’ learning, you want them to attend to their teaching. Too often, you raise the bar but nothing else gets lowered. It is important that we ask for something that is manageable, such as a course portfolio, something that fits into their already busy lives.”
Cook finds the course portfolio idea both useful and possible to do. “The beauty of Dan Bernstein’s idea is that faculty would focus on the creation of an electronic portfolio for one course only. A course portfolio would be 10-12 pages in length, and it would be peer reviewed. In such a portfolio, a professor would explain how the course came to be designed, reflect on her or his teaching, and on what was learned—by the faculty member AND by the students. As they engage in the creation of course portfolios, faculty generate hypotheses, and test those hypotheses by collecting and analyzing data.”
The foundations and higher education leaders who advocate the scholarship of teaching and learning are hoping that concrete artifacts and tangible products, such as course portfolios, will be regarded as legitimate scholarly work, broadening the criteria by which faculty will be evaluated, and placing more emphasis on teaching.
How Do We Study Teaching While Teaching?
In a sense, the problem of studying teaching while doing teaching is similar whether you are an elementary or secondary teacher, or a college faculty member. Currently, few of these contexts provide clear incentives or support for engaging in such work. Teaching is such a labor-intensive activity, involving so much planning, organizing, interacting and evaluating, that it is hard to make time for stepping back and reflecting, for asking hard questions. And if you are facing the working conditions that many in pre-K-12 settings face—up to 180 students a day, large class sizes, and not many material resources, it becomes really tricky.
Still, new tools, such as video cameras and handheld PDA devices make it easier to capture classroom exchanges and observations. Teachers also have learned that by working collectively on a question or problem over time, they can use time in staff, departmental, or school improvement meetings to discuss relevant professional readings, look closely at students’ classroom work, or plan new lessons to address the concern. As all educators face more pressure to explain how they know that what is being taught is actually being learned, the researching stance seems ever more sensible.
by Laura Roop
Published Spring 2004
Scholarship of Learning and Teaching Resources
Boyer, Ernest L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Glassick, Charles E., Mary Taylor Huber, and Gene I. Maeroff. 1997. Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hutchings, Pat, ed. 2000. Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Menlo Park: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Web site: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/castl/highered/
University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching Web site: http://www.crlt.org
