Chapter 1 Summary
- Faculty Identities
- Philosophies of Teaching
- Student Identities
- From College Ready to Student Ready
- Student-Centered Institutions
- Student-Centered Educators
- Reflection and Review
- Grit and Growth Mindset
Letās embark upon a journey together. I imagine you chose this book because youāre a faculty member who cares about your students and wants to improve your practice as an educator. (If thatās not true, then this book probably isnāt for you. Iāll understand if you choose to stop reading now, although I hope youāll continue.)
The first stage of our journey will begin before we take a single step. This chapter will help us find our bearingsāto locate the little dot on the map labeled āYou Are Hereā so we can plot a course that will take us to our destination. Therefore, weāll start by developing an understanding of the identities, values, and beliefs that guide our work as educators. Weāll also examine who our students are and how their identities have changed. The knowledge weāll gain prepares us for the work in which weāll engage throughout our journey, leading toward our development of student-centered and student-ready philosophies of teaching and a more accurate understanding of our students.
Faculty Identities
Imagine youāre at a social gathering. You strike up a conversation with a new acquaintance who asks, āSo, what do you do?ā How would you respond?
Many faculty might say, āI teach ___ [name of subject] at ___ [name of institution],ā or āIām a professor of ___ [name of subject] at ___ [name of institution].ā
Connections between work and identity are particularly strong for professionals: when weāre asked how we see ourselves, we commonly respond with statements about our jobs, as in the previous examples.1 Clearly, the act of teaching takes priority in these statements, but the phrasing is somewhat curious. To say, for example, āI teach molecular biologyā usually means āI teach students the theories and practices of molecular biology,ā but we seldom phrase it this way. The same is true of saying, āI am a professor of music.ā To profess is to boldly state a claim, which implies the existence of an audience. To whom are you professing your knowledge? The habit of omitting students from our statements of identity may be nothing more than a verbal mannerism or figure of speech, but itās also indicative of our perceptions and attitudes toward our work. After all, teaching is not an activity conducted in isolation, nor does the subject we teach have anything to learn from us. Although we may not be aware of it, leaving students out of our statements of professional identity reveals that, at least for many faculty, our focus remains firmly on our discipline.
We include the name of the place we teach when someone asks, āSo, what do you do?ā because the institution plays a significant role in our professional identities. Its reputation, status, history, and brand shape how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. Likewise, our role within the institution affects those perceptions, including the degrees or titles we hold, our academic rank, tenure status, and affiliations with groups within the institution. Itās all part of our professional identity, defining who we are and how others think of us.
Most faculty develop a professional identity in graduate school, where we absorb the values, attitudes, and disciplinary norms of the faculty under whom we study. Terminal degree programs place a primary emphasis on research or creative practice. Graduate students may work as teaching assistants or graduate instructors, but a demonstration of competence in teaching is seldom required for graduation. Instead, our studies lead to qualification as disciplinary experts. Then, equipped with this new status, we obtain work as educatorsāa job for which weāve had little to no prior training.2
Our experience as graduate students transmits implicit expectations about how teaching works. Most of the faculty from whom graduate students learn tend to rely on lectures or direct instruction as their primary teaching method. As a result, their students emulate this technique once they become faculty members themselves. Graduate students and new faculty members also internalize faculty cultures that value and reward engagement in research or creative activity over the pursuit of excellence in teaching, mirrored in the systems by which faculty achieve professional distinction through peer-reviewed publication, exhibition, or performance. Furthermore, institutional systems for retention, promotion, and tenure often include a peer-review component whereby faculty evaluate one another, usually emphasizing disciplinary achievement over excellence in teaching.3 It should come as no surprise, then, that many (if not most) faculty hold their research or creative practice in higher esteem than their work as educators.
Philosophies of Teaching
Institutions of higher learning frequently include the term āstudent centeredā in their mission and vision statements, strategic plans, and promotional materials. Do our institutionsā public claims of being student centered align with our own attitudes toward teaching? The answer lies in our professional identities and philosophies of education, both of which exist within the highly institutionalized environment of higher education.
First, a common understanding of the meaning of the term āstudent centeredā might be helpful. The Glossary of Educational Reform defines āstudent-centered learningā as āa wide variety of educational programs, learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic support strategies that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students and groups of students.ā4
Itās one thing for an institution to declare that itās student centered, but this philosophy is nothing more than an attractive slogan until faculty come to see themselves as both disciplinary practitioners and educators, understanding that one identity need not displace the other. Institutions can facilitate this change by providing professional development, time to create and revise curriculum and pedagogies as an established and protected staple of a faculty memberās load, and incentives that persuade faculty to take action to become better educators. However, developing a student-centered philosophy of education primarily depends on changing our minds about what we do as educators, influenced by the extent to which we retain a traditionally faculty-centered perspective.
Faculty-Centered vs Student-Centered Models of Education
What springs to mind when you picture teaching and learning in higher education? Many of us immediately envision a middle-aged white man standing at the front of a lecture hall. Thereās a projected presentation on a large screen behind him, and heās facing a sizeable group of students seated in theatre-style rows, all taking notes. Itās a clichĆ©, I know, but how many times a day does this scene play out on nearly every campus? Most of us sat in these lecture halls when we were in college, and many of us still teach in them today.
Since time immemorial, higher education has focused both literally and figuratively on the instructor, whose status as a disciplinary expert imparts a high degree of prestige as well as autonomy over the pedagogies and curricula they choose to employ. Weāre quite comfortable with the instructor as the center of attention. Given the path that most of us took to the professorate, itās no surprise that we would presume this is simply how education has always been and will always be.
Faculty-Centered Teaching
Faculty seldom spend much time contemplating their philosophy of teaching unless weāre asked for a written statement to accompany a job application, nor is this a requirement of most graduate programs outside the field of education. Nevertheless, our explicit and implicit teaching philosophies drive our approaches to the pedagogies and curricula we choose to use in our classrooms, labs, and studios. In Chapter 2 of Higher Education by Design, I presented a brief overview of educational philosophy, including the following (emphasis added):
Traditional approaches to education might be termed āinstructivism,ā rooted in John Lockeās Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), in which Locke proposes that the human mind is a blank slate at birth, filled by accumulated experience. Education has, therefore, historically been predicated on the belief that studentsā minds are empty until filled by the instructor, who carefully plans and organizes a program of study on behalf of the learner. Learners must first become literate and gain a measure of self-discipline in order to pay attention to the information presented by the instructor and to remember concepts they do not understand, including rote memorization of information.5 Clearly, this is an instructor-centered6 model of learning, with the student remaining a passive recipient of transmitted knowledge.
Similarly, the Glossary of E...
