The Commotion on Teaching: Six Principles in Search of an Audience

Abstract

The author reflects on his experience in the Center for Teaching and Curriculum at Emory, identifying six principles or problems that the current concern with teaching seems to embody. These principles are: the false opposition between “teaching” and “research,” a formulation that misrepresents the nature of academic work; the difficulty of evaluating the double allegiance of teaching—toward a discipline and toward its disciples; the paradox that although teaching is discipline-specific, meaningful discussion of it seems to take place across disciplines; the value of teachers' becoming students of another subject; the difficulty of proving that discussions of teaching lead to improvement; and the culture clash between faculty and administrators over the nature of the university within which teaching takes place.