In this entry, I continue my reading log of Scholarship Reconsidered, by Ernest Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In Chapter 3, "The Faculty: A Mosaic of Talent" Boyer explores the diversity of faculty work and contemplates alternative methods for assessing a professor's scholarly performance. ....

Boyer begins this chapter by exploring the ways in which institutions value research scholarship over other methods. Publication proves that one is "staying in touch" with one's field, and thus it makes sense to incorporate publication records into faculty assessment. But Boyer proposes a common sense alternative: "Why not assume," Boyer writes, "that staying in touch with one's field means just that -- reading the literature and keeping well informed about consequential trends and patterns?" (28). (He even goes so far as to suggest that faculty simply write a paper for the deans, chairs and evaluators about the recent trends in their field to prove it, rather than publish discoveries in research).

After mapping a major shift toward rewarding research "at the expense of teaching," he outlines dissatisfactions among faculty about how they are assessed and evaluated for tenure and promotion. In the surveys conducted by the Carnegie Foundation that form the data set upon which this book's recommendations are drawn, Boyer notes that more than 60% of faculty feel that teaching effectiveness should be the primary criterion for promotion, not publication. There are problems, too, with publication as a criterion: faculty are skeptical about the way in which their publications are reviewed by committees; faculty believe that quantity counts more than quality; different disciplines get different levels of funding for research; and different disciplines conduct research in radically different ways. 68% of faculty believe that we need better ways than publication to evaluate scholarly performance (34).

Next Boyer outlines some alternatives that will allow a full range of faculty talent to be assessed. He encourages a broader range of writing which should "count" as research: textbook authorship; "popular writing" for non-specialists; journalism; preparing software; communicating via TV and radio; and designing new courses or participating in curricular innovation.

Finally, Boyer dips his toe in the area of evaluating teaching. He calls this "a mare's nest of controversy" not only because of the difficulties of judging it, but because it is valued differently at different institutions. He explains:

Teaching, as presently viewed, is like a currency that has value in its own country but can't be converted into other currencies. It may be highly regarded on a sizeable campus, and yet not be a particularly marketable skill. Thus for faculty members whose primary loyalty is to their careers rather than to their institutions, teaching now counts little in increasing prospects to move on and move up. Consequently, excellence in the classroom all too often is undervalued. (37)

To better assess teaching, Boyer recommends that assessment come from three sources: students, peers, and one's self. Aside from the usual methods that are in place for these areas, he offers some unique possibilities. He recommends that teachers prepare statements about their teaching philosophy (as they do when they apply for jobs). He suggests that faculty peers form "teaching circles" where they evaluate one another in a reflective manner. Submitting essays about classwork to teaching-oriented journals, too, might provide a method for assessing what goes on in the classroom. Asking former students to provide assessments of classes as much as current students. And finally, he suggests that "how to assess teaching" be taught in Freshman orientation, in order to make student evaluations more meaningful.

Boyer concludes by citing Kenneth Eble's call to administrators to "Put less stress on evaluating what we have done and more on stimulating what we might do" in order to reward and encourage faculty creativity and talent (41). The next chapter will discuss creativity further.

UNSTRUCTURED RESPONSE:
I liked the creative forms of assessment that Boyer encourages in this chapter. Particularly, I saw my own work reflected in his call for different sorts of publication to "count": especially popular writing. I am lucky, I think, to be at an institution where my creative writing in popular genre fiction and poetry are actually embraced and rewarded. Part of this is because we run a graduate program in Writing Popular Fiction. But another part of the equation is that many of my colleagues and supervisors realize the value of popular writing and understand that, say, writing a poem, is a form of faculty work that feeds back into my teaching of poetry. Traditional academic publishing is rewarded just as much -- if not more -- but it is seen as part of a whole, not an end in itself. I appreciate that. I don't know if I would be so active in my creative writing if it wasn't rewarded by my institution. I'm not sure how "portable" my credentials are to other institutions, either -- but that's no matter to me right now, because I'm teaching in a program that is ideal for me.

Speaking of "portability," Boyer's contention that "teaching is like a currency that can't be converted" from school to school is an interesting one. It explains to me why teaching is undervalued by some professors. The self-serving logic goes like this: "If publications are all that matter, why bother growing as a teacher when I can spend more time on research, racking up publications that will enable me to move to a better paying, more prestigious institution?" The problem with such "careering" lies not only at the feet of the self-serving professor who cares more about himself than his students -- it is a symptom of an institutional pathology that encourages this attitude. If number of publications is all that matters because it is the most visible public way of keeping score, then there should also be a way to assess and reward teaching is an equally public way. Until more colleges reward teaching in the ways that Boyer recommends, the problem will probably only escalate. As many faculty realize, the "publish or perish" paradigm depends very much on the economy of publishing itself, rather than on their own importance. And commerce eventually drives the scholarship, rather than intellectual pursuit. Reconsidering Scholarship today is all the more crucial, given the growth in electronic publishing and other alternative forms of conducting research.

I liked Boyer's point about using publication as an avenue toward evaluating teaching. There are many pedagogy journals that are available online or in print, and many refereed journals in any given field of study would consider essays on teaching that subject (there are several in English, of course). Faculty associations (like the MLAor NCTE in English) offer journals that explore teaching in the discipline; and then there's the more general interest academic publications like The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Wow, I've written a lot more on this chapter than I anticipated, given that it's a relatively short one. The next chapter looks very interesting to me, because it takes into account how to assess shifts in a faculty member's interest over the years.

You can ping this entry by using .