What We Wish That We, the Chair, and the Dean Had Known: Reflections on "The First Year of College Teaching"

Abstract

This essay has a mixed agenda. Our goal is to raise some questions about college teaching and to suggest some directions in which to look for their answers. We are particularly interested in the training of new college teachers of sociology. We do this by reviewing in detail a recent study of first-time college teachers (Fink 1984) that was originally intended to assess the impact of college teacher training programs for graduate students in geography. The study produced some new, surprising results. We use these as a vehicle to raise our questions and to promote further discussion of the possible answers. The First Year of College Teaching (Fink 1984) can be viewed in a number of ways. First, it is a research report that summarizes a two-year project that followed the first year of teaching for 97 new college geography teachers. It is a pioneering study in that it covers territory often talked about but seldom examined-the effects of social and