An Interdisciplinary Seminar for Preparing College Teachers

Abstract

We are now experiencing a period of retrench ment wherein it has once again become legitimate to talk about quality instead of quantity in education. With the supply-demand function for college teachers almost completely reversed from what it was in the 1960s, col1ege and university administrators are now re quiring various kinds of evidence representing teaching of prospective candidates for academic po sitions. This has implications for graduate students who are seeking their first position as college or university teachers. LTntil very recentV, most graduate students have neither been encouraged to pursue know1edge about college teaching, nor had an adequate amount of supervi sion and training for their career development as college teachers. These deficiencies have been cited by several investigators: for examp^, Hanzeli,1 Costin,2 Morrow,3 Berelson,4 Heiss,5 and Eble.6'7 Concern about the improvement of co1lege teaching and the career development of college level teachers has been recognized also by some professional societies and private foundations. During the spring of 1971 a con ference was held in Sante Fe, New Mexico in conjunc tion with the National Project to Improve College Teaching.8 This meeting, arranged by Dr. Kenneth E. Eble, director of the project, was the final general ses sion associated with a two-year project sponsored by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges and funded by the Carnegie Corporation. The conference participants rep resented a diverse group of educators concerned about improving the quality of col'ege teaching. As one might expect from a group of this nature, there were many divergent opinions among the participants regarding so lutions for improving teaching. One topic, however, in which there was almost unanimity of opinion was the need for a set of teaching and learning experiences for all graduate students planning careers as college or uni versity teachers. During the conference a task committee headed by Dr. Michael Scriven was formed to draw up an outline for such an experience, or course, which would speak to some of the dimensions of teaching and learning thought to be crucial to a good beginning or first step on the road to success as a college teacher. Inspired by the conference and fo'lowing guidelines offered by Eble9 and Williams,10 then adding some ideas of our own, we designed and offered an seminar on college teaching. Having developed and con ducted the seminar for the past six years, we feel that what we have learned is worth sharing with colleagues who are also interested in providing some vehicle whereby beginning teachers may gain valuable knowl edge and experience which can contribute to their effec tiveness as future college teachers. For the most part, past efforts in teaching seminars have been focused within a single discipline.11,12'13 The distinguishing feature of the approach cited in the pres ent report is the nature of the seminar. The word interdisciplinary here refers to the composi tion of the student participants, not necessarily the teach ers or resource people. We assumed that such topics as establishing instructional objectives. writing examin ation questions, evaluating teaching effectiveness and the use of media, to mention only a few, are not the private domain if any one discipline. On the contrary, most of the critical dimensions of effective teaching are common to all disciplines. In addition, having students from a variety of areas results in the distinct advantage of being able to view teaching through individual disci plinary prisms. The potential give and take among stu dents from different areas could also emphasize that general principles of teaching apply across many subject matter fields. Finally, it was believed that through an exchange the students would gain an appreciation and respect for other discip1ines and view points, a characteristic so often absent in the curricular and supervision structure of most graduate training. Graduate students in a given discipline usually have little or no professional or academic contact with graduate students from other departments during their training, and their supervision is nearly always under their own department. It shou\l be pointed out that this seminar was not designed to replace teaching supervision received in the student's own department. The Seminar