So (according to a headline in IHE I noticed while reading about student antics in Oklahoma), the American College on Education has released a report entitled Unpacking Relationships: Instruction and Student Outcomes. I can't seem to find an actual copy of the report (even in the "store" section of the ACE site), so I have no idea what methodology was used, but, according to the press release on which the IHE article appears to be closely based, findings include these gems:
The paper concludes that for students to succeed, they must be engaged in stimulating and effective learning environments. But for that to happen, “faculty need to help students make connections between various learning experiences and the end goals of higher education by supporting student-centered learning environments,” the paper notes.
“Instruction matters,” the paper states. “And higher education needs to provide support for faculty to help students attain outcomes.”
However, the evidence-based instructional practices that have been widely documented as effective in promoting better student outcomes are not widely used, the paper also concludes. It explores five areas of intersection between instruction and student outcomes:My first reaction to most of this is "duh." My reaction to the sentence in red is, well, to see red. I can't speak for other disciplines (though many of you can, and I suspect you'll say you're doing these things, or doing your best given class size and other conditions), but I do this stuff. My colleagues do this stuff. This is very, very old news in composition world (so much so that we've got a decades-old set of basic writing-intensive course expectations and a nearly decade-old faculty evaluation rubric that ensure that we're doing most of them).
- Transparency: Students must have a clear understanding of where they are going as well as the criteria that will be used to assess that they have gotten there.
- Pedagogical Approaches: Pedagogical approaches, such as high-impact practices and personalized instruction, are linked to enhancing student learning, involvement and engagement beyond simply making the coherence of the educational experience clear to students.
- Assessment: Students need multiple opportunities to practice learning in a variety of situations to facilitate the transfer of knowledge.
- Self-regulation: The active participation of students in their own learning is a necessary component of the relationship between instruction and student outcomes.
“This paper shows the vital role effective instruction plays in student success, what type of practices can have a positive impact and the importance of building institutional capacity to support faculty,” said ACE President Molly Corbett Broad. “It documents a path forward that can lead to higher postsecondary graduation rates and help students and institutions meet their academic goals.”
- Alignment: The alignment of elements such as content, instructional design, pedagogical approaches, assignments and evaluative criteria is critical to successful learning environments.
What we don't have, of course, is a reasonable course load (which would allow us to do even more of this), or salaries that would allow us to focus on teaching without financial distractions, or tenure or service built into our jobs (which might give us a chance to tell the administrators who will no doubt start lecturing us about this stuff in the coming weeks that we're already doing it).
Oh, and according to an earlier press release, this gem is the result of a $1 million initiative which includes "a particular focus on contingent faculty, who comprise the majority of today’s instructors at many institutions and often bring valuable practical knowledge to the classroom but lack instructional training" [yep; seeing red again]. Admittedly I'm working from my own institutional and disciplinary perspective, but in my department (and in a number of others at my institution) contingent faculty are (1) career academics, not moonlighting or retired professionals [though it seems impossible to convince the provost that this pattern exists, at least in some departments] and (2) by far the most experienced instructors, especially if you measure experience by number of sections taught in average conditions (i.e. as part of a part- or full-time adjunct load). But we rarely get a chance to share our expertise, or to play a role in curricular decisions. It used to be that our tenure-track colleagues made those decisions; these days, it more and more seems they're being made by people at the administrative level, some of them experienced teachers, but even those some years removed from teaching intro and gen ed courses in average conditions. Leaving aside the basic inequity of such an arrangement, it strikes me as a waste of human capital, and institutional knowledge.
Update: I finally found the report itself, courtesy of google and a tweet from an independent-school head. Not sure why it isn't linked from the press release, but it allows for nonprofit dissemination, so here's a link to the PDF. A few notes for those who don't bother to click: it's a synthetic report (no original research), 24 pp. in all, with the actual report taking up 12 pages (including some good-sized pictures), and the bibliography occupying another four. The citations used to support statements that we need to move to a constructivist model from a lecture-based ones are also among the oldest: 1995 and 1997. I'm not seeing any actual support for the statement that more effective methods aren't in wide use (it may, of course, be a common refrain in the source studies; I didn't track those down).
I think it is telling that these items are juxtaposed in no particular order as if to imply equal effect on the outcome; the truth is far from it. At least the phrasing is somewhat honest [emphasis added]:
ReplyDeleteTransparency: Students must...
Pedagogical Approaches: ...are linked to enhancing student learning...
Assessment: Students need...
Self-regulation: ...a necessary component...
Alignment: ...is critical...
I could be wrong, but it seems that Transparency, Assessment, and Alignment are lower-hanging fruit, i.e., determined while the course is in development stage, and then simply carried out. For example, grading criteria are spelled out in the syllabus, topics are arranged in a coherent order, learning objectives are provided for each class meeting or assignment, etc.
Pedagogical Approaches require the most work. Whether you are sage on the stage or guide on the side, you are doing it all semester, having given it great attention while prepping. And yet, the best you can do by altering your approach is to have it be "linked to enhancing student learning". Why so tenuous a connection?
Answer: because without Student Self-regulation, the whole thing goes out the window. Irrespective of whether they fucking want to do the work, when students just don't fucking do the work, nothing you do will help. Something about horses and water.
The report itself (see link above) is similarly disjointed, perhaps because they tried to partially review literature on 5 different subjects in the space of 12 pages (with illustrations and fairly wide spacing/margins). Transitions/connections wouldn't pass muster in my undergraduate class, and the self-regulation section, like the others, appears to be a quick skim over ideas in a half-dozen or more sources, without any in-depth examination.
DeletePedagogical Approaches: Pedagogical approaches, such as high-impact practices and personalized instruction...
ReplyDeleteHow am I supposed to deliver personalized instruction when I have >100 students per class?
Assessment: Students need multiple opportunities to practice learning in a variety of situations to facilitate the transfer of knowledge.
Who is going to grade all these low-stakes assessments? Our TAs are already overworked just running and grading labs. I usually give eight homework assignments per semester plus 10 in-class assignments, but I had to cut homeworks back to six in fall because I was flat-out exhausted by mid-semester. Why did I get so exhausted? Because my enrollment was double my usual number.
The emperor has no clothes. My university pretends it values teaching, but allocates about 1/3 of the resources required to do it well.
Yep. That's about the size of it.
DeleteI would say many of those are not the norm in my field. Alignment particularly stands out.
ReplyDeleteWhat passes for being pedagogically woke in my field is to be able to use these buzzwords in speech, whether or not you're actually making them happen in the classroom. My department uses learning outcomes that aren't, and in practicality can't be, aligned to what everyone is doing in the classroom (e.g. one of them says that students will be able to compare and contrast different rodents, when pretty much the entire department, and everyone who teaches the class with that learning outcome, is a hamster specialist only.)
Agreed that a lot of this could change with actual support from the administration. I'm plotting a post on the complete lack of overlap between what they teach you at the Teaching Support Center and what you're actually evaluated on.
That's an important point. I think the degree of pedagogical evolution varies considerably from department to department, and I'm very aware that, as a contingent faculty member who doesn't get out of my own department much, I don't have the bigger picture.
DeleteEvaluation also matters, a lot. I'll look forward to your post.
Oh, this hits my pet peeve (or one of them, anyway).
ReplyDeleteStudents: We like our classes just fine. But we want to get our financial aid checks on time, we need reliable transportation for those of us who don't have cars and a 21st century parking permit process for those of us who do, some of us need on-campus childcare, and we'd all like someplace to eat on campus that's open after three.
Administration: *Does nothing about the issues mentioned above, sends the teaching faculty through professional development. Again.*
So familiar...
DeleteThe good news is that we have relatively little required professional development (yet?).
DeleteI think my institution just creates a new administrative position and moves everybody up a level. So far they seem to spend more time talking to each other than bothering the faculty, but I do worry about what they're planning without much input from us.
Cassandra says it well:
ReplyDelete1) duh
2) see red--yes we do this
3) contingent faculty are not valued
4) pedagogy is increasingly the province and product of administrators who are pressured by external forces to invent meaningless accountability scales to measure unquantifiable (beyond course grades) attainment of skills.
That's a good point about the pressures on administrators (though I'd be a bit more sympathetic if they didn't keep proliferating. At least at my place, it doesn't all seem to be in response to unfunded mandates, but I could be missing something. I've definitely got a limited perspective.)
Delete