Great College Teachers: Born or Made?
Like the age-old psychological debate as to whether nature or nurture makes a person, so the question has arisen of late as to whether college teachers are born or made.
Historically, “good teaching” has not been a topic of focus in the higher education sector. Doctoral candidates spend years becoming experts in a field, but are rarely formally trained for what many will end up doing: educating undergraduates.
This stands in sharp contrast to the American K-12 education system, in which it is accepted as fact that good teachers are not only born, but trained.
As co-author of the new book Taking College Teaching Seriously: Pedagogy Matters! and principal researcher of a project on the effects of improved college teaching on student success (on which the book is based), I’ve held a keen interest in this subject over the last six years.
In the last month or so, three opinion editorials on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website have touched — in varying degrees — on quality in college teaching: A.C. Grayling’s “What Makes a Good Teacher?,” Leonard Cassuto’s “What Will Doctoral Education Look Like in 2025? Predictions and hopes for the future of Ph.D. training,” and Douglas Anderson’s “Clear the Way for More Good Teachers.”
While Grayling posits that being an inspiring teacher is largely “a matter of natural capacity,” and Anderson offers the hypothesis that replacing half of college administrators with more and better faculty would assuage many of the problems plaguing higher education, I am just glad to see the sprouting up of this topic.
I myself have been working to spark this conversation nationally, based on my belief that if we do not put faculty at the center of the drive to increase levels of college student achievement, including graduation, we will fail at this national priority. I also know that great teaching is essential for the millions of at-risk students.
Although I agree, in part, when Grayling says, “Good teachers are those who remember being a student,” the trouble is that today, faculty are teaching students who are far different from themselves and face problems that faculty are unprepared to handle, be it poverty, homelessness, mental illness or simply a lack of academic preparation.
So while quality of teaching is important for economic or academically elite students, for my students — and the almost 50% of undergraduates in the U.S. attend community colleges — it is essential.
Cassuto says, “I talk to a lot of graduate students these days, and most of them would appreciate more focus on pedagogy in their training. They want it integrated into the curriculum, not just as an add-on.” And he nods to National Endowment for the Humanities “Next Generation” grants as hope for the future. Indeed, LaGuardia Community College is partnering with the CUNY Graduate Center through a Mellon Foundation grant to put humanities doctoral students in the community college classroom, helping them perfect their skills where many will likely work in the future.
Yet I, and the co-authors of Taking College Teaching Seriously, believe that teaching practice can be improved even for those already in the throes of their college faculty careers…and not necessarily in a mechanistic or prescriptive way. We think it’s possible for all college teachers to improve, and we also believe that all good teachers do not have to look alike.
As reflection and practice are the foundations of improvement in athletics to business to the arts, so should it be the foundation of college teaching. And we think that the effects on student success, especially for at-risk student populations, can be tremendous.
