Diane M. Enerson
                 Director, Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching

 

Introduction

This new edition of The Penn State Teacher should find a very different community of teachers from that which greeted the first edition in 1993. Four years ago, The Penn State Teacher was welcomed as something new. Readers were pleased to find a text that gave voice to some of the excellent teaching at Penn State and provided a central identifiable focus for issues of teaching and learning. Much has changed since then, however. Attendance at advertised events about teaching and learning is no longer limited to the "usual suspects." Today many more voices are contributing to the conversations, which have become an expected part of the Penn State culture. New initiatives aimed at strengthening and enhancing some aspect of the teaching-learning process emerge each semester.

We have witnessed this change first hand at the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT), where participation in our events has not only increased dramatically, but has also often exceeded our wildest predictions. When we began offering a course in college teaching, for example, skeptics warned us of our folly. We were, they said, unrealistic. How could we expect people already strapped for time to devote precious hours to a course that offered no tangible incentive (e.g., money, prestige, political advantage, or academic credit)? But our own survey data suggested that there were indeed many within the Penn State community who would eagerly welcome an opportunity for sustained discussions about teaching, as long as those discussions offered immediately useful insight and a neutral framework within which to begin thinking about teaching.

Evidently our analysis was correct. Since its inception in fall 1992, annual enrollment in our Course in College Teaching grew quickly and has remained at well over 100 for the past two years. Although our original participants in the course were for the most part graduate student instructors, roughly a third of those who participate each year are faculty. For ten weeks, course participants come together to reflect on what they are doing in the classroom, share their successes and failures, learn from and provide support to one another as well as discuss some of the current literature on teaching. These discussions are always lively, and they are always productive. Similarly, attendance at our Roundtable Discussions for teachers of large class sections has been consistently strong since they began in August 1996. More importantly, the impact of this series has been impressive, with nearly all of our participants reporting at least one improvement in the courses they teach as a result of something they learned during the discussions.

The success of these and other programs is clear evidence of a growing interest in discussing--and improving--teaching and learning at Penn State. And happily, this interest is not exclusive to CELT. Across the University, participation in activities related to teaching have proliferated no less rapidly. Educational Technology Service (ETS), for example, instituted a new set of seminars on teaching and learning with technology which drew close to one thousand participants in its first year. The Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning (SIIL) has been up and running for two years with enthusiastic participation in its noontime conversations and funding opportunities. The Provost's annual Colloquy series has drawn well over a hundred participants on each occasion. Assorted programs in departments and colleges are no longer limited to a few individuals exchanging ideas but are rapidly becoming institutionalized at every level throughout the University. Similarly, programs that offer new kinds of learning opportunities for undergraduates such as the College of the Earth and Mineral Sciences and the Liberal Arts Freshman Seminars, the Dynamic Physics project, and the Learning Edge Academic Program (LEAP) have also become more prominent and plentiful during the past four years.

All the signs point in the same direction--the culture for teaching and learning at Penn State is changing. While this evolution may be faster in some areas than in others, it would be difficult to deny the increasing visibility and frequency of the discussions about teaching and learning. It would appear that any institutional shyness about disclosing what transpires in the classroom has vanished. In 1993, it was commonly argued that teaching was something you did when others weren't looking. In polite society, good neighbors do not pry--never mind that there are often 300 students present in the room. Teaching was still perceived by many to be a highly personal and private affair. When discussions about teaching (and learning, which was less frequently discussed) did occur, the cultural imperative at that time was to keep them as technical as possible. Systematic analysis of what went on in the classrooms or in our students' minds was viewed, more or less, as vaguely irrelevant.

Although speaking about a different university, Jane Tompkins has struck a resonant chord for many Penn State teachers when she confesses that "teaching was exactly like sex for me--something you weren't supposed to talk about or focus on in any way but that you were supposed to able to do properly when the time came." Consequently, "people rarely talk about what the experience is really like for them, partly because . . . there's no vocabulary for articulating the experience and no institutionalized format for doing so." (1) This inhibition results in what Tompkins refers to as "the performance model of teaching." Not surprisingly, the performance model--which is still prevalent and is often encouraged by institutional practices such as student evaluations--focuses not on what the student is doing but solely on what the teacher is doing. The primary focus in this model is for teachers to demonstrate how smart, knowledgeable, and how well prepared they are, with little if any attention being directed toward what the students are doing.

Tompkins' "performance model" stands in marked contrast to the one that is evolving at Penn State and elsewhere, in which the learner--and what goes on in the mind of the learner--is placed at the center of the discussion. Less and less do discussions focus on superficial aspects of the teacher's behavior. But more and more they are focusing on the difficult questions about learners. Increasingly, groups of faculty, graduate student instructors, or administrators who are asked to reflect on the question "What is good teaching?" respond in remarkably similar ways. Although charisma and entertainment appeal may occasionally be mentioned, the real heart of each discussion lies elsewhere. These discussions nearly always end in complete agreement with Patricia Cross when she observes that "while learning has many ends, teaching has only one: to enable or cause learning"(2) One case in point is a recent survey of Penn State students finding that the single strongest predictor of overall satisfaction with a course was how much students believed they had learned.(3) Almost without exception, those queried report that what is most memorable is not what the teacher did, but what they as the learners saw, did, or discovered because of what the teacher did. Great teachers live forever not because they give flawless performances but because they change forever the way their students think.

Teaching is increasingly being recognized as a complex and multifaceted product of many variables, not the least of which are what the learners and the teacher each bring to the situation, as well as the nature of the subject matter at hand. This complex view of teaching reflects clear progress from where we were four years ago and movement toward a point at which teaching becomes, in the words of Lee Shulman,"community property."(4) Penn State today is a place where what goes on in classrooms has become more public, a place that more comfortably embraces serious engagement with issues of teaching and learning, and where members of the community join in meaningful discourse about teaching at every level.

So, when in the autumn of 1996 we discovered we had distributed almost all of the original printing of The Penn State Teacher--usually at the request of a department or individual--we wondered about the relative merits of a reprint versus a revised second edition. It was clear that many found the existing edition useful. Numerous departments were using it annually as part of an orientation program or course for new faculty and graduate student TAs. We used it in our own Course in College Teaching. The most obvious--and certainly the easiest--solution to our problem would have been a reprinting of the existing volume. But could we do this and still acknowledge the cultural transformations that had occurred? Would this option significantly further that cultural transformation that had begun over the past four years?

We didn't think so. Nor would this option allow us to articulate our own evolution and new understandings about what is involved in becoming skillful teachers. In the years since The Penn State Teacher was first published much had changed within our office as well. The activities and services we offered had undergone considerable evolution. We had a new name--the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching--that reflected these changes. (5) We had logged thousands of additional hours working and talking with faculty, gaining new information about teaching at Penn State in the process. More importantly, we had also learned a lot of new and interesting things about what activities are most helpful in fostering an atmosphere that leads to excellence in learning and teaching.

Clearly, only a new volume could reflect these important changes while also allowing us to reflect on them. To guide the revision process, we looked to our Course in College Teaching. It only made sense to have the new edition follow the course's structure and incorporate what we had learned from developing and teaching the course. One of the most significant of these lessons was how much easier it is to encourage good teaching when discussions are focused on the fundamental activities of teaching (i.e., verbs like "planning," "assessing" and "revising") rather than discrete topics (i.e., nouns such as "learning styles" and "classroom management"). These changes, evident in new chapter titles and subheadings, go beyond semantics however and reflect a significant "re-vision" of the book.

The revised edition also includes considerable new material. In the last four years, Penn State teachers have shown a growing interest in a number of issues like collaborative learning and classroom assessment. Accordingly, we have expanded our chapter on teaching methods to include collaborative learning and problem solving and have added an entire new chapter on classroom assessment. Our own programs, such as the discussions for teachers of large class sections and the short course on the teaching portfolio, have also suggested some special topics of interest. Consequently, we have added two other new chapters. Chapter 3 addresses some of the unique circumstances of teaching and learning in the specific context of Penn State. Chapter 6 explores the complex issues of how we approach teaching as a scholarly activity. In addition, because computers have begun to permeate all aspects of teaching and learning at Penn State, we have added a piece in chapter 3 and have incorporated numerous examples using technology throughout the book.

This new edition also includes many more texts by members of the Penn State community than did the first edition of The Penn State Teacher. Perhaps the greatest impact of the first edition was the voice it gave to some of Penn State's "master" teachers. Highly skilled and dedicated individuals like John Lowe, Robert Mitchell, John Moore, Marie Secor, Larry Spence, and Jackson Spielvogel had been recognized University-wide for their excellence as teachers. Many readers gained both good ideas and inspiration from the willingness of these celebrated teachers to share what they had learned. Since 1993, however, the sense of community around issues related to teaching has been greatly strengthened and broadened. Now, in addition to those who have won awards, many others at all levels from TA to full professor, are enthusiastic about displaying their skill and dedication to teaching. In order to better represent this heightened sense of involvement in teaching and learning, we have sought to incorporate many more Penn State voices--those of both teachers and students. By doing so, we hope not only to reflect the Penn State community, but also to encourage further dialogue and discussion.

Finally, to capture the "re-vision" that underlies these changes, we have modified the title--The Penn State teacher II: Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn --just enough to make it clear to the reader that this is in effect a new book, with a new underlying structure and a new audience. The first edition had been entitled simply--The Penn State Teacher: A Collection of Readings and Practical Advice for Beginning Teachers--because we had assumed our audience was primarily those teachers who were the newest to Penn State and/or the newest to teaching. Evidently, our assumptions were incorrect. With nearly 7000 copies of the first edition in circulation, many besides TAs and new faculty are obviously reading it.

Further, the feedback we have from faculty at all levels and all locations throughout Penn State suggests that this has been a volume that a diverse group of teachers find useful for a variety of reasons and purposes. Some, for example, use it as a catalyst for their discussions with TAs they are mentoring. The revisions should make this use both easier and more productive. Others, some with decades of successful and dedicated teaching, simply report that they found it reaffirming and refreshing. We are hopeful the revisions will add significantly to these readers' discoveries and pleasures. And others still report using it as a first reference, especially when tackling a new teaching assignment. We hope these readers will continue to make such use of this new edition.

Finally, we began the previous edition of this book by saying that good teaching requires a considerable amount of thought, planning, and self-analysis. The same principle underlies this new edition. The many voices within this book offer a diverse set of perspectives and approaches to teaching, but they all agree that teaching is an ongoing process of planning, assessing, revising, reflecting. Good teachers are very different, but good teaching is fundamentally the same. We thus begin with one definition of good teaching that provides a context for the chapters that follow.

This is a question I have asked and have been asked literally hundreds--possibly thousands--of times. Countless research articles, books, and essays have been written on it, an astonishing number of which I have read. Although the basic approach to the task may differ, the findings and general claims often bear a striking resemblance to one another. Similarly, the many voices within this book offer a diverse set of perspectives and approaches to teaching while still agreeing on a few basic conditions of good teaching.

In the voices from outside Penn State as well as within there is a general consensus. Good teaching is a complex process that begins and ends with students. It takes into account who they are, what they already know, what interests they may already have, and what they will need to know. Focusing on students in this way can mitigate, if not totally prevent, the all-too-common experience of completing the "perfect" explication of a critical concept only to discover later that your students have imposed some entirely "new" meaning on what you thought you said. Focusing on the students and what they need to learn is also comforting. To quiet the inevitable stage fright that overcomes me when walking into a class for the first time, I always find it helpful to ask,"What two new ideas or concepts do I want my students to walk away with today?"

There is also very little disagreement that good teaching-especially at the university and college level-demands a high level of subject matter expertise. But subject expertise alone does not a good teacher make. The difference between subject expertise and the kind of explanatory expertise that results in good teaching is real and important. Explanatory expertise involves more than merely telling students what you know in the hope that they will come to know it too. Rather, it involves revealing the solutions to the problems and also how you got there. In a sense, the real difference between being an expert in something and being an expert who teaches is showing your students how you got--and how they can get--the rabbit out of the hat.

There is generally also consensus that good teaching plays off the strengths of each individual teacher. Good teachers fall back on their strengths while working on their weaknesses. Cute tricks and theatrics are not my forté, so I don't try to use them. Your love and enthusiasm for the subject matter, your belief that it is relevant, important, and absolutely fascinating is critical. Enthusiasm is compelling and infectious. Lack of enthusiasm is also infectious, but it is deadly.

Finally, good teaching is about community. Like a good community, good teaching is purposeful, open, just, disciplined, caring and celebrative. (6) But as Bunny Willits notes in the recent report on Penn State as a Community of Learning, these are abstract principles that "need to be personalized in time and space." (7) Implementation is not always easy. And the same strategy does not work in every situation. There are no simple algorithms that will guarantee good teaching. A specific strategy like taking attendance or requiring homework may work in one class but not in the next. What works for me may not work for you. But each solution suggests another, which in turn suggests still others. We can always learn from one another.

While there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for good teaching, happily there are a few activities that do seem to make a difference and around which this book is designed. One such activity is planning. Good teaching involves planning, lots of it and at every level. What do I want my students to learn? It's hard to get somewhere if you don't know where you are going. What makes the subject interesting to me? What will make it interesting to my students? Good teaching also involves adapting to the constraints of the circumstances in which we teach, including the constraints of students' prior knowledge and the constraints of scale. Good teaching never happens in a vacuum but is part of a larger cultural and institutional context. Good teaching involves feedback--both feedback collected from your students and feedback provided to them. Feedback, accurate feedback, is the bedrock that supports learning. It is necessary for learning. Sometimes students can provide it to themselves, but often they can't. And good teaching involves critically analyzing and responding to the feedback. Finally, good teaching is about self knowledge and growth. Finding and respecting your limits is an important part of effective teaching.

We began the previous edition of The Penn State Teacher by noting that good teaching requires a considerable amount of thought, planning, and self-analysis. The same principles underlie this new edition. Good teaching is an ongoing, iterative process that involves careful planning, feedback, analysis, and the courage to try again when things don't go quite as expected. As even a cursory glance at the philosophies in the appendix of this text will attest, good teaching is something that is always labor intensive, sometimes frustrating, but doable. And it is worth the effort.

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