What if the problem is not pedagogy, but profession?

Interesting conversation over at Steve’s Pedablogy site on what enables risk, and why teaching is such a walled garden even inside the university.

Rodney Brooks
likes to take assumptions and negate them, so in that spirit and to play devil’s advocate, what if the problem is not that people aren’t thinking well about their teaching? What if the problem is that people aren’t thinking well about their professional work? Working on narrow topics and publishing things of interest to only a few could be a succinct definition of much of the blogosphere. What’s the difference? Why blog anyway? How do we get a “blogosphere” out of all the “b” blogs?

I’d submit that the difference is the way in which it’s obvious that one-to-few or few-to-few communications over the Internet are still parts of the conversation. It’s obvious that the work we little bloggers are doing is part of something much larger. The apparatus of higher education has managed to obscure that truth about the professional work we do. We can’t even find that “something much larger” on our own campuses, or reflect it in our curriculum, or foster it in our interaction with colleagues, much less find a way to demonstrate it to the world.

Unless we can find a way to demonstrate that “something much larger” to the public, why should we expect the public to offer support for our specialized expertise and labor? And why should we expect students to understand the point of their contact with us? It may be heresy to say this, but I worry that too much emphasis on pedagogy per se addresses a symptom instead of the real illness(es).

7 thoughts on “What if the problem is not pedagogy, but profession?

  1. Interesting take. I’ve long felt somewhat left out of the academy because I tend to the generalist, interested in the bigger picture. One thing that I have personally been working in is becoming involved in campus-wide activities, attending lectures and student events to get a better handle on the campus community as a whole. Far too often, I see folks in the IT department glued to their computer screens, never looking beyond the cubicle. Also, I see faculty stuck in their offices or only on campus during office hours and classes.

    The world is passing such folks by and as you suggest, their narrow focus on “what’s important to them” leaves them open to criticism.

  2. Unfortunately, most faculty are pretty blind to the degree to which they have become “professionalized.” Our departments hire from a very small number of “acceptable school”s where graduate students have spent 5 years or more absorbing a culture that subtly (or not so subtly) reinforces a very narrow view of the “right” journals, acceptable publishing houses, subjects of inquiry, types of pedagogy and even research methodologies. They learn to “think like” historians, economists, psychologists or sociologists to an even greater degree than lawyers and accountants do. Many of our most cherished practices of peer review, self-managed accreditation, promotion and tenure are based on the assumption that our professional communications and practices are so complex that those outside the club could never understand them.

    This pronounced professionalism generates a sense on many campuses that the primary purpose of the university is to serve as a container for the individual disciplines (professions) and to provide funding and protection from outsiders who can’t possibly understand the uniqueness of what we do. Because those of us in the institution have such strong faith in the righteousness of what we’re doing, we expect others to accept our vision as truth.

    In recent history those of us in the university have been able attract the support of legislators, parents, students, foundations and other government agencies. But the changes in the world may well erode that trust and require us to articulate a mission beyond that narrow confines of our own IT cubicle or professional specialty. As both you and Laura note, a failure to find that mission leaves us to questions and criticisms from those whose support makes our professional existence possible.

    The apparatus of higher education has managed to obscure that truth about the professional work we do. We can’t even find that “something much larger” on our own campuses, or reflect it in our curriculum, or foster it in our interaction with colleagues, much less find a way to demonstrate it to the world.

    That “something larger” isn’t a buzzword or a slogan. It’s a world view that we need to construct through conversation, experimentation and a willingness to question our current assumptions and activities.

  3. Pingback: Techfoot » Blog Archive » The Ends of Education

  4. Pingback: Thoughts and Experiments » Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching » Blog Archive » Response to James

  5. Well, it seems to me that the problem isn’t necessarily professionalism per se. As a philologist (I know it’s always about moi) I have a very narrow, particular, and strange field to work in; inexplicably few people are interested in the development of metaphoric transfers controlled by non-restrictive relative clauses. Should I sit there saying “o tempore, o mores?” I think the real problem is that professionalism (at least in the arts) has become exclusively the only thing we know how to teach. It used to be a ‘no brainer’ that any one trained, for example, in literature could teach a survey of British or American literature with very little difficulty. Today, good luck finding anyone to do so coming out of graduate school; instead, we find professionalism has become ideology and ideology has become good teaching. So teaching a survey that is beyond their knowledge is objectionable because they object ideologically to the notion of survey; thus, they don’t have to admit that they can’t. I attended a conference last year where several of the speakers suggested that the role of pedagogy was no longer inquiry nor freedom of thinking over a wide range of problems, but social engineering. It gives one pause, no? So the narrowness is the professionalism, and grad schools teach students that their professionalism is the only way to create a pedagogical forum. Some forum. Let’s not even start to talk about territory. Heaven forfend that people overlap topics from varying epistemological viewpoints–turf war extraordinaire. Change doesn’t happen because all too frequently the modern professor perceives change as a threat to their well-policed solutions. They don’t think about it, perhaps, because they perceive change as the enemy–not as a function of growth. I think now about the arguments I have had with faculty about whether or not, for example, a serious blog should be considered as valuable professional activity. Too many still say, no.

    O tempore, o mores

  6. Pingback: Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching » Blog Archive » More on The Problem

  7. Good day. What do you believe is the major aversion to professors in teaching on online course?

    Also, could you please suggest some jounals or web articles that deal with this subject?

    Thanks, Anthony Allbright

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