At the start of day one of my orientation as a full time professor, we all sat in a large room and listened to multiple administrators tell us that “Georgetown is special because we value teaching and research equally.” After this and a few more institutional platitudes, the administrators concluded the welcoming ceremony, turned the proceedings over to three professors, and left the room.
This would be the first of several panels comprising the “actual” orientation, and I was completely unprepared for what was about to unfold. The first professor to speak made a show of making sure the administrators were gone, and then stated categorically that teaching didn't matter whatsoever in terms of one's career, and that this was true regardless of the department. The other professors, each from a different department, nodded in agreement. The three spent the rest of their time block sharing various tips on how to phone in the teaching part of the job without giving the overt appearance of doing so. They told us to schedule office hours during lunchtime in order to discourage students from attending. Or, schedule office hours so that they conflict with when the courses required for the major meet. And so on…
It bears repeating—although the panel had some innocuous title I’ve long since forgotten, it was part of the official new faculty welcoming and orientation event. Two of the professors mentioned sat on this particular panel before. So much for the official school line about the equal emphasis placed on teaching and research…
I'd overheard similar things said between faculty members about the utter disregard for teaching while I was a grad student. Still, to hear things spelled out so clearly, unmistakably, and unselfconsciously really knocked me over.
I don't know what I would have done if I’d known this as an undergrad. I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d known this as a grad student. As a faculty member though, I found it just appalling. I still find it appalling, even with the understanding that, from a faculty perspective, it’s in many ways a systemic issue.
When research is the only thing that really matters, faculty have no incentive from a career standpoint to invest in developing pedagogy, unless it can be tied to research. Worse, innovation is actually disincentivized—challenging and changing accepted pedagogical practices takes a lot of time and effort. It’s far easier to go with the flow, especially when that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
The gap between what is said about the value of teaching and what is done to value teaching isn’t something specific to Georgetown. I’ve talked with friends who teach at various schools, some with tenure and some as adjuncts, and they’ve had similar experiences. From an institutional standpoint, which quickly becomes an individual standpoint, teaching is under-supported and undervalued.
I was extremely fortunate and extremely privileged so that I could be a bad teacher long enough to get enough on-the-job experience to become a better teacher. This was years and years in the making—as an instructor for adult continuing education courses, a teaching assistant, an adjunct, and an assistant professor.
My training? In grad school, we took a 1-semester “learn to be a T.A.” course, which felt more like a box for the university to check for liability purposes than anything else. It was heavy on griping and nonexistent on pedagogy. I know other schools have a more rigorous training protocol, but I also know that plenty don’t.
Generally speaking, we don’t adequately train people to teach in higher education and we don’t adequately value teaching in higher education. You might be tempted to conclude that we don’t adequately value students in higher education—that seems to me to be the clear institutional statement on the matter. Pretty undeniable, when you look at it.
There are *so* many ways to interpret the idea that we need to “invest in teachers and in teaching,” and I think every one of those interpretations is valid.