Making Better Teachers
Harvard Magazine has a nice piece on Theda Skocpol's new committee, the
Task Force on Teaching and Career Development, and its mission of trying to improve the level of pedagogy at Harvard.
Couple of things. First, this committee is an interesting barometer of life at post-Summers Harvard. Derek Bok and Jeremy Knowles clearly support it...but they've also delegated it to a person with credibility,
Theda Skocpol, who's powerful enough to make sure that this thing is taken seriously. (And forceful enough, as well.) The committee membership is impressive, a sign that faculty members are buying into it. All good indicators, though hardly determinative, of a successful project. I don't ask this rhetorically: Could this have happened under Summers?
And second, the piece is filled with thoughts of how to provide incentives for better teaching. An interesting challenge, because the incentives to publish books and hit the lecture circuit may always be greater (at least in terms of prestige and money) than the rewards of
good teaching. But here's one suggestion: How about providing a disincentive for bad teaching?
I don't know if Harvard already does this—somehow I suspect it doesn't— but how about posting student evaluations of their professors online, accessible to all, whether inside or outside Harvard? That would certainly provide some incentive to teach with enthusiasm. Also—and this could be related—how about a Harvard-sponsored website devoted to teaching? (And it wouldn't have to be limited just to Harvard, the site could look at teaching techniques and great teachers wherever they may be.) I bet you could find a donor for that....
