The Scholarship of Teaching

Earlier this week, Lee Shulman announced that he will retire next year from his position as President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.  I suspect that most people hardly know this name.  But for those of us in higher education, Lee Shulman has been a significant figure and his retirement will mark the end of an era.

At a cursory level, Mr. Shulman is best known for coining the phrase, “the Scholarship of Teaching.”  Much of his writing and research over his long career has centered on improvements in classroom instruction.  But he has also been instrumental in engaging important national conversations about redefining scholarship, exploring reward structures for faculty members, changes in the classification system for colleges and universities, and the relationship between professional education and the liberal arts.

In my opinion, Shulman’s greatest contribution has been his focus on the improvement of teaching.  He encouraged the academy to become more analytical of teaching, to study and investigate how we teach, how we assess student learning, and how we engage students in the learning process.

I thought it was interesting that at the same time that Shulman’s announcement of his impending retirement was made, an article was released about the increasing percentage of college and university students who fail to attend class.  In interviews with a number of college professors who confirmed this growing trend, their solution was to make attendance mandatory, give more pop quizzes and use more technology.

Having heard Shulman speak many, many times over the years and used his books and research in courses, I reflected on what his response to the attendance problem might be.  I suspect his answer would be that professors should work harder to make their classes so interesting, so engaging, so meaningful … that students will want to attend.  Shulman would place the responsibility on the professor and not on the student.  And I suspect that he would be chagrined at the increasing rate of class cancellations by professors, which conveys something about the value and the importance of the class to their students.

There are many important issues facing higher education.  Issues related to assessment, access, and affordability dominate the news.  Internal discussions about governance, accountability, and resource allocations consume much time.  But there is no more important issue than the quality of instruction … the quality of our teaching … the classroom experience for our students.  Shulman was a voice for reflective practice, for a continuous examination of how to teach better.  He spoke with great admiration for college and university professors who had a passion for excellence.  Lee Shulman was right.  And we should thank him for his long and dedicated career to making higher education better for all of us.

(As always, your comments and questions are welcome.)