Summary Notes on "Teaching Excellence and the Inner Life of Faculty," by R. G. Kraft, CHANGE, May-June 2000, pp. 48-52. [Referred by Jean Layne, Center for Teaching Excellence, TAMU]

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 8/17/01

"In the fall of 1998, two of my … colleagues died suddenly within weeks of each other. They were active men, barely middle-aged. … In the last 14 years I 've taken a close look at the emotional landscape of faculty life, and these deaths triggered an observation that's been stirring in me for much of my 35 years in higher education."

" … If you think of the varying sizes and functions of American colleges and universities, ours falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum - large but not the largest, with a teaching emphasis and lots of research. You could describe us as 'typical.' … Our state has three large 'research' universities. … In 1986 the Faculty Center for Instructional Excellence (FCE) began offering workshops to faculty members about teaching at EMU. … We wanted to think we were succeeding, but I had no reason to believe that teaching was getting better at EMU."

"… So I set up a seminar called 'The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.' We met every Friday for 90 minutes throughout most of the 15-week term. With no release time, with no encouragement from administrators… 240 faculty members enrolled in this seminar over a period of 18 semesters. … It is advertised throughout the university as a forum 'not about methods but about the larger questions out of which methods might emerge. What is learning? When, why, and how does learning happen? What do teachers do to enhance or retard learning? …' Faculty joined up, about a dozen per term. … It became immediately clear that they mostly wanted to talk. …"

"… There was no room for such talk within departments. … And there is an even deeper problem in departments: a reluctance to share feelings of any kind. … Why are there no 'intellectual communities…' within departments? … What I heard from faculty, added to my own 30 years' experience in a department, yielded insights that I am still testing. … Pursuit of knowledge in their discipline has been largely isolated. … Research requires dispassionate observation. And whereas teaching… is full of feeling, feelings reflect bias. In research, bias must be avoided at all costs. … Faculty separate their lives into segments: home-life, teaching-life, department-life, and research-life. Feelings belong in the first two segments and only there. … Sustained, in-depth conversation about teaching… is seen as taking teaching too seriously. Furthermore, a persistent, not so-subtle undercurrent suggests that the uninhibited display of feeling is undignified and inappropriate in a 'disciplined' department. …" 

"… There can be no discreet distance between the teacher and his or her subject and students. … Therefore, teaching may be at home in a university, but not in a department. … Teaching is hardly worthy of talk. … Despite Ernest Boyer's landmark book, Scholarship Reconsidered, teaching is not regarded within disciplines as a serious intellectual pursuit. … But teaching is what faculty actually do - day in and day out. … But it is not what you talk about in department meetings, where important work must be done."

"… Faculty consistently confess that they feel like frauds in the teaching. No one prepared them for teaching. … Their subject knowledge is certain and confident. That confidence makes all the difference. … To one another, department members wanted to talk about what they teach, not why or how. … Complaints about poor teaching are endless. Listen to students talk in the elevators. But my and probably every university has many excellent teachers. Where do they come from? … Good teaching comes from the heart, from a deep center of caring for subjects and students. A teacher with such a deep center… is likely to be effective with most any method. … Therefore, method, while important, is peripheral to teaching effectiveness."

"… Every teacher must ask, 'Who and what am I? Why am I doing this? What exactly am I trying to accomplish and why? What effect does my person-hood, my mind and heart as expressed in my personality, have on my teaching? Can I relate to these students?' … First… teaching methods must be compatible with personalities and goals. … Effective methods must evolve for each individual teacher. Second, teachers improve in small increments in response to felt inadequacies that are personally troublesome. We do not change unless we feel some discomfort and are looking for relief. … Finally, change is a huge risk… We tend to teach… the way we were taught, only because it's familiar and comfortable. …"

"I mentioned above that I saw no evidence that teaching improved after most one-stop workshops and conferences. In contrast, this seminar made a difference. … There are no lectures, no 'presentations' by 'experts.' Instead, the focus is always on a community of peers in conversation. … It's simple and inexpensive to create the seminar. It only requires an experienced faculty peer-leader with some released time, some passion for teaching, and some familiarity with teaching scholarship. … Such a leader must start the group off with community-building… He or she gently discourages excessive complaining and keeps the group from going off into irrelevance. … Above all, the leader must avoid being answer-person or advice-giver. Connection, after all, is what faculty are after, not someone else's 'right' answers. … Coffee and cookies fit right in."

 "As for my own university, we can't know if the emotional malnutrition in faculty life contributed to the deaths of my colleagues… But I do know that faculty are often without nourishment they need to support the ideals they seek to serve and to live fulfilled lives. This lack weakens their enthusiasm and commitment. …"

[Readers who are interested in this article are encouraged to read the original paper in its entirety. Other summary notes on faculty reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]