Chapter: V.
Experimentation
as a Responsibility of Educators
In the previous chapters, it has
been argued that educators have a fundamental moral responsibility to
constantly strive toward better teaching. This means that there must be
a constant effort on the part of educators to improve upon what already
works well, and to correct pedagogical shortcomings and mistakes. This
continued effort of improving pedagogy effort involves research and
experimentation, and this experimentation necessarily involves human
beings.
As we have noted elsewhere, one of
the most significant recent trends in colleges has been the increased
emphasis on pedagogical research. This increasing emphasis on the
scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) is important for several
reasons. First, it secures the central role of faculty and
administrators in the continuing attempts to improve the efficacy of
post-secondary educational practice. The emphasis on effective teaching
at these institutions demands continuous inquiry into educational “best
practice,” and the growth of centers, institutes, and conferences
dedicated to SOTL is based on the recognition that the analysis and
implementation of good pedagogy is best done at the local level, given
the unique demographics and missions of individual colleges and
university..
Second, it demonstrates the unique
relationship between good teaching and effective research. College
faculty with their often heavy teaching loads (particularly at two-year
colleges) continue to pursue scholarly research. Yet this research need
not be at odds with teaching responsibilities. Some have recently
argued, SOTL provides an invaluable opportunity for faculty members to
combine their research interests and educational responsibilities.
(Marti, et al, 2004) This results in both enhanced research
opportunities and more effective teaching.
An increased recognition of the
vital role of SOTL in post-secondary education is an important step
towards enhancing the value of the educational experiences of both
students and faculty. But in this midst of this trend, it is important
to recognize that there are some serious questions and issues faced by
the researchers and practitioners involved in the scholarship of
teaching and learning, These issues include the following questions::
-
Does there exist an obligation to conduct research
and contribute to the SOTL?
-
How are members of the academy to handle the
tensions and conflicts and dual demands of conducting research in
their academic disciplines and pedagogic research?
Yet these issues cannot be
addressed in a manner that would produce a resolution that is both
intellectually satisfying and practically manageable without a
consideration of the basic conceptualization of the role of an educator
and its incumbent professional responsibilities.
What is
pedagogic research?
Pedagogic research
involves a number of different activities including:
-
study of the literature
on pedagogy
-
study and analysis of a
teaching/learning situation to determine the factors most relevant to
the learning outcomes
-
an experiment conducted
on human subjects/students
What is
pedagogic experimentation?
In the context of education an experiment would
involve some educator doing any of the following: try out a new
procedure, idea, or activity, to test or conduct a trial, to entertain
as tentative some procedure or policy; : an operation carried out under
controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to
test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law
A pedagogic experiment with humans might involve
any of the following models:
1. vary condition C to determine what the result R
would be
2 . suspect that R will result if condition C is changed and then make the
change to determine if R obtains
3. have two quite similar groups of learners and then change condition C
in the instruction of one (the experimental) group in order to
determine what the resultant change, if any, would be in the learning
outcomes within that group as compared to the other (control) group.
The Obligation to Conduct
Research
A recent article by Dan Bernstein
and Randy Bass in Academe (a publication of the American
Association of University Professors) dealing with issues related to the
scholarship of teaching and learning, the authors attempt to address the
first of the issues above without such a framework of reference to
professional obligations of educators, and they reach a most
unsatisfying conclusion. As Bernstein and Bass point out,
Our two projects
[relating to the scholarship of teaching and learning] also raise
questions bearing directly on the nature of faculty work: Should all
faculty engage in this scholarship, or just those who wish to? Are the
practices associated with it another "add on" to overloaded faculty
lives, or a new way of conceptualizing fundamental professional
responsibilities? How can faculty be recognized for this work, and how
should it be addressed in institutional reward structures? -- Dan
Bernstein and Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning”,
Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005 pp. 37-43..
However, Bernstein and Bass are
unable to answer these questions with any degree of rigor or clarity as
they do not establish foundational concepts, such as a concept of
education as a profession and what sort of moral and professional
obligations that identification that would entail. The authors also
note that projects that develop SOTL such as teaching portfolios are
ways to assess teaching effectiveness and as such ;
When teachers connect
their classroom work to outcomes for students, they make teaching a part
of their intellectual lives as a form of ongoing inquiry. We never
called teaching portfolios "research" or construed them as adding to the
world of educational theory. We saw them simply as responsible
professional practice, which necessarily includes inquiry into the
effectiveness of one's practice and reflection on possible changes. --
Dan Bernstein and Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning”, Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005,
At this point, Bernstein and Bass seem to want to
claim that SOTL is “responsible professional practice,” but do not
indicate the grounding for this responsibility. They seem hesitant to
identify the important features (and attending obligations) of education
as a profession. By simply recognizing the responsibilities and
obligations that stem from the dual role of college and university
professors as both scholars and professional educators, the
grounding for this claim becomes much more apparent. The foundation for
the obligation to conduct pedagogical research is provided through the
provision of the concept of education as a profession and the
professional responsibilities accepted (either explicitly or tacitly) by
those who enter the profession.
Unfortunately without this conceptual foundation,
they make the rather confusing claim that there is no responsibility to
engage in research to further the efficacy of instruction:
No less a figure than
Aristotle stated that successful teaching was the highest form of
understanding. We make the claim that effective teaching is an equal
among many forms of intellectual work, in its own right, so we do not
insist that all faculty must be engaged in research on teaching. -- Dan
Bernstein and Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning”, Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005,
It is not clear what the basis would be for Bernstein
and Bass to insist (or not insist) on faculty doing anything to become
better educators. However, it is the profession itself which
establishes the norms of behavior for its members and sets out the
responsibilities for professionals. In post-secondary education,
these norms involve professionals fulfilling, to the best of their
abilities, their fiduciary responsibilities to their students and the
society as whole, and contributing to the advancement of the profession
and of their colleagues within the profession through research and
experimentation.
Randy Bass further declares that:
I recognize that this work has multiple levels
and purposes, and I agree with Dan that one goal is raising the bar on
what responsible professional practice means for all teachers (what
some call reflective teaching). .
-- Dan Bernstein and Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning”, Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005.
This would be the raising of a bar based on what they
observe as actual practice but it would not be raising the bar based on
a concept of professionalism and the responsibilities of professional
educators.
Split Personalities: The Professor as Scholar
and Educator
Bernstein and Bass attempt to provide terms and
contexts in which conversations about workload might take place. But
they note that work done as SOTL
…may not be, in the end,
quite like any other kind of work in the academy: it is a hybrid between
teaching and research, it is both local and cosmopolitan, and it is both
individual and collaborative. Accommodating ourselves and our
institutions to the scholarship of teaching and learning (by whatever
name) may require our coming to terms with this uniqueness and finding
new structures and practices for it. . -- Dan Bernstein and Randy
Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning”,
Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005
At the end of their article Dan Bernstein and Randy
Bass recapitulate this tension faced by faculty members torn between
their desire to protect their interests in both the academic discipline
and in the profession of education when they observe that
Over the years, the two
of us and those involved in our projects have worked "against the
grain:" against the grain of our professional careers; against the
grain, initially, for participating faculty wanting to bring this work
into their lives; and against the grain for those seeking a place for
this work institutionally. Now, perhaps, the greatest challenge in
living with the consequences of success is having the courage and
creativity to follow out the logical consequences of the possibilities
of the scholarship of teaching and learning. . -- Dan Bernstein and
Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning”,
Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005
It is not so much the possibilities of SOTL that
require the courage to realize on the part of individual faculty but the
acceptance of the dual professional membership by teaching faculty that
is the challenge for those producing SOTL. If the self conception of
professional educators were to be realized as being that of a
professional educator as well as a scholar, this would lead to the
recognition of the responsibility to forward the profession and to
advance the effectiveness of the individual’s instruction by means of
research.
Bass brings up the more fundamental issue of how
faculty are to approach activities relating to the scholarship of
teaching and learning when he presents two developmental models for
faculty. In the first,
[f]aculty members are
introduced to the concepts and practices of the scholarship of teaching
and learning and reflect on their own classroom and teaching practice.
They then share insights and findings with peers. If they continue to
pursue the scholarship of teaching and learning, they take on more
individualistic inquiry and publishing activity. Some faculty members
might engage a little; others more. But the engagement involves levels
of individual commitment. . -- Dan Bernstein and Randy Bass,” The
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning”,
Academe , Volume 91, Number 4,
July-August 2005
This seems straightforward enough, if it does seem to
underscore the very real need for professional pedagogical development
and training. But it is the second model that Bass presents as a
hypothetical “what if,” rather than as the model of post-secondary
education that should result from the professional responsibilities of
educators.
But what if we imagined
an entirely different developmental model (or at least one complementary
to that of traditional scholarship)? What if you introduced faculty to
the scholarship of teaching and learning initially as a foundational
professional practice to improve their own teaching, but secondarily to
cultivate a faculty motivated to join collaborative efforts around
teaching and learning problems that were key local issues? How might
that change the ways that faculty think about the scholarship of
teaching and learning as an intellectual and professional activity? How
might institutions support this work, needing under this model to
provide support and recognition for contributions to collaborative
efforts to improve the local conditions of successful student learning?
. -- Dan Bernstein and Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning”, Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005
If educators as educators were seen as professionals,
trained as professionals, and expected to act like professionals, then
Bass might not advance the second model as a proposal or thought
experiment as much as a reminder of what should be the case in the
American professoriate. If college professors (understood both as
educators and scholars) were to acknowledge their professional
responsibility to monitor and improve upon the efficacy of instruction
and thus to perform research toward that end then they acting in consort
could fulfill their collective responsibility to insist that educational
institutions provide for support and recognition of that activity which
produces the SOTL.
Dan Bernstein and Randy Bass describe their projects
that generated SOTL and describe its value as recognizing that
…a reciprocal effect
exists between the scholarship of teaching and learning (or scholarly
teaching) and pedagogies designed to elicit "data" on learning. These
pedagogies often help students themselves reflect on and critique their
own learning. In fact, one of most important effects of the scholarship
of teaching and learning on professional practice may be to lead faculty
to consider whether additional teaching strategies and modes of
assessment and learning processing might make student learning more
accessible (or visible) to both students and faculty. . -- Dan
Bernstein and Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning”,
Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005
While it is no doubt the case that this is important,
it is vital to recognize the deep implications this emphasis on SOTL
will have for the American professoriate, especially in terms of tenure
and promotion. At many universities and colleges, tenure and promotion
decisions are based on the “three-legged stool”: Scholarly achievement,
teaching, and college service. Unfortunately, the teaching “leg” of
this stool is often judged solely on the basis of student and peer
evaluations, if not simply on a lack of student complaints. However, as
the scholarship of teaching and learning is emphasized more and more in
American post-secondary education, the evidence of effective teaching
will change significantly. Faculty members up for promotion will no
longer simply rely on teaching observations, but will have to
demonstrate clear evidence of pedagogical research and a commitment to
improvement in pedagogical methods. This in itself is a significant
change in the attitudes professors have toward their teaching duties,
and will demand an enormous shift in the critieria used for tenure and
promotion decisions. Yet this shift can only occur if the notion of
“scholarship” is enlarged to include SOTL. And as Bernstein and Bass
rightly recognize, this means recognizing the need for disseminating
SOTL, and to do so through an expanded notion of publishing:
Our work has made it
clear that we need to expand our notion of publishing. We need to
imagine new genres for sharing insights that are much broader than our
current models for publishing. We need to develop much more interplay
between product and process. The article-length study in a journal is a
viable form of publishing that is especially appropriate for faculty
focusing on a certain career path or seeking to share work that has
matured. But that benchmark alone will not enable us to change
professional practice on a broad scale. For the scholarship of teaching
and learning to matter to many faculty, and for it to help transform
teaching practices (and the quality of student learning), we need to
conceptualize forms of "going public" built more on the idea of cycles
of product and process, rather than on the linear line of traditional
scholarship. And we need to make more robust use of digital tools and
archiving resources to give faculty outlets for sharing their insights
and resources. . -- Dan Bernstein and Randy Bass, ” The Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning”, Academe
, Volume 91, Number 4, July-August 2005
Yet when considering the questions of the audience
for SOTL, and the general need for dissemination or publication,
Bernstein and Bass lay out claims and observations that reflect the
general failure of post-secondary institutions to recognize education
as a full profession, with its own sets of obligations and
responsibilities.
Concerns in Conducting Research and
Experimentation
There is a rather unique set of
ethical questions facing scholars and researchers of teaching and
learning. As the gap between classroom and research narrows, the
traditional ways of viewing the ethical obligations of pedagogical
researchers changes dramatically. When classrooms become research
laboratories, the relationship between faculty members and their
students changes drastically, as does the manner in which educators view
the ethical commitments and obligations of educators.
Institutions such as The
Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and
the American Educational Research Association have done well to
recognize the changing ethical landscape in the context of SOTL, and in
bringing the awareness of these new challenges to light. Yet much work
remains to be done in this important field.
Ask any post-secondary educator if
their teaching methods have changed, and they will say yes. From the
graduate assistant in his second year of running recitations to the
tenured full professor with decades of classroom experience, college
educators are constantly adapting their courses to the inevitable
changes in the academic and social context.
How do teaching methods change? An
instructor might simply modify examples used to illuminate a lecture
from one semester to the next, or exhaustively rework the content of an
entire course. There might be significant advances in the discipline
that must be woven into a classroom discussion or lab presentation. An
individual teacher might want to make better use of the technological
tools available to educators. Even new textbook editions or
translations can have a significant effect on the delivery of course
content.
How are these changes made?
Educators often find suggestions to improve their teaching in
professional journals and at conferences dedicated to pedagogical
effectiveness. They might seek out the advice of colleagues, using
these informal discussions to test new ideas and methods. Or they might
simply build on their own personal experiences in the classroom, finding
out what works and what doesn’t in the effort to help students
understand the material.
Regardless of whether these changes
are the result of literature reviews, discussions with colleagues, or
personal experience in the classroom, all deliberate changes made in
modalities of instruction and pedagogy exhibit the desire of educators
to increase the effectiveness of their teaching. Post-secondary
educators as a group are constantly striving to “teach, teach well, and
teach even better.” This desire bespeaks an acknowledgment, if only
subtle, of the professional obligation to further the profession and to
continually improve the efficacy of instruction. Fulfillment of the
professional obligation to conduct research demands a willingness to try
new things, to be creative, and to experiment with novel methods and
approaches in the classroom.
Introducing changes in pedagogy has
profound impact on the nature of the classroom. Anytime an instructor
tries a new pedagogical method, from the smallest examples to a complete
overhaul of content delivery, they are conducting an experiment.
Indeed, as presented in the previous chapter, all instructors, and
particularly post-secondary instructors, have a professional obligation
to experiment in the classroom in the effort to improve their teaching.
All of this has profound
implications for educators. Post-secondary instructors are not simply
“teachers;” they are also pedagogic researchers. A college class does
not function solely as a “classroom;” it is by definition a research
laboratory as well. Pedagogic research is not a discipline confined to
academic journals; it is a fundamental obligation of all college
instructors. An instructor who does not experiment with pedagogical
methodology is not a teacher. Teaching is not simply the transmission
of ideas. If it were, teachers would be easily replaced with CD-ROMs
and DVDs.
There is a professional duty to
conduct research into pedagogy so as to advance the profession and so as
to avoid harm to one’s trustees/learners (more on this in chapter eight
below). This duty is to be fulfilled in both formal and informal ways.
Formal study can occur through course work that leads to another degree
in education or through workshops and course work as part of the
continuing obligation for professional development. Informally this
research can be done by individual educators or by small groups of
educators who undertake some periodical review or research into
particular subject areas related to either pedagogy in general or the
pedagogy associated with subject areas or with some particular community
of learners. Indeed, in an effort to better manage the dual
responsibilities to conduct research in both one's academic discipline
and in pedagogy faculty form learning communities in an effort to assist
one another deal with the tensions or "antagonisms" and make the
workload more manageable.
Many tenure-track professors
on our campus and others see the relationship between teaching and
research as mostly antagonistic, because they are often so busy
preparing for their classes that they must carve out their research
agenda from the time left over. Our learning community therefore
sought to strike a balance between research and teaching in the
professional lives of faculty. The result was a truly dynamic learning
community. ---Andrew
Hershberger, Paul Cesarini, Joseph Chao, Andrew Mara, Hassan Rajaei,
and Dan Madigan" Balancing Acts:
Tenure-Track Faculty in Learning Communities", Academe , Volume 91,
Number 4, July-August 2005,
There is also the duty to explore
more effective pedagogies through experimentation and again this is
fulfilled in both formal and informal ways. Experimentation can be
conducted for one’s own sake and without the intent for widespread
dissemination and without all of the formal criteria for an experiment
being satisfied. Such experiments can involve just one group of learners
and may involve no more than the change of a lesson plan or textbook or
the redesign of a curriculum or a change in a teaching method or
device. On the other hand some educators enter into the design and
conduct of the most formal types of experimentation with human subjects
that involves all the rigor of scientific investigation. The results of
such endeavors are intended to be widely disseminated and to be
replicated by other researchers in other locations.
Finally, there is the duty to
communicate the results of pedagogic research, whether formal or
informal, and again this can be accomplished through means of
dissemination that are formal or informal. There are a myriad of
methods for informal dissemination that are engaged in by many, even
most, educators that includes corridor conversations, luncheon
discussions with colleagues, presentations at departmental meetings or
professional societies and the like. Formal dissemination would take
place through publication in professional journals both print and
electronic and through the process of collegial review including blind
review.
Given this, there are several duties that
together fulfill the obligation to forward the progress of the
profession of education:
Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching (1997-) speaks of the “pedagogic
imperative” (Hutchings, vii) that includes the obligation to inquire
into the consequences of the educators work with learners. For Shulman
“teaching is an intentional, designed act undertaken to influence the
minds of others, and change the world in an intensely intimate, socially
responsible manner.” (Hutchings, v) Education for Shulman brings with
it “inexorable responsibilities”. He maintains that educators can teach
with integrity only if they make efforts to examine their efficacy as
educators. Each educator is responsible for the efficacy of what they
do as educators. While Shulman does not ground the responsibilities he
maintains professional educators have them. In this work the source of
those obligations has been argued to be the basic responsibilities all
humans have, the basic values of society which creates and sustains the
institution of education and in particular the basic value of preventing
harm which is instanced in the special obligation of those in a
fiduciary relationship to look after the best interests of those whom
they serve. For Schulman it is unimaginable that educators would have
no concern for the impact and results of what they do. For others that
lack of concern may simply be irresponsible of even heinous but,
unfortunately, well within the realm of imagination and within the realm
of actual unfortunate experiences with educators of the callous sort.
Be that as it may, it remains that educators are, as are most humans,
responsible for what they do.
Among the inexorable responsibilities then of
educators as professionals is the responsibility towards the profession
itself. Such responsibilities exist for engineers and medical
professionals and it should be no surprise that such a concept attaches
to professional educators no less than to any other professional group.
This responsibility towards the profession itself “devolves” onto
individuals to assist in contributing to the collective responsibility
of safeguarding the integrity of the profession. Each bares the
responsibility to the extent of their work within the profession.
Educators are responsible for:
·
What is learned
·
How it is learned
·
How well it is learned
·
The value of that learning for the learners
·
The educators’ own learning as it relates to fostering
learning in others (Hutchings,2002, vii)
Scholarly research is a necessary condition of good
pedagogy, and it is especially important in post-secondary education.
Good teaching, whether at a research university or a two-year college,
demands academic inquiry by faculty. And while this inquiry might take
many different forms (artistic expression, scholarly specialization, or
pedagogical analysis), it is the driving force of an effective college
education.
The philosopher, Alfred North
Whitehead, understood that, at its best, post-secondary education
combines the experiences of faculty (both academic and personal) with
the enthusiasm and the “zest of life” of students.
(Alfred North
Whitehead , “Universities and Their Function” (p. 93)
The college classroom (be it physical or virtual) is
a forum where ideas and concepts are evaluated by both teacher and
student, and a successful course of study demands both knowledge
acquisition and critical reflection.
The college classroom is not simply a forum for the
transmission of ideas. Besides imparting information, a good teacher
promotes critical reflection on the course content. And while it is
important to provide students with the factual knowledge necessary for
professional competency, a college education must do more. It must
provide students with the ability to analyze, to understand, and to
apply the theories and practices learned in the classroom to the labs,
classrooms, boardrooms, and offices of their respective professions.
Many colleges and other institutions of teaching and
learning have set up their own Center for Teaching and Learning (CETL).
Often their primary goal is to enhance the growing scholarship on
teaching and learning (SOTL).
But what is the scholarship of teaching and
learning? All good educators are scholars and teachers, and we
certainly hope our students are learning something. But as Marti, et al
point in the recent article, “Communities of Change,”(
Marti, Eduardo, Kutnowski, Martin, and Gray, Peter . “ A
Community of Practice”, Community College Journal,
April/May, 2004 ) there is sometimes a disconnect between the teaching
and research of college educators. Except in the highest reaches of
post-secondary education (research institutions, etc.), educators rarely
find themselves in a position to spend large segments of class time
toward the discussion of their scholarly research. This disconnect is
even more pronounced in introductory and survey level courses, where a
scholar’s research is often far removed from the basic information and
skill development that is the content of those classes. In such cases
the educator can exercise their prerogative for doing research into the
very pedagogies employed in their teaching of those classes. In so
doing they fulfill their obligations as professional educators to teach
well and even better through critical reflection on what they do when
they teach and on the efficacy of their teaching.