What It Means to Teach — Part II
Teaching and Academic Freedom
What does it mean to teach? The storied dictionaries of the world cannot agree on a unified conception of what it means. Where linguists do find some agreement, teaching is seen as the transfer of knowledge from sage to student. With that in mind, it becomes difficult not to conjure a traditionally popular but highly erroneous image of what it means to teach.
Picture a venerable pedagogue with oval-framed glasses and tweed jacket, smelling of pipe tobacco. He stands at the podium, gesticulating wildly while covering significant amounts of content sans notes or props except for dusty scratchings on an already crammed chalkboard.
As he speaks, puffs of translucent vapour emerge from his mouth. No, that is not smoke from his pipe. That is his knowledge, drifting and swirling towards a lecture theatre full of captivated young students. As it dances over their heads, students feverishly inhale trying to capture every whisp. Yes, on this day the teacher has taught, and the learners have learned.
In 2024 that image is uncomfortably wrong in many ways. Let us stick to the point herein and that is an understanding of what it means to teach. Specifically in higher education. More specifically at the University of Prince Edward Island, where I am employed as an instructional designer.
As this is my context, let us use it as a case in point for what it means to teach. Here are excerpts taken from two formal documents at the University of Prince Edward Island.
From the UPEI Academic Plan (Oct 2015):
Our Academic Plan will uphold the principles of academic freedom as stated in the collective agreement: ‘academic freedom involves the right to teach, to investigate, to speculate, to publish and to collect and make available library materials without deference to prescribed doctrine and free from institutional censorship.’
From the UPEI Faculty Association’s Collective Agreement (2022–26):
Members hold the following rights and freedoms…
A4.2c: freedom in the choice and pursuit of teaching without deference to prescribed doctrine, and free from institutional censorship;
Defining what it means to teach requires understanding what a teacher does, something that I attempted to point out in Part I of this blog series. In the two examples above, teach and teaching are not further defined. That leaves significant room for interpretation, which opens the door to concerns around integrity and rigour. Speaking of which, here is another notable example from the University.
From the About UPEI page on the UPEI website:
Academic Freedom and Rigour
The freedom to teach and conduct scholarly work guided by curiosity and intellectual inquiry, without deference to prescribed doctrine, is fundamental to our university. This freedom is essential to advancing and disseminating knowledge and carries with it the duty to use that freedom in a manner that is consistent with an honest search for knowledge. It is important for the credibility of the University that this quest for knowledge is carried out with integrity and rigour.
We must look at teaching as more than the purveyance of knowledge. Teaching primarily involves the creation of environments conducive to student learning. Teaching is instructional design, but it is also much more.
“We cannot call one thing teaching any more. We cannot call it teaching if we stand in front of a classroom situated down the hall of an ivied old building, and then call nothing else teaching. Lecturing isn’t teaching. Assigning group work isn’t teaching. Writing a lesson plan isn’t teaching. Creating a discussion prompt isn’t teaching. Figuring out how to join a video conference with your class. Meeting with a student, responding to an email, getting creative about grading. Not teaching. Not unless all of these things are.” — Sean Michael Morris
I would suggest that this quote is not an image of what it means to teach well. It simply is what it means to teach, period! Teaching well is a completely different series of blog posts that goes beyond what I am trying to point out here.
It is interesting to note that all the above excerpts from UPEI include the following phrase: without deference to prescribed doctrine. And that, I hope, is a statement that does not require definition by which to align us all. It is one thing to be an instructor in higher education having the freedom to choose the content that you want to teach. It is a very different thing to apply that same freedom to how to teach that content.
While beliefs are often personal and deeply rooted, the onus is on each of us to reflect on and update our beliefs when new information comes along — higher education instructors included. What if there are evidence-backed ways to teach well and an instructor chooses to ignore them? Is that an act of academic freedom or a breach of integrity? Does it also call into question an instructor’s commitment to the rigour of their teaching?
To teach is to plan, design and deliver content for individuals to learn (and yet so much more). The planning and design portions of what it means to teach are too often being overlooked. Whether that happens by choice, time pressure or lack of awareness, it does not amount to the implementation or achievement of integrity or rigour in teaching.
Works Cited
Morris, SM. (2018, April 12). Instructional Designers are Teachers. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved February 27, 2024 https://hybridpedagogy.org/instructional-designers-are-teachers/
University of Prince Edward Island. (2015 October). UPEI Academic Plan. Retrieved January 22, 2024 https://files.upei.ca/upei_academic_plan.pdf
University of Prince Edward Island. (2024). About UPEI. Retrieved on January 22, 2024 https://www.upei.ca/about-upei
University of Prince Edward Island. (2022). Collective Agreement Between the University of Prince Edward Island Board of Governors and the University of Prince Edward Island Faculty Association Bargaining Unit #1. Retrieved on January 22, 2024 https://files.upei.ca/agreements/2022-2026_upeifa_bu1_final.pdf
