
Why Don't Professors Share Teaching Practices the Way They Cite Research - jyosim2
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-11-23-professors-aren-t-good-at-sharing-their-classroom-practices-teaching-portfolios-might-help
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Bartweiss
This is an interesting question, but I worry that people overestimate the
value of "teaching teaching".

Most people who've been trained in sales or leadership know how much of that
training is useless. The techniques work fine for the teacher, they might work
fine for someone else in the class, but they don't work for you. It's a
fundamentally social, interpersonal task, and so a method that works for one
person may fall completely flat for another.

The teachers I know generally describe something similar. A full day of staff
development might produce one good insight, and it's not always clear which
tip is good and which ones aren't going to work for you.

My best teachers have shared certain skills, but they've also taught with
vastly different formats and techniques. Training helps, and all of them were
experienced teachers, but attempts to "export" advanced teaching skills almost
always fall flat.

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Alex_Butters
A middle ground is best from my experience in lecturing. Lecturing for the
first time made me realize why I had always slept through classes in HS, UG,
and grad school. But as a lecturer, doing a complete 180 flip is too work
intensive. I found lecturing 2/3 classes a week with worksheets in the class
and 1 class a week devoted to project meetings with my student groups was most
effective.

While meeting many student groups would seem like it would take a lot of time,
it ended up being about the same as a lesson prep + lecture time (there is
needed prep and recovery time in lecturing).

People also need to realize, college instructors aren't paid to teach. They're
paid to research and so of course they'll be lazy on sharing what they've
learned from teaching. Universities have teaching centers, but those can only
do so much when you really need to also be talking to fellow instructors in
your specific field since every topic can't be taught the same.

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gnicholas
> People also need to realize, college instructors aren't paid to teach.
> They're paid to research and so of course they'll be lazy on sharing what
> they've learned from teaching.

Tenure-track professors are rewarded mostly based on research, but many
classes are taught by lecturers, instructors, adjuncts, and other non-tenure-
track teaching staff. These people should care about teaching efficacy, though
they are often overworked (see below) so perhaps they just don't have time.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/opinion/the-college-
facult...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/opinion/the-college-faculty-
crisis.html)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-
cos...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-cost-of-an-
adjunct/394091/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/24/exploi...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/24/exploitation-
of-adjunct-professors-devalues-higher-education)

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purple-dragon
You say overworked, but I think underpaid is the more important aspect to
consider for that class of teaching positions. The effort/compensation ratio
is not incentivizing.

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germinalphrase
My background is in k12 education. I would love to hear from folks with higher
education teaching experience on what level of training and/or expectation is
involved in their curriculum and instructional design.

My anecdotal experience as a once-ago student and now teacher is that
significantly more consideration goes into k12 instructional practices
compared to higher education.

Perhaps it's merely a matter of student expectations aligning instructor
incentives: in k12, I am being held accountable for the educational
progress/lack of progress in my students regardless of ability and background,
but in higher education this is not the focus of accountability. Other
concerns take priority - so instructional practices tend to be traditional
and, consequently, are shared less frequently?

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Declanomous
I personally think that K-12 education is a disaster driven by dogmatism. I
think the only reason K-12 education works at all is because of the incredible
effort individual teachers put forth.

I think we may both be right in a sense. My view is based on my schooling
experiences: I have dysgraphia, which made the traditional methods of K-12
education literally torturous for me. Despite a formal diagnosis and a IEP, I
had to constantly fight with teachers and school administrators to get
accommodations.

I went to a small school for college, and I graduated on time despite being
one of the most academically rigorous institutions in the country. College was
definitely a struggle for me, but I felt that the professors were on my side,
and had a holistic view of student success. This experience might be different
if you went to a research institution, where classes were taught by TAs.

The only reason K12 wasn't a complete disaster for me is because my parents
were immensely supportive, and because I realized that a learning disability
didn't make me worse than other people. I get angry every time I think back to
the other kids who were in special education with me, who were treated like
problems by teachers and administrators because they interfered with the K12
machinery. They internalized all of this hatred towards themselves and hated
themselves because of it.

The focus on test scores, graduation rates, and college attendance in K12
education is a disaster that hurts the most vulnerable children in our school
system. I listen to my friends who are teachers, and they all know who these
children are, but they don't have the time or the resources to help them.
Enforcing accountability through grades and test scores ensures that these
students will be left behind, because their energy is better spent making sure
10 other students score 5 percentage points higher on the next standardized
test.

~~~
germinalphrase
Thank you for your comment. I completely agree with what you're saying about
misaligned standards/incentives in k12 education and how that can, and does,
create really rough experiences for students. Some of the best educational
environments I have had the opportunity to work inside of have been small
classroom alternative programs. The kids brought with them massively diverse
challenges/needs - but the environments lacked the same "benchmark" cultural
pressures that regiment standard classrooms. Teachers had the time and
opportunity to figure out what each kid needs AND the time and opportunity to
build learning experiences around those needs. In a standard classroom, the
teacher will often completely understand the former but remain
logistically/circumstantially unable to provide the latter.

We will never have the number of classrooms that can provide that level of
support because it would explode the budget of schools. It's probably part of
the answer, though.

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yodsanklai
Maybe because they aren't that many ways to teach? there are certainly some
known fundamentals and maybe some tricks that improve teaching marginally, but
I doubt there is some pedagogical silver bullet waiting to be found.

But more importantly, professors would do a better job if they had incentives
to teach. It is time consuming to prepare a class, especially if there are
labs to set up and maintain. Even worse, some professors have to teach classes
for things that are not their domain of expertise. In some universities, it's
not uncommon that, let say, a professor specializing in logic has to teach
operating systems.

All the time spent on teaching is basically lost as career advancements are
based on research and administrative work.

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ivan_ah
I find it difficult to separate the "teaching practices" from the "teaching
content." Wouldn't the approach the teachers take be dictated by the textbooks
they're using? Even in primary school, a good lesson would be planned around
some activity or handout. Or does every teacher just improvise the lesson on
the spot each year?

From what I know about teacher portfolios, their focus is often "too meta":
they discuss the process the teacher used rather than share the actual result
(e.g. lesson plan, notes, or slides).

At the education meetup during Pycon 2014, Greg Wilson of software-carpentry
asked a really good related question: _Why does open source work so well for
code and not so well for educational content?_ I don't know if anyone has an
answer to that yet... Why is OER not taking off more? Here is a blog post of
my own ideas about what git-for-authors could look like:
[https://minireference.com/blog/git-for-
authors/](https://minireference.com/blog/git-for-authors/) It's a really
interesting space to watch.

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bsder
The big problem is simply how much time it takes to teach effectively.

Teaching even a single class (2 lectures/3 hours each per week+new homework
assignments so students can't copy your old ones+answering questions in
email+office hours) when you are fully engaged is a 40 hour per week
commitment for 12-14 weeks.

If you are required to teach more than 2 classes, your teaching quality
suffers. If your research needs priority, your teaching quality suffers.

Improving pedagogy is wonderful, and I'm glad people are looking at it.
However, what everybody actually needs is the _time_ to put it into practice.

The fact that teachers are woefully underpaid for this kind of thing just
makes everything worse (Most lecturers I know get less than $5000 for a 12-14
week course--they could make more at McDonald's or WalMart).

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compsciphd
At least in computer science their are strong forums for this.
[http://sigcse.org/sigcse/](http://sigcse.org/sigcse/)

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woodandsteel
College teaching is not easy, for a number of reasons. One suggestion I would
make is that every college teacher should be required to take course in public
speaking.

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contras1970
Because of perverse directives, and the bootstrapping problem. Research
generates citations, citations generate tenure. Teaching does neither
(currently).

