Teaching with Integrity

The Ethics of Higher Education Practice

Bruce Macfarlane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134311187
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This is a book about the ethics of teaching in the context of higher education. While many books focus on the broader socially ethical topics of widening participation and promoting equal opportunities, this unique book concentrates specifically on the lecturer's professional responsibilities. It covers the real-life, messy, everyday moral dilemmas that confront university teachers when dealing with students and colleagues - whether arising from facilitated discussion in the classroom, deciding whether it is fair to extend a deadline, investigating suspected plagiarism or dealing with complaints. Bruce Macfarlane analyses the pros and cons of prescriptive professional codes of practice employed by many universities and proposes the active development of professional virtues over bureaucratic recommendations. The material is presented in a scholarly, yet accessible style, and case examples are used throughout to encourage a practical, reflective approach. Teaching With Integrity seeks to bridge the pedagogic gap currently separating the debate about teaching and learning in higher education from the broader social and ethical environment in which it takes place.

Part 1
The professional and ethical context

Chapter 1
The pedagogic gap

Introduction

University lecturers1 are often involved in preparing students for the demands of professional life. This includes the education of future doctors, nurses, engineers, architects, lawyers and school teachers. Hence, it is somewhat ironic that lecturers working in universities have not traditionally been regarded as a distinct profession in their own right. University lecturers, though, have rarely presented an image of a unified and coherent professional group. They are commonly characterized as a disparate community of subject specialists or rival ‘tribes’ (Becher and Trowler, 2001), an insular image of strife within ivory towers that has been well recorded over more than two centuries (eg Kant, 1979).

These so-called ‘tribal’ tensions exist because for many teachers working in higher education their first point of identity is their discipline rather than their vocation as a lecturer. Others already possess a professional identity when they enter academic life as, for example, a lawyer, engineer, clinical psychologist, music therapist or medical practitioner. This professional or disciplinary identity provides many individuals working in higher education with their main external point of reference. In consequence, they will subscribe to this group’s norms and values (Becher and Kogan, 1992). Many regard themselves,first and foremost, as researchers or experts in a disciplinary or professional field rather than teachers of their subject (Piper, 1992). This is also due, at least in part, to the role of the doctorate as the conventional entry route into academic life. By this means, young academics have been inducted into the traditions of a discipline through a research apprenticeship rather than the multifarious demands that will be placed on them as teachers of university students.

Possessing a doctorate has long been regarded as the only necessary qualification for someone to teach in higher education. In this way, to paraphrase Lee Shulman, the expert learner is instantly converted into the novice teacher. Although the logic may seem strange, it has long been presumed that scholarly expertise alone is sufficient preparation to enable someone to teach effectively in higher education. It is in these narrow terms that professionalism among university teachers has conventionally been defined.

A problematic concept

The concept of professionalism, though, is problematic for university teachers for other reasons. Notions of professionalism encompass both mastery of an area of knowledge and skill, and service beneficial to the client (Jarvis, 1983). However, academics have always been very wary of terms like ‘customer’ or ‘client’ (Gordon, 1997). Indeed, radical academics regard the use of such terms in contemporary higher education as symptomatic of a de-skilling process. Ritzer (1998), among others, has labelled this process the ‘McDonaldization’ of higher education, recasting the lecturer in the role of a service worker.

Hence, whether academics teaching in universities constitute a profession is a moot point. Indeed, in many ways academics are a more divided, disparate and less powerful group than they used to be. The conditions of modern higher education mean that institutions are employing growing numbers of part-time and temporary staff on insecure, short-term contracts (Ainley, 1994; Nelson and Watt, 1999). Moreover, a sharper division of labour exists among contemporary academics with many now employed, for example, in a ‘teaching-only’ or ‘research-only’ capacity. This division is a symbol of the pressures brought to bear by separate funding arrangements for teaching and research in public systems of higher education, such as the UK and Australia. These forces are contributing towards what Nixon (1996) terms a crisis of professional self-identity. They also suggest that, in some respects, university teachers are becoming even further removed from the conditions necessary to establish a coherent professional identity.

However, the changes that are occurring in higher education across many parts of the globe are also helping to shape a new professional identity for university lecturers. The expansion of vocational and professional courses in universities means that a doctorate is no longer the normal starting point for every academic career. Teachers in fields such as business and management, social work, education and nursing are more likely to have professional or vocational expertise rather than a doctorate. Indeed, more practically oriented professional doctorates in management, education and the health sciences are increasing in popularity, taken after, rather than before, career experience is gained. While some staff from vocational and professional backgrounds may wish to pursue research objectives, others may experience the pressure to conduct research and publish as alienating and unhelpful to their career ambitions.

Furthermore, university lecturers from vocational fields bring with them values from their various professions. Among these values is a commitment to the needs of ‘clients’ or ‘customers’ and less discomfort in applying this language to their own students. In turn, this concern to meet the needs of the ‘end-user’ makes many lecturers from professional fields attuned to the needs of the student as the direct recipient of a university education, while prepared to acknowledge the expectations of stakeholders such as employers and professional organizations.

The impact of massification

It is the expansion of higher education, though, that has probably provided the biggest impetus towards the development of a new sense of academic professionalism. The massification of higher education provision is a global phenomenon (Scott, 1995, 1998). It has occurred in many developed countries, including the UK, Australia, the United States and the Netherlands. In the UK, changes in government policy led to the expansion of the participation rate in higher education from just 6 per cent in 1962 to around 15 per cent by the mid-1980s. A second, more rapid increase in student numbers occurred during the late 1980s and 1990s. At the time of writing, it is estimated that the participation rate in English higher education has risen to 43 per cent of those aged between 18 and 30 years old (DFES, 2003). The UK government’s espoused target is a 50 per cent participation rate for everyone under the age of 30 by 2010. While this may seem a tall order, the participation rate in the UK is lower than in many comparable developed countries such as Australia, the Netherlands or Sweden. National definitions of what constitutes a ‘higher education’ differ, and much of the planned expansion in the UK will occur through growth in sub-degree provision (DFES, 2003), bringing it closer into line with notions of ‘tertiary education’ elsewhere.

The impact of massification has been felt throughout the higher education sector. It has brought about huge changes in the teaching and learning environment of university life. While the phenomenon has affected some popular, broadly vocational subjects more than others, the ripple effects have been felt across the sector. In particular, as we shall see later in this book, massification has brought into sharp focus a range of issues connected with the management of student learning.

Higher participation rates have meant greater diversity in the student body. University students are no longer a small, socially homogenous elite who are necessarily ‘in love’ with their subject. While a student of history might have a ‘passion’ for the subject (Booth, 1997), learners in vocational areas, like business and management, are likely to be more motivated by perceptions of relevance to career aspirations (Coates and Koerner, 1996). Many come to university with modest qualifications or limited previous academic study, with pragmatic, rather than idealistic, goals to better their job prospects or change their current career path. Modern university students are also more likely to be mature adults working full- or part-time in order to support their studies. Indeed, a majority of students in UK higher education are over the age of 25 (DFES, 2003). However, efforts to widen access to higher education are far from complete, with social class continuing to play a vital role in determining who goes to university. Students drawn from professional backgrounds are five times more likely to participate than their counterparts from unskilled social backgrounds (DFES, 2003). Despite these shortcomings, universities now contain a broader mix of students from different social, economic and cultural backgrounds than ever before. Although there is still some way to go, higher education is now regarded as the right of the many rather than the privilege of the elite few.

The new diversity of the student body, in, inter alia, age, ability, social background, culture, motivation and economic status, presents significant ethical challenges for teachers. In teaching, assessing and managing students this diversity has an impact. It is no longer good enough to treat students as an immature, homogenous group with identical educational backgrounds. One indication of the impact of diversity is the growing significance of student support centres and supplementary instruction schemes within universities, often focusing on the development of language and numeracy skills.

Rising student numbers have also prompted more use of group work together with peer and self-assessment. While there are sound educational reasons that justify these responses (Brindley and Scoffield, 1998), they are also pragmatically linked to the demands of teaching and assessing more students. As we shall see in later chapters, there are underlying tensions here linked to issues of justice for the individual student. In group work assessment, for example, research indicates that students are exercised about ‘free-riders’ or ‘passengers’ who fail to contribute sufficiently to collaborative assignments (eg Kennedy, 1997; Bourner, Hughes and Bourner, 2001). How this problem is managed is an ethical issue as much as a technical one.

Finally, the traditional role of the state as a benevolent benefactor has been replaced by national governments acting as a ‘hands-on’ customer (Scott, 1995). This has manifested itself in the UK via the work of the funding councils in auditing the quality of teaching and research. The audit of research quality is also a feature of the Australian higher education system. Similarly, students are now encouraged to think of themselves as consumers of educational services. The notion of professionalism in university teaching is being shaped by the emergence of this more service-oriented culture with the ‘student-as-customer’ (Scott, 1999) in an increasingly competitive, market-driven higher education system. This has created another pressure within universities for teaching staff to adopt a more professional approach to their practice.

Professional development

Despite the emergence of a mass higher education system, the academic community has still retained elite ‘instincts’ or ‘habits’ (Scott, 1995). One of these elite instincts has long been the notion that academics do not require development for their teaching role beyond the acquisition of a doctorate. This elitist instinct, though, is on the wane. In the UK, the recommendations of the Dearing report (NCIHE, 1997) have led to the rapid development of professional development programmes for lecturers at most UK universities. Many of these programmes have been shaped by the dominant notion of developing ‘reflective practitioners’ (Schon, 1983) and the philosophy of student-centred learning (eg Ramsden, 1992; Laurillard, 1993). It is somewhat ironic, though, that the widespread acceptance of ‘student-centred’ teaching methods has coincided with massification. The practical difficulties of responding to student needs on an individual basis pose a major challenge for lecturers in the context of rising numbers and a deteriorating staff–student ratio.

Many programmes in the UK have been explicitly designed to conform to the accreditation requirements of the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE), a professional body for teachers in higher education formed in 1999 as a result of a recommendation contained in the Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997). The foundation of the ILTHE was preceded in the United States by the establishment of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in response to the work of Boyer (1990) and others on the scholarship of teaching and learning. The Carnegie Foundation, along with bodies such as the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Canada, provides a forum for debate, research and dissemination of best pedagogic practice, with associated fellowship schemes to showcase the work of innovative and committed teachers. Although parallel schemes are now in place within many institutions to reward excellence in teaching, pedagogic research and curriculum innovation, kudos and recognition within the academic community are seen to lie elsewhere, in subject-based research. Crucially, academics still sense that their achievements in subject-based research, rather than teaching, are more influential in terms of career advancement (Gibbs, 2002). The culture in this respect will take a long time to change.

The erosion of autonomy

The right to exercise some degree of autonomy in their ‘immediate work setting’ is a key characteristic of a professional person (Laffin, 1986: 21). Traditionally, university lecturers have enjoyed a consider- able degree of autonomy in the way in which they manage teaching and learning relationships with students in writing courses, setting assignments, grading academic work, granting extensions and generally taking a whole series of decisions affecting students both individually and as a group. This does not mean that this power of discretion has always been used wisely or responsibly. While the age of consumerism is now upon us, a more deferential culture preceded it where academics were unaccustomed to having their decisions challenged. Freedom to exercise untrammelled authority over students should not be confused with some sort of ‘golden age’ of academic life. It was not a panacea for all ills. It led, in some instances, to an arbitrariness of decision making and abuses of power.

On the other hand, the environment of contemporary academic life is increasingly rule-bound. Governments across the world now demand that national higher education systems provide ‘value for money’. They act as customers rather than benefactors, with students (and their parents) increasingly adopting the same attitude. Accountability has become a key watchword in respect of stakeholders such as students, parents, employers and general taxpayers. Government agencies have been charged with exercising this more ‘hands-on’ responsibility for ensuring that higher education offers value for money. In the UK, the work of the Quality Assurance Agency for higher education, and professional bodies in many subject areas, means that neither teaching nor the curriculum is any longer the private preserve of ‘academic rule’ (Moodie, 1996).

The room for professional discretion and judgement has been slowly eroded by a range of interrelated changes in higher education. These include massification, consumerism, modularization of the curriculum, the casualization of academic labour, government control and ‘new’ managerialism. In this environment, complex ethical issues of teaching practice are subjected to reductionist forces, with universities producing increasingly detailed and defensive codes and regulations. Such an approach seeks to convert complex ethical issues of pedagogic practice into a simplified series of rules driven by an emphasis on standardized regulations. These rules are often created by senior academic, managerial and administrative staff rather than engaging frontline teaching staff who have a better understanding of the current operational reality. As a result, many new lecturers are being inducted into a culture that discourages the use of personal judgement in resolving ethical issues in teaching (Macfarlane, 2001).

The rule makers in academic life are now the managers rather than the academics. The creation of managed national competition between higher education institutions and the evolution of global competition between universities have brought about irrevocable changes in management styles within higher education. So-called ‘new managerialism’ is a phrase which has come to represent this radical shift (Dearlove, 1995). Academic management based on principles of consensus and collegiality has been largely replaced by centralized management teams involved in market-led decision making.
According to some analysts, the experience of staff in higher education has become one of ‘subjection’ to ‘untrammelled managerial power’ (Winter, 1996: 71). The competitive position of the institution determines issues in relation to the curriculum, research and teaching. In consequence, new managerialism has had the effect of divesting academic faculties and departments of their decision-making authority while simultaneously placing more responsibility at a lower level for key responsibilities such as budgetary management. Since it is central to the competitive position of the university, the management of the student learning experience is no longer the sole preserve of academic departments.

The forces of massification have shaped new challenges to the traditional authority of academics and presented practical problems in managing ever-larg...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FOREWORD
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART 1: THE PROFESSIONAL AND ETHICAL CONTEXT
• PART 2: PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
• PART 3: IDENTIFYING THE VIRTUES
• APPENDIX THE CASE STUDIES
• REFERENCES