We Invest in Research, But What About Teaching?
Improving Science Education Requires Rethinking Academic Priorities
SOURCE: flickr/cogdogblog
The structural incentives of the academy are in general stacked in favor of research and against high-quality science teaching.
Print
Since President Obama’s announcement of the Educate to Innovate program in November 2009, an encouraging number of technology and media companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies have been working in concert to strengthen the nation’s approach to science education. But the reality is that the lion’s share of transformation must come from within: from school systems, in the case of K-12 education, and from the academy, in the case of higher education.
A position paper recently issued by the Nature Publishing Group illustrates this point in the context of higher education. A significant majority, 77 percent, of the 450 faculty surveyed for the paper consider their educational responsibilities to be equally as important as research responsibilities. Only 6 percent consider research more important than education. Yet when asked to appoint a hypothetical candidate to an open tenure position in their department, the majority chose a star researcher with poor teaching skills over both a star teacher with little research background and a candidate equally skilled, though not notable, in both teaching and research.
The ripple effects of this mindset in the academy are damaging to the goals of universities. Faculty at most of our institutions are expected to both teach and conduct research; yet if they are selected largely on the basis of their excellence in research, why should be we be surprised if the quality of classroom teaching is often low, as many studies strongly suggest? Poor teaching has three regrettable consequences. First, many talented science majors who enter college with inadequate prior preparation switch out of science programs after a year of disappointing college courses. Second, many students who do stay in science programs never achieve sufficient levels of mastery in the field to launch a professional scientific career. Third, students for whom science is a side interest rather than a career don’t build the scientific literacy that will turn them into informed voters, parents, teachers, and policy-makers later in life.
There are thousands of individual superb teachers throughout higher education, to be sure, and hundreds of colleges that place great emphasis on classroom teaching. But, as the Nature Publishing Group paper illustrates, the structural incentives of the academy are in general stacked against teaching. Research brings far more funding and prestige to both universities and individuals than teaching does; no surprise, then, that university presidents and department chairs push a research agenda, and that science faculty are motivated to follow suit. The point is not that research isn’t important; on the contrary, research is the central purpose of science, and we must galvanize both investment and political will to support the needs of our research sector. But where education is weak, research has a rickety foundation. It may be thriving today, but who will perform meaningful research tomorrow, if sufficient numbers and a diversity of students are not well trained and guided through the education pipeline to the laboratory bench? Who will vote for increasing national investment in research & development if the average citizen has a poor understanding and appreciation of science? The scientific challenges our society faces are only growing, as crucial issues like climate change, diabetes, and food sustainability proliferate and intensify. Is our educational system keeping pace?
If we want to ensure that R&D prospers in the next generation, we must take a hard and candid look at the incentives that are built into the academy. Universities that profess to value teaching must ask themselves whether their department chairs and tenure committees are really asked to select excellent teachers as well as excellent researchers. If they are not, then a mandate to support teaching must be made explicit, and backed with financial awards, job security, and promotions. Funding agencies, both private and governmental, must continue their current trend of allocating increasing investment to excellence and innovation in teaching, to eventually ensure that a dedicated and successful teacher will receive comparable career rewards to those that star researchers can count on. And universities and funding agencies must work together to develop a much-needed system of evaluating teaching quality, similar to what is already in discussion in the engineering community. A reliable set of metrics will make teaching impossible to ignore. We believe that such a system, which can be produced by a concerted effort of the key players in higher education within a few years, would be a watershed in the reinvigoration of our national science capabilities.
Vikram A. Savkar is Senior Vice President & Publishing Director, Education Markets, for Nature Publishing Group. He is based in Cambridge, MA.
Comments on this article
Good points. I would note however that “teaching” at universities is not limited to classroom lectures. In reality there is little division between a professor’s responsibility as a researcher and their responsibility as a teacher. Professor’s rarely conduct the experiments themselves, rather, they run a research group of students (grad and undergrad) and postdocs. Their role when conducting research is one of a mentor and the teaching they do is critical to developing the next generation of scientists and innovators. I think this sometimes goes unnoticed. Professors teach all the time, just not in classrooms.
My guess is that professors value their classroom teaching less than their role as a mentor of their trainees. This may be just the way it is and always will be – after all, guiding students as they work on scientific questions that you find intriguing and helping them achieve those “ah ha” moments is pretty damn great. But, classroom teaching is essential as well and could be valued more highly during the tenure process.
cv
May 12th, 2010 at 2:37 pmI don’t disagree with message that teaching deserves more credit. I note, however, a frustratingly common reference to the “average citizen” when actually addressing academia — “Who will vote for increasing national investment in research & development if the average citizen has a poor understanding and appreciation of science?”
Face it, the “AVERAGE citizen” in America does not even have a college degree. And certainly not a 4-year degree from a research institution where there can be a battle between research and education priorities. The reason the average citizen, who will or will not vote for increased investment in science and technology, has a poor understanding and appreciation of science is due only in part to the K-12 teaching success. It is also due to the complete lack of science promotion to the public AFTER secondary education.
NSF spends a comparatively tiny amount of its budget on outreach, and what is spent is dedicated primarily to programs aimed at the K-12 audience and not beyond. It’s as if the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities were to commission projects and allow those pursuing degrees to study them but never send them out for the rest of the world to see and appreciate. THAT is why science doesn’t get the attention and appreciation it deserves. Because it is not enough a part of the social discourse and not celebrated as the arts and humanities are.
May 12th, 2010 at 4:19 pmSavkar is on target in saying that the structural incentives of the academy are in general stacked against teaching. He may not go far enough. The appointment, promotion and tenure process is based on credentials obtained through peer-reviewed publications. Moreover, most university curricula in the U.S. strongly influenced by faculty research directions – not criteria for preparation of students for careers.
And the trends to change federal incentives are negative rather than positive. Did you notice the $7+ billion additional funds provided to NSF as a part of the ARRA budget? And America Competes has almost nothing to serve needs expressed by Savkar.
May 12th, 2010 at 6:45 pm