ERIC Number: EJ874235
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1822-1645
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
The Quality of Teaching in Higher Education
Stake, Robert E.; Cisneros-Cohernour, Edith J.
Quality of Higher Education, v1 p94-117 2004
Campus teaching is not independent of campus politics. Quality of teaching is partly a function of who cares. The complexity of the disciplines taught is not justification for indifference to the needs of students--and the needs of the public, and the state, and the campus administrative offices, and the instructors. Teaching is not merely a matter of communicating but also of providing opportunity to gain skills, understandings, and capacity to persevere, some of which will be outside the comprehension of some of those who teach. Campus politics today seldom mirrors the Marxist, industrialist, civil rights and anti-war battles of the past. Today's macro-politics are driven by global economic causes, particularly the drawing of students away from work in their home communities to the technological and business centers of the more economically developed cities and countries. The micro-politics of teaching continues to be largely a matter of who gets to teach the courses they want to teach. Good quality of teaching requires attention to the choices in the lives of students, not only in academic specialization but choices about with whom they will have coffee and to what values they will commit their careers. In this paper, we support multiple evaluative efforts. We urge some but only a small amount of attention to traits and styles of instructors. We only slightly notice student outcomes. What we emphasize is instructor duty (McConney et al., 1995). We call for personal judgment of the evaluator and urge that the instructor be viewed as a member of a teaching community. Finally, partly as a political view, we oppose using personnel evaluation to standardize campus teaching. (Contains 29 endnotes and 3 figures.)
Descriptors: Teacher Effectiveness, College Faculty, Higher Education, Educational Quality, Politics of Education, Teacher Evaluation, Evaluation Criteria, Risk, Teaching Styles, Personality Traits, Faculty Workload, Bias, Accountability, Communities of Practice, Objectives
Vytautas Magnus University, Centre for Quality of Studies. South Daukanto g. 27-314, Kaunas, LT-44249, Lithuania. Tel: +370-37-327973; Fax: +370-37-327973; e-mail: zur+amk@skc.vdu.lt; Web site: http://www.vdu.lt/skc
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A