From the issue dated December 12, 2003
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What Makes a Teacher Great?Even 'Professors of the Year' have a hard time explaining how they do what they do so well
Edward Ayers is a great teacher. His students think so, and so do his colleagues. They call his lectures "spellbinding" and praise him for getting undergraduates excited about research. Even Mr. Ayers, when pressed, acknowledges an "almost insane commitment to teaching." Last month the professor of history at the University of Virginia was selected as a U.S. Professor of the Year, the nation's most prestigious teaching award, by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His nomination was one of four that passed through several rounds of judging and beat out hundreds of others. So what set Mr. Ayers and the three other winners apart from all of those other professors? It's a tricky question because it leads to another, even trickier one: How should the quality of teaching be measured, assuming it can be measured at all? The issue is one that colleges wrestle with when making hiring and tenure decisions. It's easy enough to review a professor's publication record, but determining whether someone knows how to teach is a considerably tougher task. "We can count the number of times you've been cited in professional journals," says Kathryn Watson, associate dean of faculty development at Eckerd College, who has also served as a judge for the annual contest. "We can count the number of books you've written. But teaching -- whoo! -- it's just very hard to assess." How Ms. Watson and other judges arrive at their decisions offers some insight into what they believe separates a great teacher from a mediocre one. "What does this person do that gets students excited about learning this material?" asks Michael Theall, director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at Youngstown State University. "Sometimes you have to dig down deep to see what's really going on." Measuring the Intangible Each year Carnegie and CASE receive about 400 nominations for the national Professor of the Year awards. A college can nominate only one professor at a time. Nominees are asked to submit a description of classes they have taught recently, a one-page personal statement, and letters from colleagues and students attesting to their accomplishments in the classroom. The pool is whittled down to 24 by judges who rate the nominees in four categories:
Usually, seven or eight candidates emerge as front-runners. "We go around the room and each judge says, 'I liked this person because I was impressed by X, Y, and Z,'" Ms. Huber says. After more discussion, a winner is selected in each of four institutional categories: Ph.D.-granting university, baccalaureate college, master's institution, and community college. Ms. Huber encourages the judges to focus on accomplishments rather than rhetoric. "We're not talking about their philosophical thoughts about teaching, but what's actually happening" in the classroom, she says. Parts of the Equation Judges were impressed by the vast digital archive of Civil War-era documents compiled by Mr. Ayers, the Virginia history professor, and his students. In his personal statement he wrote that he wanted to "let students handle the evidence of the past for themselves, let them struggle with its loose ends, silences, and surprises." Another winner this year, Thomas Goodwin, similarly stood out for his emphasis on involving undergraduates in actual research. Mr. Goodwin, a professor of chemistry at Hendrix College, in Arkansas, studies the biochemistry of elephants. Students visit elephants at a nearby sanctuary and work alongside the professor in the laboratory, trying in particular to identify chemical compounds that may reveal something important about how the animals communicate. "I tell students that it's worse than looking for a needle in a haystack because at least you know what a needle looks like," he says. The two professors' lecture styles are remarkably different. Mr. Ayers has a flair for the dramatic and is described as preacherlike. Mr. Goodwin is more soft-spoken, with an oddball sense of humor. "We've had cases where it's clear from the materials that a person is charismatic, a wonderful performer," says Ms. Huber. "But that's generally not the reason they are selected for the award," she says. "We want someone with an extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching." There can be no doubt about Paris Svoronos's dedication. Students who don't show up for class get a chiding phone call from him that evening. If a student is having trouble learning a particular concept, he works with that student until it is clear. "I usually come back home at 9, 10, 11 at night -- whatever it takes," says Mr. Svoronos, a professor of chemistry at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York. "Luckily I have a patient wife." But many professors, especially those at community colleges, put in long hours. So while such commitment is commendable, it is not, perhaps, enough to set them apart from other nominees. The judges, however, were struck by how many of Mr. Svoronos's students emerged from his classes with a love of chemistry, going on to become chemical engineers or physicians or chemistry professors. Many of them have presented papers at symposiums sponsored by the American Chemical Society. "Chemistry is not the most exciting subject, but you have to make it exciting," he says. Patty Hale's students also leave her classes with a high level of excitement. Ms. Hale, a professor of nursing at Lynchburg College who won in the master's-institution category, is the first professor in her discipline to be chosen as a professor of the year. Her students describe her teaching style as conversational. She guides the discussion rather than dominates it. She also makes sure that her students experience the world outside the classroom. She has had students compile and distribute a list of local health-care resources to needy residents. She also works with her students to set up free clinics. "One of my biggest passions is to have students work with people who are different from themselves," she says, "so they can see how they are really like them." Where's the Evidence? Many professors, like Ms. Hale, teach and advise students both inside and outside the classroom -- another measure of effective teaching. Ms. Huber believes in listening to a number of voices to help determine whether a professor's techniques are effective. "It requires a student voice," she says. "It should also include the voice of the professor, giving the reasons for what they do. And it should have the voices of colleagues, including people in their department, but also other people in the field." As a growing number of departments and tenure committees recognize the need to assess teaching abilities, one measurement tool that is being used is the teaching portfolio. Like the entries submitted by aspiring professors of the year, a teaching portfolio requires a professor to write a reflective statement of purpose, along wi th input from students and colleagues. The information is combined into a single document that can be many pages in length and may include students' course evaluations, test scores, and writing samples. The biggest advocate for the use of the teaching portfolio -- and the person often credited with its creation -- is Peter Seldin, a professor of management at Pace University. His book, The Teaching Portfolio: A Practical Guide to Improved Performance and Promotion/Tenure Decisions, which will be published in its third edition in January, has sold more than 20,000 copies. He has preached the virtues of teaching portfolios at conferences and workshops around the country. In 1990, according to Mr. Seldin, only 10 colleges used teaching portfolios. Now there are more than 2,000. "The reason it seems to work is that it captures both the individuality and the complexity of teaching," he says. Like Ms. Huber, Mr. Seldin argues that by looking at a variety of material -- like student evaluations and personal statements from professors -- colleges can get a better idea of what's going on in the classroom. Still, it's important to demand that professors produce evidence that they are actually doing what they say they are doing. If they say they have helped students write better, then they should include samples of student writing in the teaching portfolio. If they say students are scoring better on tests, include the scores, says Mr. Seldin. He encounters people in academe who scoff at the idea that the quality of teaching is something that can be measured. But the success of teaching portfolios proves that the skeptics are wrong, Mr. Seldin argues. "There are some folks who just think it's inappropriate to try to measure teaching," he says. "But my notion of measuring teaching is whether someone is reasonably effective, not whether they are a 4.8 on a 5.0 scale." Course portfolios are another, newer way of determining teaching quality. Unlike teaching portfolios, which take more of a cumulative look at a professor's teaching abilities, course portfolios zero in on one course. Professors set goals for the course and must explain how those goals were achieved or why they were not. Encouraging professors to dissect a single course is beginning to catch on, says Dan Bernstein, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas. He hopes, however, that the use of course portfolios will be used not just in personnel decisions, but also to allow professors themselves to take a close look at what they are doing in the classroom. Measuring teaching quality is no easy task, contest judges and experts on teaching agree. One reason is that teaching is a very personal endeavor. No two professors do it exactly the same way. "The interesting thing to me is that if you take 10 excellent teachers, they will all teach differently," says Ms. Watson, of Eckerd College. "My own view is that they have to be smart, articulate, and they have to care about their students. I don't mean that in a sappy way. They have to be a 'compassionate hard-ass.' And they have to have passion." Another CASE teaching-awards judge, Thea Prettyman, an associate professor of mathematics at the Community College of Baltimore County, believes that great teachers have a tendency to make themselves known. "It has to expand beyond the walls of the classroom," she says. "It has to be something that goes beyond their own circle, something that influences the culture and policy of the institution." Ask great teachers what they do well and they usually can't offer an immediate answer. "I don't have a big, dramatic, well-thought-out philosophy," says Hendrix College's Mr. Goodwin. "I don't feel comfortable saying, 'If you follow these rules, you'll be a good teacher.'" Instead, the award-winning chemistry professor offers the following metaphor: "I think of myself like I'm up in a helicopter and I'm flying over my students, who are wading through a swamp. I have a bullhorn and I'm saying, 'Don't go that way, there's an alligator over there! Watch out!'" He laughs. "How's that for a teaching philosophy?" http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 50, Issue 16, Page A8 |
Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education