What Is The Future Of The Disciplinary Expert In The Academy?
Note: This post is part of our League Symposium on Higher Education in the 21st Century. You can read the introductory post for the Symposium here. To see a list of all posts in the Symposium so far, click here.
By Alex Small
I want to ask a somewhat different question than most posters probably will: What is the role and future of the professor’s expertise? To explain why this question matters (isn’t the whole point of college that you learn advanced things from experts?), I need to make some digressions on the recent history of higher education. Some might wonder if this question matters when universities are all about to be swept away by online schools. Even then, I would argue that the question of expertise matters. Do you want an online course with subject matter decided on by somebody whose professional emphasis is the subject matter itself and the practice and application of the material, or somebody whose research focus is on educational methods relevant to that material?
(Please note that I am writing this from the perspective of a theoretical physicist at an undergraduate-focused public university.)
1. Professors, Research, and Expertise
It is often said that the rule of the academy is “Publish or perish!” This is true at research-oriented universities, which place a substantial emphasis on doctoral-level education. It is also true at the more elite private undergraduate colleges. Good luck getting tenure at one of those places without significant scholarly output. However, historically it was not true at the lower-tier state schools (the ones with few Master’s programs and few/no doctoral programs) and many private undergraduate colleges. Generally, the faculty at these places focused on teaching. That’s not to say that they did no research, and there were always a few who produced spectacular research in teaching-oriented schools, but the general trend was more modest levels of research output. One wouldn’t fear perishing for lack of publishing.
That has changed in recent decades, for a number of reasons. Part of it is pursuit of prestige and grant money. Part is recognition that students learn valuable things from participating in research. Go to an undergraduate-focused institution and you’ll find students in the research labs contributing to projects. And there are other factors.
At the same time, “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” has exploded in popularity. In my field it’s known as Physics Education Research (PER). The rise of this field is largely driven by insights into how people learn. Some of it is synergistic with the increased emphasis on research in teaching-oriented institutions—if your institution places a heavy emphasis on teaching, what could be more relevant than studying how effective your teaching is? However, there is also a tension between the findings of pedagogical research and the belief that students will benefit from being taught by faculty with active research programs.
I should also pause to emphasize that educational research in the university classroom differs from K-12 educational trends in that the people doing it usually have a PhD in the field that they are teaching. If you do research in physics education, you go to a physics department and get a PhD in physics. You take the same physics courses and qualifying exams as any other physics PhD student, but your thesis project involves researching a question on how people learn in the physics classroom instead of a question about the physical world. They have a solid foundation in physics, but their perspective remains (understandably) somewhat different from that of other physicists.
2. Much of the scholarship of teaching and learning is valuable, and I use it.
Before I dissent, let me emphasize that I find three modern pedagogical insights completely unobjectionable, and consistent with the common sense and experience of any good teacher:
First, people learn more from a class if they read/study/practice beforehand. This is true whether the class is a lecture in a large hall, a video on their iPad, a discussion in a small room, or an online chat. If you’ve examined the material before the presentation and discussion, you’ll learn more from the presentation and discussion. Consequently, I give online quizzes before many of my classes. Students have an incentive to review the material before I discuss it, and I can tailor my discussion based on their answers. This is really just a modern version of an ancient practice called “Doing the reading before class.” (Nowadays, though, they call it a “flipped class”, because everybody loves buzzwords!)
Second, people learn more if they are thinking and discussing, not just sitting there. Thus, I break up my lecture with questions to the room. Often these questions are multiple choice, and they use a “clicker” (basically, a remote control) to answer after discussing the possibilities with those around them. I see how many people selected each answer and I know whether to spend more time on the topic or move on.
Third, people learn more from constant feedback on their work. Thus, I give a lot of online homework, so they immediately know if they got the right answer or need to do it over for partial credit. Say what you will about partial credit, but doing it until you get it right is better than waiting a week to find out if you did it right.
3. On the other hand…
As much as I use these tools, I dissent from some PER prescriptions. They tend to take the common sense things that I have just pointed to and dress it up in a lot of jargon. Some of their workshops are also very preachy. Academic science might have a lot of atheists, but to this squishy Catholic many educational presentations feel like evangelical church services.
Beyond concerns about style, one big divide between the PER community and other physicists is over the types of questions and homework problems that we value. Delving into the specifics would take us far from the question I want to get to. The key point is that there is a fundamental difference of perspective.
4. Another, arguably bigger difference
As much as I value keeping students engaged and thinking and working during class, I don’t want to completely shut up. Attribute it to a personality flaw, if you like. Or, use the common “sage on the stage” metaphor to dismiss me. In my view, I absolutely love physics and want to share it. And I don’t just want to share via whatever activities a team of pedagogical researchers prescribed. No, I want to share the way that a real, live practicioner thinks about and uses these powerful tools and ideas. When I’m not teaching I’m doing research. I am constantly thinking about physics, solving problems in my main research projects as well as various side projects. I may not be Feynman, but I still have insights to share! I have been working in research since my freshman year of college. I have loved every minute of my journey in physics, and I want to share some of that.
However, educational researchers say that students only learn via activities. What matters is the students and what they do, not what the instructor says to passive listeners. I should shut up and give them group work, whether that group work is in a lab or in a small classroom or in an online forum. At one workshop, a more adamant type bragged that he won’t even answer questions because he wants students to look things up on their own. There’s an important idea in there, there’s a place for “Did you try looking it up?” But the subtext is that the professor’s expertise has no place in the learning, and that even careful answers to questions detract from learning. There’s no point to a role model showing how he or she would do it. I recall reading an article by somebody who had done some very clever things to make a class more activity-based (including some activities that I plan to borrow), and they were almost ashamed as they described how they lectured on a few subtle topics because the material just didn’t lend itself to activities. Is this a classroom or a confessional booth?
As for me, I want a balance. I want students doing things, but I also want to share my perspective, my love of the subject, and be an example. If pedagogy researchers made group activities that really modeled how an expert did things, I might reluctantly shut up. (Maybe.) But pedagogy researchers look at the subject from such a different perspective that their activities rarely show how practicioners think. They ask different questions and value different things. There’s a place for that (indeed, I have argued that my department should include a pedagogy researcher in the next batch of hires!), but it shouldn’t all be that way.
5. Or should it?
Let’s take pedagogy researchers seriously. They certainly have more statistical data than I do. Maybe they’re right, and the instructor’s perspective is not what matters. OK, it mattered to me in college, but those of us who get PhDs and become professors are unusual sorts. For 99% of students it doesn’t matter. If so, then what we really need are faculty who fully understand and accept the rationales behind activities designed by pedagogy researchers, who are not just partial adopters like I am, but rather are fully-immersed in the educational literature. They will develop and teach classes that are 100% best practices, 100% focused on the students and their activities, and not on a sharing of the perspective of the “sage on the stage.”
Still, I think that we need a balance, and that half the point of college is to go beyond learning what is already known. Maybe 4 out of 5 experts do agree that some particular activity designed by a team of pedagogy researchers is the most effective way to convey a given concept. (Yes, toothpaste ads are applicable metaphors, on multiple levels.) At some point, though, students need to encounter the example of experts struggling with the unknown. Some of that comes from guided research projects, and some comes from advanced specialty courses that go to the limits of what is known (e.g. in some of my advanced classes students will read research articles published in the last few years). However, some of that comes from role models who say “The material we’re covering here is well-established stuff, but the approach that I will take here, the sorts of questions and methods that I will use, are the same that I use in my own research. They’re also the same questions and methods that I use when approaching a topic that is known to others but not (yet) to me.”
Still, that is just my take. It’s a take that would resonate at some proudly traditional private institutions, but at a large state school that is devoted to efficiently serving the masses it may not be a relevant take.
One reason I think that my traditional take is relevant is the pace of change in the modern world. In a world that changes faster and faster and confronts us with more and more information, the last thing you need (at least after crossing certain basic levels of competence) is more training designed around the most efficient path to discovery of known results. You should encounter sophisticated role models approaching new ideas, because you’ll spend your life confronting more and more new ideas. In a changing world, anchors matter more, not less. I hope for a balance, where pedagogy researchers provide guidance on how to present ideas, and people doing basic disciplinary research decide what ideas to present.
If I’m wrong, though, it is rather funny that teaching-oriented schools have increased their emphasis on research at the precise same time that educational research has called into question the relevance of faculty expertise in the discipline. Why does the school want me to go out and probe the unknown if my experience is irrelevant to the students? Why does the school want me to continuously polish my skills in the field if my perspective is not what matters? Don’t hire and evaluate people based on their research, hire people with a sound foundation in physics and deep immersion in modern pedagogy. The increased emphasis on faculty research is irrelevant in this new model.
Finally, what about online classes? The dilemmas that I outlined are arguably just as relevant. Do you want an online class where all of the videos and simulations and guided activities were designed by four out of five experts who agree that this particular presentation is the best way to guide you to understanding this concept? Or do you want online access to presentations from the perspective of a world-renowned expert? In reality you’ll get a bit of each…I hope. Or maybe the pedagogy researchers will prove that the sage on the webpage is just as irrelevant as the sage on the stage. We need to take that possibility seriously, and confront it.
Alex,
What struck me about this piece is how much of the tension you describe is present on the other end of the education spectrum, where I work, in early childhood education. What this tells me is that this tension is consistent throughout our education system, though likely takes different forms in different contexts. I don’t know of any K-12 schools that have anything akin to a PER program, but most encourage or require teachers to taking part in continuing teacher education, sending them out to class, conferences, or workshops to learn from experts on best practices and pedagogy.
Where I think many of these “teaching the teacher” programs fall flat, be they designed for pre-K teachers like myself or theoretical physicists like yourself, is when they attempt to make universal declarations. Students, no matter what age, are unique and individual. Some will learn better from teaching practice A while others will learn better from teaching practice B. Perhaps the vast majority will do better with A than B, making A preferable if individual tailoring of instructional methods is not possible; but that doesn’t make A better than B or A right and B wrong. In such a circumstance, one would ideally teach primarily using method A but would sprinkle in method B. This ensures all students would get some opportunity to learn in their “first language” while also stretching students to work through times of difficulty and become more flexible as learners.
Looking more specifically, I have long championed socio-constructivist teaching, which often gets simplified down to having students do projects in groups. I recently came across an article (which I need to read more thoroughly and write up) that showed this approach might only benefit top-level students; others generally won’t make the same gains and need to learn from a “sage on a stage”. Vygotsky’s theory was predicated on interacting with others who are within one’s zone of proximal development (ZPD), which is defined as what an individual cannot do independently but can do with guidance. I see no reason why a professor with an expertise cannot serve as just such a “learning partner” for a college student.Report
Why is it only physics that supports “physics education” professionals? I don’t see folks in CS, Chemistry, Biology devoting their professional career to “teaching people how to learn our material better.”Report
Why is it only physics that supports “physics education” professionals? I don’t see folks in CS, Chemistry, Biology devoting their professional career to “teaching people how to learn our material better.”
Physics has one particular problem (and math the same problem, to an even greater degree IMO, so I’ll stick with that) that most of the other areas don’t, and that problem is what gets the field interested in teaching methods. Every engineering and science discipline sends all of their beginning students over to the math department for three semesters of calculus and a semester of differential equations. Maybe linear algebra too. They want their students to learn the mechanics as quickly as possible, then come “home” to learn how the individual disciplines make use of that math. So the math department is in the position that the vast majority of the student-hours they teach are to students that, even though they’re in technical fields, aren’t going to be mathematicians. So many students that logistics sort of dictates the 700-seat lecture hall and the face-to-face part left to the tender mercies of the TAs [1]. So at the least, there’s an interest in how to do a better job of teaching calculus to all those students.
[1] While I was in graduate school at the University of Texas in the 1970s, the state legislature considered a bill that would have required that all the freshman and sophomore classes be taught by a full-time member of the faculty, with a limit on class size. The head of the math department was testifying before one of the education committees, where he was asked, “What would it take for your department to implement this law?” His answer was, “Funding for 100 more full-time faculty members; or make the engineering school teach calculus to their own students.”Report
Oh, to live in a world where the state legislature would even think of mandating that classes be smaller instead of larger.Report
As I recall, the bill was sponsored by some legislators whose children had recently been through the “TA from hell” experience that occurs from time to time. The math department at UT in those days actually worked quite hard to try to keep those situations from happening.Report
Well, other disciplines in the sciences do seem to have an increasing presence of pedagogy researchers, i.e. people whose affiliation is in a department of chemistry or biology or whatever, but whose research focus is on educational methods. Physics just seems to have gotten a head start on it.
I’m told that math has a long history of educational research, but my outsider impression is that most of it has focused on k-12 and I don’t know what fraction of them sit in the Math Department instead of the College of Education or whatever.Report
I’m told that math has a long history of educational research, but my outsider impression is that most of it has focused on k-12 and I don’t know what fraction of them sit in the Math Department instead of the College of Education or whatever.
35 years ago my undergraduate school had just this type of major, with contributions from both departments. The focus was indeed on K-12, and stopped just short of calculus. As best I can recall, PhDs in that area were awarded by the College of Education, not the math department. But math department folks participated in the summer seminars run for high-school math teachers.
As a first-year graduate student I took a theoretical topology class taught in a learning-by-doing style (usually called the “Moore Method” in math circles after Robert Lee Moore). At that point I could cut it; I’m not sure that I could have managed without four years as an undergraduate learning how to learn math.Report
When the telephone was invented, a good many people, including Alexander Graham Bell, predicted it would be wonderful educational tool. When television began, the same wishful thinking was seen again. The Internet began as a footnoting tool for scientific research. Thanks, CERN.
With every such fad-du-jour, there’s always been this handwringing in the educational community, trying to stay relevant.
I’ve said it before: the best teachers don’t cram us full of facts like so many unfortunate geese whose livers will be converted to foie gras. The wise teacher teaches us how to learn.
Physics is the anatomy of the real world.
My mother had a wonderful friend at Olean Hospital, a pathologist, a skirt chaser and a thoroughly enjoyable rogue, one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever known. I’d been doing pen and ink renderings. My mother showed him a few. He took a human femur off his shelf and said “Draw that. It’s my favourite bone.” I laboured over it for weeks, brought the illustration back, he paid me something like sixty dollars for it.
At some point, as every student who took an anatomy and physiology class knows come final exam time, there’s the dissection cadaver with all the labelled pins in it and there you are, with a numbered list. I had a wonderful A&P professor. Worked with pigs. Knew more about swine than was good for anyone and I took a real shine to the guy. We stayed friends for years afterwards. He made those pins mean something to me.
The sage on the stage is only the latest incarnation of the learning process, especially in a subject like Physics. The current act, if you will. His predecessors, the K-12 teachers who first showed the kids how balls roll down inclined planes and how ice forms and prisms create rainbows, they’re the prior acts. Different day, different sage. Now it’s the current sage’s turn to recapitulate and expand upon the subject.
All this concentration on facts and techniques and efficiency is missing the point, it seems to me. Every professor is best served to approach his subject as if he were drawing a map, illustrating his subject.
Maybe I’m just naive to say this but we ought to give professors more leeway to draw that map without constantly riding herd on them. What is the point of someone dedicating that much effort to gaining mastery of a subject and defending a dissertation — only to have some well-meaning moron who couldn’t possibly teach the class — telling the professor how to teach the class? It’s nonsense. It defeats the entire purpose of education.Report
I’m not familiar with current education research, but I do have lots of experience being a university student, so here’s my view from that perspective.
At the undergraduate level, especially in the sciences, the focus seems to necessarily be on learning all of the basic building blocks and foundational material that you need in order to do any further work in the subject, or to develop your own ideas. Which means lots of memorization (in biology) and lots of practice on reactions and equation (in chemistry and physics). Because if you don’t know the basics, you can’t move beyond them.
In the labs that I took, we were mainly doing experiments where we already knew what the results should be, not doing original research. I don’t think this was bad – it was necessary, because at the lower undergrad level when you get an unexpected or unusual result, there’s a 99% chance that the reason is “you screwed up the experiment,” not “you’ve made a fascinating new discovery!” By the 3rd and 4th year levels there’s a little more space to move beyond that.
I’ve had classes where we used the electronic clickers, but I didn’t find them overly useful. I think the online quizzes are a little overrated too – the problem is that when you have a paper quiz, and you get a question wrong, there’s a higher chance of going to the prof after class or during office hours and asking about where you went wrong, and learning something. If you have an online quiz, you generally just fill it out, look at your score, and forget about it; there’s no physical piece of paper that you can carry around with you until you remember to ask about it.
I value profs who are experts in their subjects and who also enjoy teaching, because even in lectures they can add things like talking about a new discovery in the field, or relating what you’re learning to common academic debates; they just have more depth of knowledge to draw on. They also tend to be enthusiastic about their field, which makes learning a lot more fun. If someone has a basic foundation in physics and has spent most of their life researching educational methods, then it’s probably educational methods that are their passion. I don’t think that’s desirable at the university level. Having a prof who is speaking about a specific topic that they love, and which it’s clear that they love, is more engaging and leaves more room for drawing in interesting material that’s not in the specific curriculum, and that’s not something to undervalue.
Taking someone who loves research and dislike teaching and making them teach – well, it’s not typically a disaster in my experience, but it’s not ideal either. I’d prefer that the university would let those researchers do their research, and bring in people who actually like teaching and have some skill in it – even if they only have an MA in the subject – if they can’t find enough faculty who want to teach. (But that means the university has to hire more people, which costs more money, so the universities don’t like to do it, and when the do they severely underpay these teachers, which is a serious problem.)
I don’t think all the faculty should need to be publishing research regularly. If someone already has depth in the subject, and has published papers before, and now just wants to focus on teaching, I think that’s great and universities should be open to it. Teaching ability, and love of teaching, is too often undervalued at the university level.Report
I don’t think all the faculty should need to be publishing research regularly. If someone already has depth in the subject, and has published papers before, and now just wants to focus on teaching, I think that’s great and universities should be open to it.
One of the really worrying — at least to me — things that is occurring in some disciplines is the two-tier faculty system. A small number of faculty are tenured, do research, etc. The second tier are “just” teachers. No way to earn tenure. No guarantees of employment beyond the current school year. In some cases, paid by the credit hour and a ridiculous load needed to earn what the most-junior of the tenure-track professors earn. Hopefully there’s a piece about this in the pipe somewhere for this week.Report
I agree that this is definitely something that needs discussing.Report
You know, when I read ‘Disciplinary Expert’, I thought for a minute this post was going a completely different direction…Report
Something about eating meat and having pudding, perhaps?Report
I was thinking maybe ‘Discipline Expert’ would work better, but upon reflection, that sounds even more gimp-suity.Report
I think my best learning was not so much the “sage on the stage” but the sage in his office. I did not learn to take advantage of it until my junior year, but what I learned from visits during office hours had much more real-world application than the facts that I learned in class. In the same way, the professor that I did research for taught me much more than I got from classes, and it was information that was better retained because it was put into immediate application.
There was definitely a lot that I learned in class, but it was stuff that could easily be picked up from a book.Report
Yep. The sage in his office. The sage after class. The sage arguing in the lunch hall with her fellow professors… hard to provide that experience to the number of undergraduates we have these days though. Without, you know, focusing on hiring more professors.Report