Research universities must redesign graduate education to prepare students for teaching undergraduate students as well as for other professional roles.
Although graduate education is not at the center of our concern, clearly the metamorphosis of undergraduate education at research universities can not occur without suitable adjustments in the way that graduate students are prepared for their professional roles. Over the last several decades, universities have prolonged doctoral study, but they have not necessarily improved it by doing so. A graduate degree is a professional degree, intended both to furnish credentials and to prepare students for their life’s work. But important aspects of their life’s work have been neglected or ignored in their doctoral programs, to their detriment and that of the undergraduates they are expected to teach.
More than half of all doctoral students will seek employment in colleges and universities, 54 per cent according to the National Research Council’s 1995 Survey of Earned Doctorates. The percentage of Ph.D.’s who become faculty varies broadly between fields, ranging from 83 per cent of humanities majors to 22 per cent of engineering majors. Most future faculty, however, cannot realistically expect to find positions at the 3 per cent of the nation’s colleges and universities that are research universities. Yet graduate education severely neglects the professional goal of the majority of students who will become college professors, that is to say, teaching.
Reshaping Professional Training
Many students go directly from their bachelor’s degrees into graduate school. Suddenly they are expected to be experts in their fields; we forget that last year they were mere seniors. They have great needs to acclimate themselves to a very different kind of learning experience. Simultaneously, we burden them with the responsibilities of research or teaching assistantships. Although more affluent institutions may allow them a grace period before beginning their assistantships, too many plunge them directly into their duties. This situation can be most harmful when they begin teaching immediately, sometimes in fields that may well not be their specialty (for example, literature majors teaching composition or foreign language courses). Moreover, they are too often expected to know how to teach with little more than a few days or weeks of casual training and with little or no supervision throughout the year.
When these neophytes enter the classroom, they rarely come armed with serious training in pedagogy. Perhaps they will have a provided syllabus in a multi-sectional course; perhaps they will be placed in charge of sections of freshman mathematics or composition. Too often they will sense that spending time on teaching will hurt them by taking away from their concentration on their own study and research. The situation creates the greatest possibility for poor teaching at the time that the freshman needs the best teaching and mentoring. It also creates great stress at the time the new graduate student is most vulnerable, sometimes leading to early burnout and often to poor teaching.
There is a striking discrepancy now between the nature of graduate work and the nature of the professional careers for which graduate students are being prepared. In particular, people educated to the doctoral level are expected by their employers and by society to be highly proficient in their fields, to be able to evaluate the work of others, to be producers of knowledge that will enrich or improve life, and to be effective communicators to whatever audiences are appropriate. Corporate leaders who recruit new Ph.D.’s seek employees who are accomplished at teamwork, at critical thinking, problem-solving, and oral and written communication. Yet graduate education too often ignores all those expectations. Graduate students are given intensive work in narrowly defined subjects and meticulous training in the technical skills required for research projects; it is the unstated assumption that the other expectations will be met without organized effort--met, presumably, by the general education that preceded graduate training. For too many people, that assumption is unwarranted.
Restoring Communication
Nowhere are the failures of graduate education more serious than in the skills of communication. Corporate leaders complain that new Ph.D.’s too often fail as communicators and cannot advance their own careers or contribute to the success of their companies. Again and again, effective communication proves to be at least as important as specific knowledge content or technological training.
The importance of communications skills for academic careers is, of course, self-evident, for professors must teach, lecture to colleagues, and publish their research. Yet the skills of writing and speaking are by and large ignored in graduate education, certainly not taught as essential skills required for graduation. Obviously, the lack of emphasis on these skills, even when graduate students become teaching assistants, has a profound effect on undergraduate education.
No student lacking in basic English skills should be expected or required to enter a classroom to teach. The issues here are far bigger than those of accent and grammar; the teacher in any course must also be a teacher of writing and speaking skills. Any graduate student, therefore, who does not possess these skills must acquire them in order both to graduate and to teach.
Solving the Teaching Crisis
Given the fact that so many doctoral students are preparing for academic careers, the reconstitution of doctoral programs will have a profound effect on undergraduate education. If undergraduate programs truly produce good communications skills, then the alumni of those programs will begin their graduate study well prepared, thus reducing the crisis in writing and speaking abilities that exists now in courses taught by some teaching assistants.
Ideally, teaching assistants will also use their classroom opportunities to foster the ability to frame questions, to seek answers independently, and to think in interdisciplinary ways. As those abilities are essential to doctoral study, so they should be initiated and encouraged in undergraduates from their earliest courses, i.e. those often taught by teaching assistants.
Some universities are giving greater emphasis to teaching techniques as part of graduate student education, but few have explored mentoring relationships or the synergy of these interactions (i.e., how do undergraduates teach graduates, and how do graduates stimulate the intellectual growth of faculty members?).
Teaching is a difficult enough task in any setting, and in a research university the difficulties are magnified. The faculties of research universities must demonstrate to their graduate students how to lead undergraduates on their journeys of inquiry and discovery, and graduate students must master those teaching skills if they are to succeed as faculty members. Overdue as those ideas may be, undergraduates can expect to benefit when they are fully put in practice.
Recommendations:
- All graduate students should have time to adapt to graduate school before entering classrooms as teachers.
- Graduate apprentice teachers should be assisted by one or more of the following means: seminars in teaching, thoughtful supervision from the professor assigned to the course, mentoring by experienced teachers, and regular discussions of classroom problems with other new teachers.
- Graduate students should be made aware of their classroom roles in promoting learning by inquiry. They should not be limited to knowing the old modes of transmission of knowledge without understanding the role of student and faculty as joint investigators.
- Graduate courses need particular emphasis on writing and speaking to aid teaching assistants in their preparation for teaching as well as research functions.
- Graduate students should be encouraged to use technology in creative ways, as they will need to do in their own careers.
- Compensation for all teaching assistants should reflect more adequately the time and effort expected.
- Graduate students should be encouraged through special rewards for outstanding teaching. Financial awards should be established for outstanding teaching assistants. The permanent faculty should make it clear through these awards and through all they do that good teaching is a primary goal of graduate education.
SIGNS OF CHANGE
University Case Study Future Professoriate Project University Syracuse University
The Future Professoriate Project at Syracuse University, funded by Pew Charitable Trusts, helps develop the teaching abilities of graduate students. Faculty Teaching Mentors lead seminars on effective teaching and serve as advisors; Teaching Associateships provide advanced teaching assistants opportunities to teach classes on their own and to receive a Certificate in University Teaching, awarded by the Graduate School to Teaching Associates who compile a teaching portfolio, which includes observation results as well as examples of syllabi, assignments, and examinations.
THE FACTS
Graduate students who plan to go into teaching Percentage of Ph.D. recipients in various fields, with definite employment commitments in the U.S., whose intended employment is in Academe (2 & 4-year colleges and universities and medical schools) or Other (not industry or government; "mainly composed of elementary and secondary schools and nonprofit organizations"). Field........Academe.....Other.....Total All fields.......54%.......17%.......71% Humanities...83%........10%.......93% Social Sciences......54%......16%.........70% Life Sciences......53%......8.5%.......61.5% Education.....50%.......38%.......88% Physical Sciences ......41.5%.....3.5%......45% Engineering....22%......2.5%.....24.5% Professional/ other..............73%......11%.......84% From the National Research Council, 1995 Survey of Earned Doctorates
THE FACTS
Where do faculty with Ph.D.'s work?
THE FACTS
Employment sector of Ph.D. recipients with postgraduation commitments in the United States for selected years, 1975-1995 (U.S. citizens and permanent residents).
Note: Only Ph.D.s with definite commitments for employment are included. Foreign locations excluded. Percentages are based on the number of Ph. D.s whose employment sector is known. Government includes federal, state and local government agencies in the United State.
Source: National Research Council, Survey of Earned Doctorates.
SIGNS OF CHANGE
University Case Study Undergraduate Teaching Initiatives University University of Virginia
At the University of Virginia, a Teaching Resource Center was created in 1990, funded primarily by reallocation. It offers evaluation, including videotaped critiques, and teaching improvement workshops, especially for teaching assistants and junior faculty. It also offers graduate courses on effective teaching strategies for special subjects. Outstanding Teaching Awards, five awards of $2,000 each, have been given annually since 1990-91.