TOWARD THE DEFINITION OF A GREAT TEACHER

TOWARD THE DEFINITION O F A GREAT TEACHER*

by John J. €%onsignoren Vincent A. Carrafiello*

Bruce D. Fisherc Gaylord A. Jentzd

Brenda E. Knowles' Phillip J. Scaletta Jrf

William H. Volz9

JOHN J. BONSIGNORE

Teachers ought never to think they are great for several reasons. The first and best reason is that the highest probability is that one is not a great teacher. Second, if one teaches for more than a few weeks on end, there will be royal screw ups and not always ways to repair the damage. A t most one is looking for a good average, not a universal success story. Third, there are times when students think they have had a good class or course when teachers know they have utterly failed. Fourth, entertaining the possibility of greatness for

* Inspired by a paper originally presented by Professor William H. Voltz a t the ALSB National Meeting in Quebec City, 1996. The authors' contributions appear in aphabetical order.

Professor, University of Massachusetts. * Professor, University of Connecticut.

Professor, University of Tennesee. Herbert D. Kelleher Professor in Business Law, The University of Texas at

Professor of Business Law and Director, Honors Program Austin.

Indiana University South Bend.

Purdue University. f Professor of Business Law, The Krannert School of Management

9 Professor, Wayne State University.

104 I Vol. 14 I The Journal of Legal Studies Education

even a millisecond will put a teacher t o sleep when constant vigilance is needed.

A student once said to me, “You seem to like teaching.” “NO”, I replied, “It’s just my kind of tragedy.” This was said partly to be impish and provoke thought on the relationship between suffering and joy, but also to express a true belief. Teaching being so fraught with failure - e.g. the wrong material, the wrong timing, the wrong questions to provoke the right use of the materials, the wrong classroom dynamics, students feeling a loss of self worth instead of feeling more resourceful - that teaching will be “liked” only by the insane or unredeemed masochists.

Teaching evaluations done by students offer no real consolation. Even a t the superlative end, they are at most statements about the past and have no bearing whatever on what can occur tomorrow. Teachers’ relying on them compares to corporate executives who project past results into unknown futures. And sometimes students mistake excitement for quality: enthusiasm, the province of the young teacher, can cover a multitude of sins, as it did in my early years when I couldn’t believe they would pay me to teach. They probably shouldn’t have.

Additional disclaimers can be made, but the above serve as a cautionary preface to some ideas about teaching that might work, if one is lucky, some of the time. Here are seven: promoting activity rather than passivity; putting students into an evaluative mood as soon as possible and keeping them there until they threaten assas- sination (no teaching method is worth dying for); injecting variety into the teaching; teaching at the edge of understanding rather than safely within zones where there is confidence: teaching by indirection rather than straightforwardly; making sure every student leaves a course with a sense of dignity rather than a feeling of disgrace (grades have less t o do with this objective than one may think); and praying for forgiveness when the prior six suggestions fail.

The greatest threat to teaching and learning is passivity on the part of students. Sometimes this is encouraged by the lecture method which asks students to take careful notes, commit them to memory, and repeat them on demand. Nothing need happen to any of the participants, including the teacher, during a lecture. Preparation for examinations and their discussion add very little. Student scan the list of grades outside a professor’s door the way they read a weather report: the weather was nice; a storm did damage.

The main rival to lecturing- the discussion method- produces passivity in a different way. When students see their task to guess the, preconceptions of the teacher, diminishing returns upon a good teaching method set in early. This form of discussion is worse than

1996 I Toward th,e Definition of a Great Teacher 1105

the lecture since it abandons coherence and sequence for no real gain. When a student says “I’m not sure what you are getting a t here, but how about this?” the line has been crossed, and discussion must cease. (One of the beauties of Kafka’s parables is that valid discussion can occur since teachers, unless they cheat by manufac- turing closure, cannot have a known endpoint toward which students must grovel. More on this theme when teaching a t the edge of one’s understanding and indirect teaching are discussed.)

One of the common misconceptions about teaching is that ”basic” information, sometimes taking years to impart by lecture or rigged discussion, is necessary before students are “ready” to evaluate information. Yet, information first and reasons to follow, discourages students who rightfully want to know why this or that information should be gathered. Probably a genuine need for evaluation produces a more economic and highly motivated quest for information, even when students who are conditioned by bad learning regimes protest that they are not yet ready. (Teachers and students sometimes agree to a wrong conclusion about timing the relationship between information and evaluation.) Taken to extremes, imparting information accomplishes nothing, since learning becomes merely quantitative and not qualitative.

Variety is the spice of teaching methods and materials. No method, NO MATTER HOW SUCCESSFUL, can be used continually without becoming ineffective. Teachers who prefer discussions can employ panels, small group discussions, student led classes, mini- lectures. Mini-lectures show that the teacher does have some sentiments about the subject, and addresses the common complaint about law school professors, that by discrediting everything, they are nothing more than rugged nihilists. If an evaluative mood has been planted in the student before any lecturing is done, teachers need not fear that a few words will bowl over and pacify students forever. However, mini- lectures should never precede the students’ having worked with the material, and experienced a variety of interpretations. Nor should there be much of this in the first month of a course lest students, who are conditioned to teacher monologues, will simply sit back and wait for periodic enlightenment. As to variety of teaching materials, movies, videos, charts, graphs, simulations, field trips, guest speakers and just about anything other than what has been primarily done, will be better than pure repetition of a favored form.

Teaching a t the edge of one’s understanding prevents the utter domination of discussion that occurs when teachers have matters pretty well at their command. It is harder to escape pure dogmatism or guessing games when the topics are from the teacher’s angle, devoid of dialectical elements.


Direct teaching will be more a t the surface than indirect teaching. Unfortunately, propagandists for soap know this better than academics. The impish remark on teaching being tragedy not comedy is a sample of an indirect approach. It could force the hearer inward like a riddle. Consider an example of the direct approach: a minister harangues a congregation on the need to do good and avoid evil, t o treat one's neighbor as oneself, or to refuse to cast a stone unless free of guilt. The parishioner for the moment knuckles under, before retreating to a secret enclave where regular beliefs can resurface and flourish. The typical sermon probably never really affects beliefs that are often unconscious. Indirect learning forces the person inward toward real choice rather than outward toward surface agreement. Given the preference of both teachers and students for the direct approach- neither really wanting to learn-it is amazing that any consequential learning takes place at all.

Material must hook a student, force the student inward toward real choice, and while what is chosen cannot be predicted, the successful teacher will have enhanced the student's capacity to make genuine decisions. Parables or cases presented without judicial outcomes do this best since the reader of them cannot reduce the stimulus to manageability and routine processing.

Concrete experiences might accomplish the same results as indirect learning in a classroom, but a t greater cost. With respect to experience it is the novel experience (one freighted with doubt and lack of direction) that arrests the imagination and produces t h e most impressive effects. If one wants to teach about the death penalty, a judicial discussion of the death penalty will probably not be the best vehicle. Witnessing an execution would be better.

All students must leave a class with a sense of dignity and worth; people change their minds slowly. If students have been offered materials that might lead them to reconsider the death penalty, the teacher cannot insist that students adopt an anti-capital punishment stance as a condition to leaving the course with a full certificate of humanity. Similarly, even though it can be painful to listen as a student fine tunes the treatment of prisoners (Working toilets are ok, but no tv, exercise, or in- prison education), unless a teacher wants to inject fascism in the name of eliminating fascism, it is better to back off, hoping that time and experience will inject more compassion.

Say a prayer for forgiveness for mistakes. P.S. When to Quit. Eventually teaching quits the teacher, who may

stay on.

1996 I Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher I 107

The following poem need not be read by young teachers:

Song Sung

An old cat lies curled up In the sun. Experience in catching mice Catches no mice.

A string is dangled in its face. One eye opens as if to say,

“I know about strings,” But the cat raises one paw only a little Before tucking it further under its chin.


VINCENT A. CARRAFIELLO

There can be no algebraic formula that will make for great teaching. Nor can we invoke some metaphysical endowment from Olympus as the mysterious cause- some divine afflatus setting us apart from colleagues and students both. All I indeed can write about is only my own experience as honestly as I can, in the brief circumference of this essay to describe what I have been doing for over thirty years.

My classes are either of the lecture variety or class discussion of assigned (but not edited) cases. 0 bviously these different classroom modes summon different procedures and styles. When I lecture, I really have to have mastered the theme of my presentation and believe of what I am talking about-enough to get the class “turned on” intellectually and emotionally. Expounding the dramatic facts of a case like Murbury v. Madison, or Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, contributes greatly to that. And I use a lot of “chalk talk” so my clothes are pretty well-dusted with yellow and white chalk- suppos- edly “dustless’’- after going through the intricacies and intrigues of the litigation under scrutiny.

During my regular semesters (not summer school) I dress formally for class because I consider it as much an honor to appear before my students as if I were pleading a case before the justices of the United States Supreme Court. In fact, I think it more an honor when I read some of the opinions these justices pronounce! I never call students by their first name and always preface my address my a Mr. or a Ms. What students want t o call me is up to them. Sometimes they can be quite original and insightful in their namings!

I have never used an overhead projector and never will, so long as my arms are strong enough to hold chalk and write on a blackboard. I want my students to look forward to my lectures as a highpoint in their day, and that is no easy bill to fill when your students are MBA candidates who have been working all day long. But to give an exciting lecture, one has to be excited by the material- stimulated and invigorated enough to continually read and study, and maintain that intellectual curiosity and discourse within oneself and within others that constitutes what education is all about.

And when a student raises a question, that should be treated as a sacred moment - the occasion of grace when everything comes together. For when questions arise, communication has been accomplished. And above all, the exhaustion and sweat-and yes chalk dust-is a joy of having given the very best you have in terms of learning and understanding.

My case discussion approach is quite different in form of course. Here the student does the initial spade work by presenting a sum-

1996 1 Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher 1 109

mation of the case, analyzed in the student’s own words. Then I will question and probe but always in a fashion respectful in the structure of thought the student has erected, to garner an understanding of the case. In so doing I want to create a place where we are professionals together - talking and analyzing, and agreeing and disagree- ing. Admittedly we do not use the case books of a law school, or its harsh caricature of the socratic method. But we do talk with and not to each other-and we do arrive at some tentative generalizations- always subject to further questioning and further probing.

And underlying all this is a quite traditional insistence on the reading of some significant and well-written books. I can’t teach a class without assigning the students some challenging outside reading. Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice and David Halberstam’s The Reckoning are good examples. I want the student to really sink their proverbial teeth into these books’ rich insight and sensitivity to human nature. From them the student will realize the law does not exist in vacuo but always in an enclosing and surrounding culture and context. I ask for the students‘ own thoughts on these readings- not mine or the authors’. Their own and unique reactions are what interest me. Good challenging reading will always elicit reactions.

Fairness is always an essential ingredient-in exams, in grading, or in adjusting for absences or illness. Many of my graduate students have international assignments to fulfill. So adjustments and makeups have to be arranged. Above all, fairness demands patience with one’s self and with students. In addition to the usual due process definition of fairness, I utilize two tests of being fair: Can I remember what it felt like to be a student, to be on the receiving end? And can I present a position I may disagree with, even more ably than its proponents?

And always there are the first day jitters. No matter the assurance of years of experience. I still get a little edgy before I have my first meeting with a new class: the concern that I will be and give my very best. But-and this is a very personal trade secret!-as I stand waiting to enter by that opened classroom door, I still hum quietly to myself beyond anyone’s hearing, the opening bars of the Latin hymn, Veni Creator, or the Polish carol Medrcy Swiata, it does have a calming effect!

If there are rewards they certainly remain nonmonetary. It is an open and notorious “secret” that great teaching ranks absolutely close to zero in the ranking of where the money goes in academe. That fact can embitter you if you only let it-or make you a cynic which is as bad a condition. For there are reward nonetheless; to see a student become a public defender for the indigent in a major state and save so many from the still-constitutional barbarism of


capital punishment, to have a law school casebook on civil rights litigation dedicated to you by a former student who went on to a prestigious law school faculty (and not mind sharing this top billing with his elementary school teacher!), and to see another student elevated to the bench who thanks you in writing for a small part as a teacher, and writing back to request he show mercy and compassion on those he judges.

For me these will be rewards more precious than silver and gold- always. They mean in one small, obscure way we are contributing to making a culture humane- creating a civilization. And what can be a greater accomplishment than that?

1996 I Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher I l l 1

BRUCE D. FlSHER

“Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he will eat for a li,fetime.”

Proverb

Bill Foster was a visiting professor at his alma mater, Prestige University. Bill was attending a faculty meeting a t which the matter of determining what constitutes “good teaching” was an agenda item.

Professor Clyde Smith, a worried looking professor who repre- sented a number of concerned faculty, presented a report which lamented the exclusive use of student evaluations of faculty teaching as the sole measure of the learning process. The report decried the state of teaching and learning that was occurring in the classrooms at Prestige University.

After Smith concluded his report, Dean Jones stated, “The entire university administration is committed t o the notion of the ‘student as customer’. As such, we have used and will continue to use the student evaluation of teaching effectiveness as THE SOLE measure of the teaching and learning that is going on in t h e classroom.” The meeting then went on to other items and Professor Smith dejectedly sat down.

“Professor. Smith was the best teacher I ever had when I was a student here,” said Calvin Walker, who had been an assistant professor at Big State University for 30 years. When asked for the basis for his judgment on Smith’s teaching, Walker quickly replied, “You could take a good set of notes from his lectures, never crack a book, and get an ‘A’.”

“Well, let’s see, Bill,” mused Fred Jones, Bill Foster’s department head during Bill’s annual performance evaluation conference. “You’ve published one article in the past year in an indexed journal, which puts you in the top quartile in the department. Your teaching, however, could stand improvement. According to the student evaluations of your classes you fall in the lowest quartile in the department. HOW do you account for this?” quizzed Fred. Bill looked puzzled. He did not know how to meet this challenge, so he just shrugged. “Maybe I can be of help.” replied Fred sympathetically. “It looks as though you are devoting too much of your time to publication and research and not enough to teaching.”

The above stories represent events that have occurred at several unnamed U.S. universities. Implicit in all three scenarios is a flawed


view of teaching and learning prevalent today in US. higher education. Student grades are higher than ever as attested to by the grade inflation phenomenon. This would suggest that students are learning more than ever before. One can peruse student government publi- cations of faculty teaching effectiveness and find high evaluations for much of the faculty. This would indicate that teaching is better than ever. Constant dollars spent on US. higher education in 1993 (most recent year according to Statistical Abstract of the US.) totaled $182.7 billion, a sum greater than the Gross Domestic Products of all but twenty-two nations according to data in the 1996 Economist World in Figures. In macro terms, resources devoted to higher education appear adequate.

Yet problems remain. Tuition increases regularly outstrip the gen- eral cost of living index. Employers bemoan the reading, math, and analytical skills of students exiting our education “factories.” Faced with such criticisms, higher education has adopted management tech- niques to evaluate teaching. Just as restaurants quiz exiting custom- ers on the quality of a pizza, “great teaching” is determined today by studentlcustomers. Students now “grade” their professors’ teaching. Further, collective opinions of students in a course reflected in a “one number” “teaching effectiveness” item on the student evaluation form a t many colleges and universities is THE measure of “great teaching.” This is the paradigm of the “student as customer.”

Colleges, universities, and factories all represent corporate “cul- tures.” A key element in today’s corporate culture is “teamwork.” Teamwork means getting along with other persons in the organization. Teamwork means empathy - seeing the “good” that others bring to their work tasks that may be distinctive and heretofore unrecog- nized in the corporate culture.

But there are extra-organizational perils to this “team” philosophy. Several years ago when Detroit’s automobile industry was in the throes of producing cars that even Lee Iacocca admitted were “junk,” auto executives decided to employ Japanese consultants to identify and diagnose Detroit’s quality problem. After studying the assembly line, the Japanese recommended that a t the end of the production line all of a car’s doors be removed and reattached. Detroit engineers refused stating that this would be impossible; the cars were made under such broad tolerances that it would take too much time to reattach them. In effect, the entire “line” had become a party to what amounted to a quality fraud: Everyone was “signing off“ on hisher peers’ work as “A-OK” when it really was not. Who would be so foolish as t o accuse a co-worker of doing substandard work? That would not be teamwork. That would be disruptive to the smooth

1996 I Toward the Definit ion of a Great Teacher I113

running to the line. Defective cars were given “passes” and sent out the box door.

The factory thus was a cultural “box.” Everyone within the box was on the “team” and everything ran smoothly so long as the products stayed inside the “box.” Alas, this was impossible since the cars had to exit the box and be sold to consumers who actually paid money for what the “box” produced.

Consumers are not on the “team.” They do not act like team players. Consumers grouse. They are intolerant of cars produced by auto workers with a Monday morning hangover who let cars pass without tightening a door fitting improperly. They complain when l t h e car stalls on a busy street. They complain when the power window is stuck in the down position on a rainy day. Consumers are, in effect, auditors.

There is a remarkable resemblance between what is going on in our educational factories and what formerly went on in the US. auto industry: There is too much tolerance of shoddy work in the name of “teamwork.” Dissenters who identify shoddiness are marginalized as malcontents who disrupt institutional solidarity. They must have “personal problems.”

Educational administrators have taken their cue from Detroit and have decided not to let faculty who are “in the box” determine when their colleagues are teaching well or poorly. This is a well-intentioned attempt to reduce a conflict of interest since there are well-known schisms on college faculties whose presence undermines objective determination of teaching. To circumvent such problems, college administrators have substituted student evaluators for faculty. This seeming solution to the “team spirit” mentality has, in turn, resulted in another difficulty in determining teaching excellence: The student1 customer’s conflict of interest. Specifically, how can a student objec- tively evaluate a process in which they perform?

Teaching is one part of a subtle process known as “learning.” Studentlcustomers who evaluate teachers have a conflict of interest which certain faculty (often those with weak publishing records) are prone to exploit: Studentslcustomers want “easy” access to the course ideas. Too many studentlcustomers equate “easy learning” with “good teaching.” Easy access to ideas is the name of the game, according to studentlcustomers. Faculty who make demands on students to read texts, cases, and apply course ideas to novel settings - formerly called “thinking” - are bet& noires in the studentlcustomers’ world. “Think- ing” is the intellectual equivalent of “heavy lifting.” It must be avoided a t all costs. Studentlcustomers are quick to punish faculty who make “excessive” demands on them by giving them low teacher evaluations. Further, students equate high grades with great learning


so naturally if a faculty member assigns a generous number of A’s and B’s, the professor has succeeded a t teaching and students have learned a great deal. If this resembles “team playing” among students, faculty, and college administrators, welcome to the educational “box.” Since students are in a position to evaluate teaching and can, in effect determine or at least strongly influence whether a faculty member obtains tenure or a raise in pay, what faculty member is going to be so stupid as to disregard the studentlcustomer preference for “education-lite.” Some administrators love high grades because they symbolize quality and justify ever higher tuition.

Faculty who give closed book exams, do not put old exams on file, require work to be done on time, and observe strict academic standards are too often dealt with severely by the studentlcustomers. Such faculty are denying studentlcustomers the access to ideas that students have paid for with inflated tuition.

There is a very intricate and subtle political dimension to teaching and evaluation of teaching and learning that plays into the hands of Machiavellian college administrators. It works as follows: It is accepted administrative dogma that “some” tension within an organization is healthy since it keeps people on their toes. Academic administrators have a tendency to introduce tension by playing off faculty known to satisfy studentlcustomers (also known as “good teachers”) against faculty known as researchers. Of course, it is possible to excel at both teaching and researchlpublication, but many faculty find themselves in one “camp” or the other, particularly a t second and third tier schools where academic standards may not be as rigorous. Oddly enough, in such a setting, faculty producing above average amounts or quality of research, and who also make real demands on their students in the classroom, are often identified as bad teachers. I once had a former department head say to me that my publication record indicated that my teaching suffered because no one can do both well. This obviously is a non-sequitur of the first magnitude, but examination of faculty salary schedules at various professional schools, and a correlation of salaries with indexed, published research at several U S . law schools and other academic de- partments convinces me that such mistaken views of a teaching1 research tradeoff are widely held.

The essence of management is control. The “student as customer” paradigm thus is an integral component of the control device university administrators now employ to manage contemporary educational institutions. It is also a major dysfunctionality deserving of rectifi- cation.

What professor has not heard the question during lecture, “Is that going to be on the test?” Clearly students are aware of the importance ’


of exams in their overall careers. It is proposed here that four statistical measures be used to “vet” exams. These measures are the number of students taught, the Spearman-Brown index, the question discrimination profile, and the difficulty index for the entire exam.

First, comparisons of faculty teaching should recognize different class sizes. Professors teaching classes of approximately the same size and subject should be compared. It is amazing how frequently this obvious fact is ignored and persons teaching one hundred per class are compared with those teaching classes of ten.

Secondly, the Spearman-Brown coefficient should be used to measure the “tightness” of fit between what is taught and learned. A high Spearman-Brown (such as .9 or above) is better or more reliable than a lower such score. Such a measure indicates more sensitivity to subtle differences in student mastery of the course subject matter. Faculty may often wonder if they are making a correct decision when awarding an “A” as opposed to a “B+” or “B.” A high Spearman- Brown coefficient on the exam should allay faculty anxiety in such situations, since it is a true “out of the box” measure beyond the influence of faculty prone to over or under rewards students. This coefficient is well recognized since it is used to vet the LSAT, SAT, many professional licensing exams from CPA, law, medicine, engi- neering, and many more exams of equal significance.

A third statistic that can augment judgment credibility based on exams is conformity to an “ideal” exam discrimination profile. Several years ago, University of Tennessee administrators hired a Duke University consultant to devise such a profile. Essentially this profile states that fewer than five percent of the questions should be neg- ative discriminators (questions which high scorers on the exam as a whole miss and low scorers on the exam as a whole answer correctly), fewer than 15% should be low discriminators (questions which everyone answers correctly), a t least 25% medium discriminators (questions with more nuanced aspects), and at least 25% high discriminators (questions which only top scorers will answer correctly). If a faculty member has met the exam discrimination profile, she should have reasonable confidence that the exam contains a proper balance among questions based on difficulty.

The fourth statistical measure suggested here to vet exams is the overall exam difficulty index. This is easily calculated since it is the mean score for all students divided by the maximum score. The higher the difficulty index (say, .75 or .8), the easier the exam. A colleague trained in evaluation suggests a stiff difficulty index of .6. Exams requiring students to APPLY course principles to novel problems tend to produce low difficulty indices-that is, they are very tough exams. Exams having such a difficulty number are not designed


t o be “user friendly” or win popularity contests with studentlcustomers, but they do encourage faculty to introduce something too often lacking in today’s educational environment; Academic rigor.

The statistical measures suggested here are designed to supple- ment, not replace, student evaluations. Obviously it is a judgment call, but it would seem appropriate to weight student evaluations about 1/3 of the total teaching evaluations, the other 2/3 coming from the four statistical measures suggested here.

There is one over-riding advantage in using these statistical tools to evaluate exams: A great teacher can make a great exam. Great exams force students to see new things in the course material. Students are forced t o extend themselves. A great exam is more than a measure of the students: It measures the professors’ mastery of course material and an ability to introduce subtle gradations in the subject matter in a novel format. This is very difficult. It requires a high mastery of one’s subject matter if a faculty member composes hislher own exams.

Two caveats should be noted: Incorporating statistics such as the number of students taught, the Spearman-Brown, and difficulty indices as well as conformity to accepted question discrimination pro- files into the teacher evaluations would not necessarily result in any different determination of who the “good” and “bad” teachers are. However, using such statistics would raise the confidence levels in the correctness of such determinations and more importantly, the judgments faculty make about student proficiency.

The second caveat is that the statistical approach suggested here hinges on the use of objective - preferably multiple choice - exams. There is great controversy about this although if one examines a key “out of the box” measure - what educators and others do in fact - objective exams are used in PSAT, SAT, LSAT. GMAT, CPA. bar exams, medical exams, and other key measures of one’s technical proficiency. It is not suggested here that objective exams be used exclusively, but they do provide a data base for “out of the box” measures that can increase confidence in important judgments we make about our students.

Studentlcustomer teaching evaluation schemes in which students are the sole determinants of “great teaching” are a fraud. They are a fraud on the students since faculty could well be falsely telling students they are more proficient than they actually are. They are a fraud on the parents who pay tuition based on such a one dimen- sional approach. They are a fraud on future employers who hire students in part based on evaluations which fail to measure accurately technical proficiency of the students, their work ethic developed through ferreting out ON THEIR OWN principles of the discipline,

1996 / Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher I 117

and student ability to apply what they have learned to novel situations.

Statistically-based teacher evaluation methods are and have been available for years t o measure how much learning has occurred and how good the teaching is. These measures can and should be added to faculty evaluations to provide a fuller picture of what is transpiring in our classrooms. Further, such statistical measures should be presented in student government association and other “professor sur- veys” to provide an educational transparency that higher education desperately needs. Such an evaluation scheme would reduce the present cynicism regarding high teacher evaluations as primarily a function of easy graders who make the subject too accessible to their students.


GAYLORD A. JENTZ “Great teachers” are not born, they are made. It is true some are

born with attributes, such as an out-going personality, or have ham- actor traits, which can enhance their ability to be a “great teacher,” but almost all of us can, with training and hard work, become an effective teacher, which of course can lead to the “great teacher” classification.

When I was asked to submit a short expos6 on what I believe the definition of a “great teacher” should be, my thoughts first concen- trated on the teachers I had in my schooling, and then on those of my colleagues who over the years I have watched and evaluated at the University of Texas. In touring my memory lane, I realized that in both cases I had the pleasure of being associated with some truly excellent teachers, particularly my colleagues a t the University of Texas. What was amazing, however, was that in attempting to find those qualities and attributes that make for the “great teacher,” I developed a more detailed list of attributes and actions which make for a poor teacher. It is with this mixed bag of things great teachers do and those they do not do that I arrive a t a lengthy but detailed definition of what is a “great teacher.”

No single attribute makes for a “great teacher.” Great teachers are consistent performers over a period of time, not onenight stands. In addition my definition does not necessarily jive with student evaluations. Being humorous in class, and receiving such favorable student evaluations as being the “best class I have taken” or “the lectures were so entertaining I never missed a class,” does not necessarily reflect what was learned in the class from the teacher. Great teachers teach, and from them students learn.

Two of the most important attributes for being a “great teacher” include being well prepared (versed in the subject area), and being well organized in presentation of the material to be learned. No matter what teaching technique is used, a “great teacher” cannot be an effective communicator without these two basic foundations. Very little is learned from an unknowledgeable professor, and even one who is an expert in the subject area of the course diminishes his or her effectiveness in an unorganized presentation.

A third important attribute for a “great teacher” is the ability to be an effective communicator. The ability to present any material, particularly complex information, in a simple, easy-to-understand format is essential. Illustrations of concepts are always useful. Stories help students synthesize the material they are learning and help students to see and understand the practical applications of the material. This can be done by lecture, multi-media presentations, use

1996 I Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher I l l 9

of the socratic method, case studies, or whatever. Being a dynamic speaker is helpful, but not the most important element in being an effective communicator. Teachers from other countries, teachers with limited speaking experience, and teachers who lecture very little in the classroom can be effective communicators by using different teaching aids and methodologies.

There are probably more don’ts connected t o being an effective communicator than any other attribute. I once made a list of these don’ts, partly because it is easy for teachers to get into bad habits. For example, do not lecture with your back to the students. Do not “lecture to the blackboard or overhead projector.” Use the blackboard or overhead projector as a means not as end. A “great teacher” who frequently uses the blackboard or transparencies to display information should place as much of this information as possible on the blackboard or a transparency before the class begins. In this same vein, keep eye contact with your students, not with the floor or ceiling. Eye contact maximizes communication. Although humor is often a helpful element in communication, off-color (both as to language and subject matter), ethnic, religious, or sexist jokes are a no- no. If the teacher offends only one student with such jokes, the teacher reduces his or her effectiveness. Today, even when referring to gender, a “great teacher” displays sensitivity. Use of one gender throughout a course annoys persons of the opposite gender. Use of “his or her” when suitable, and a mixture of genders as subjects in examples or illustrations given is highly desireable. One also should never stereotype in illustrations. In discussing the tort of negligence by using an automobile accident as an illustration, one must be gender neutral. Although there are other don’ts, a “great teacher” tries to avoid mannerisms which are distractive. Pacing or swaying back and forth, too many “ahs,” monotone speech, too frequent use of expres- sions such as “in this case,” talking too fast, and the list goes on and on of mannerisms that simply are so annoying that students start counting the “ahs” per lecture rather than listening to and absorbing the instructor’s pearls of wisdom. Fortunately with some work, most of these mannerisms can be corrected or minimized,

A fourth attribute of a “great teacher’’ is the teacher’s availability to the student. A “great teacher” teaches outside as well as inside the classroom. Every outstanding teacher that I know has students who wish to ask questions, share problems, or actively seek advice from that teacher. Students of great teachers tell me they know that their teacher is available to them and will welcome their inquiry both inside and outside the classroom. I have never had a “great teacher’” who was only available for three set office hours per week.


A fifth attribute is respect for the student, whether that student is an undergraduate or graduate student. A “great teacher” seldom or never talks down to students. My great teachers treated every student’s question as a serious one, even though I thought some of my colleague student questions were rather stupid or off the wall. To treat questions in any other matter, turns off the tap of student inquisitiveness. Some students need simply more explanation, and they are honestly seeking answers or understanding of the class material. If the student still does not understand, the “great teacher” offers in earnest an opportunity for the student to speak with him or her after class to go into more detail. A student is therefore not embarassed, this student does not take up valuable class time from other students, and the student feels free to ask future questions knowing that answers will be furnished. Great teachers know also how to subtly handle disruptive students. Confrontations in the classroom are rarely the answer.

A sixth attribute of my “great teachers” is “fairness.” Although all were demanding and challenged me to learn, to be analytical in my thought process, to be inquisitive, and to go beyond the four corners of the text, everything in the class had a ring of fairness. This included not only the make-up, coverage, and length of exams, but various course “rules” which were explained with reasons a t the beginning of the course. These rules included required attendance, make-up exam policies, use of course materials in exams, wearing of caps in the classroom (today particularly for exams), bringing back- packs into an exam room, and the list goes on. The rules were fairly applied to all, and although exceptions were rare, even the students as a whole felt the exceptions granted were warranted. I rarely had a “great teacher” with a long list of rules, but even those that had a number, I never heard much objection as long as these were explained and administered fairly. My observation today of those colleagues I evaluate as great teachers, have the same quality.

The seventh attribute of a “great teacher” is the ability to solicit from the student a learning process, one which requires critical and analytical thought processes and an inquisitive mind. These great teachers treat a textbook only as a resource. Lectures and other materials of a “great teacher” stretch the mind well beyond the boundaries of memorization, and extend t o the whys, hows, what ifs, and what the prediction for the future will be. For example, a “great teacher” would expect a student given any limited subject area of law to understand not only the historical development of the law, and what the law is today, but the student would be required with sound reasoning to predict any changes in that law ten years fiom now in our changing society.

1996 I Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher I121

The eighth attribute is the enthusiasm that the teacher brings into the classroom for the subject matter being taught. Nobody likes a dead fish, but a live fish, even when hooked onto a fishing pole, brings excitement to those in attendance. If the teacher is excited about the teaching of the subject matter, the student becomes excited and anxious to learn it, and to be an active partner in the teaching and learning process. I remember one of my law professors who hated the subject and teaching of Contracts I. It was the most boring, but restful to the eyes, class I took and my grade was truly reflective. Fortunately, my teacher for Contracts I1 was an excellent and effective teacher who generated enthusiasm for the subject, and in that course and over some years of teaching, I rebounded from a void learning experience.

The ninth attribute for being a “great teacher” is to be a good listener. We learn from students, even from constructive criticism. Being a good listener demonstrates a teacher’s concern for the student’s problems and questions, completes the communication chain, and avoids many times miscommunication.

Here then are my nine attributes for being a “great teacher.” I’m sure others may even consider other attributes, but very few instructors can achieve all of my nine, and thus be deserving of the title. What most instructors in our profession achieve is that of the definition of an excellent and effective teacher, a teacher who exhibits a number of these attributes but not all nine. Students remember “great teachers” and “bad teachers” during their lieftime, but only some of their excellent and effective teachers. For what it is worth, today the business law or legal environment teachers are almost always rated as a group as being excellent and effective, with a number of our colleagues as “great,” in comparison to other disciplines, and rarely as “bad.” It’s a feather in our “caps” worth wearing.

So, what is the definition of a “great teacher”? For the dictionary only, a “great teacher” is defined as “a knowledgeable, well prepared, student available instructor who effectively communicates and instills a body of knowledge in students through a fair and demanding learning process which encourages and extends the analytical thought processes and inquisitive mind of the student.”

122 1 Vol. 14 I The Journul of Legal Studies Education

BRENDA E. KNOWLES

In a few days I will serve as an evaluator of thirty candidates for an all-university teaching award. Questioning my own competence to judge such matters, I will struggle yet again to come up with a calculus that ensures some degree of certitude, fairness, and objec- tivity. Put differently, after almost two decades of teaching, I find that coming to grips with what constitutes excellence in teaching still confounds me.

At one level, I can relatively easily parse from these dossiers the qualities that characterize excellence in teaching. In my experience, such teachers generally have a passion for their discipline and for teaching; they maintain their technical competency and remain abreast of developments in their field (and in other disciplines); they communicate ideas clearly and effectively; they demand a great deal of their students (and even more of themselves); they successfully nav- igate the treacherous byways inherent in upholding high standards and expectations while at the same time ensuring student learning: they have a profound and abiding respect for the seriousness of what transpires in the classroom setting; they have great personal integrity and thus strive for fairness and impartiality; they possess a mental acuity that inspires curiosity and wonderment; they manifest a genuine classroom persona and employ teaching styles compatible with it (I use the term “persona” intentionally because it has been my experience that a teacher’s personality inside and out of class may vary dramatically). These traits and mindsets, coupled with the teacher’s resoluteness and purposefulness, represent the primary catalysts in igniting the synergies that can turn an ordinary class into a life- altering experience.

This transformation- and the setting of the benchmarks that ac- company such changes -involve the evocation of strong personal energies and what Ferlinghetti has called “constantly risking absurd- ity.” As the evidence in these dossiers demonstrates, great teachers take great risks; albeit in different ways, each asks the student to strive for profundities. Great teachers accomplish this by exploiting that most pre-eminent of all motivations for learning- human curiosity. This can occur only in “thinking-intensive” classes in which both the teacher and the student engage in a mutual sharing of intellectual inquisitiveness and in which both parties understand the contextual nature of their shifting roles in the learning process. In the words of an Asian philosopher widely read in the 1960’s. “A wise teacher does not bid you enter his [or her] house of wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”

Through this investment of energy and this dedication, the truly great teacher not only teaches the canon but goes beyond it. Great

1996 1 Toward the Definit ion of a Great Teacher 1 123

teaching moreover transcends the temporal and physical boundaries of the classroom. Teaching moments occur anywhere, anytime. Teach- ers who achieve greatness convince each student of his or her stake in this vision of education. By showing their trustworthiness and by manifesting an openness to inquiry, great teachers give each student the courage to approach the mystical, i.e., the spiritual dimensions of learning from which the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom- the true outcomes of education-can result.

The dossiers I have read attest to these high stakes and also underscore the increasingly wide chasm between what teachers cus- tomarily have expected from students and the generally lower aspi- rations as well as the increasingly consumeristic orientation of present- day students. The tensions implicit in these disparities pose significant challenges for the teacher who tries to “move” the students into changing fundamentally the way they think, since the pool of potential learners reflects these students’ increasing disengagement from the academic process, indeed from anything resembling an intellectual life. In undertaking this quest, especially today, the great teacher invites both adulation and rejection.

Accordingly, as my reading of these dossiers indicates, teachers who strive for greatness necessarily become students of the learning process (which in turn entails their becoming students of human nature as well). They understand they teach not business law (or legal studies) but people. Having learned that one cannot bribe, scheme, manipulate, or cajole students into learning, they think of ways to convince otherwise unmotivated students of the satisfaction derived from learning. Great teachers’ dedication to learning challenges the students to move from pretending to be students to being real students. Great teachers thus see themselves as designers -or architects- of student learning.

Persuading the students of the high-marquee value of learning means fostering a classroom climate in which the students become “hooked on learning.” To accomplish this, great teachers use the nimbleness of their mind (steeped in the disciplinary paradigms) and their perspicacity as tools for ferreting out the essence of any idea. They also nurture a trusting relationship with the students and remain sensitive to the fragility of those who are less confident about the materials being covered and those who question the materials’ relevance and value. At the same time, great teachers remain stead- fast - despite declining student evaluations, vocal student resistance, and the post-modern angst that increasingly infects the learning enterprise - about upholding high standards of academic and professional integrity. Great teachers acknowledge that abjuring these aims tends to stymie the melding of wills that infuses authentic teaching


and learning. The great teacher inspires the students to become active partners in the spiritual discipline that results from this gestalt..

Knowing that deep (as opposed to superficial) learning involves an ever-changing mix of the existential and the collaborative, the great teacher takes on many roles and thereby puts a human face’on the learning process. The dossiers I have examined reveal that, in following what they perceive as a calling, great teachers incite emotions similar t o those experienced by great religious leaders (who, not coincidentally, considered themselves teachers). Like those religious leaders, great teachers view their vocation as a struggle for the students’ hearts and minds. Hence, to effect connectedness and to build a community of learners, great teachers often resort to story- telling, proverbs, parables, analogies, aphorisms, and slogans. In challenging the students to delve deeply into the learning enterprise and to confront their own shortcomings, the great teacher, like those venerated religious leaders, may face monumental resistance. On any given day, then, students may consider a great teacher as either a prophet or a pariah. But great teachers, by challenging each student t o strive to be better than he or she is, eventually manage to enfold in their hearts even the most ardent resisters.

The dossiers I have read also make clear that great teachers, in exhorting the students to put learning a t the center of the educational enterprise, often take on the role of a coach. As such, they stress the fundamentals, demonstrate the effective execution of a concept, and then, after establishing this foundation, move the level of play to those rarefied heights of mastery. Like coaches, great teachers employ different strategies, depending on the students’ level of talent (or lack thereof), so as to enable the students t o exploit their own particular strengths and to compensate for any deficiencies. Moreo- ver, great teacherslcoaches celebrate the students’ successes and use the students’ failures as the bases for further instruction. Great teachers’ configurations of “plays” (rewritten, rethought, and re- worked for every class) demonstrate to the students the mental and ethical wherewithal that will equip the students with the capacity to solve future problems and thereby become successful professionals. And, like great coaches, great teachers lead but are led as well. They inspire the students to enter into the dance and, with the students, work toward that mutability when it becomes impossWe to tell the dancer from the dance. It is in these crystalline moments that both the teacher and the students can recognize those self-sacrificing partnerships that underlie true teaching and learning.

The dossiers I am reading reflect time and again that great teachers use these well-conceived approaches and the resultant dynamics

1996 / Toward the Definition of a @eat Teacher I 125

to electrify the students. And most students do respond positively. Yet these self-same teacher-student interactions can paralyze and riddle other class members with insecurities. We must remember that whatever role we take, we, as teachers, positively and negatively shape students’ attitudes toward our discipline, their chosen career, education, and even life itself. As we teach, our powers of cerebration and the adversarial orientation of our training as lawyers enable us in particular to do great good or to savage our students. Though presumably none of us consciously sets out t o draw and quarter those students brave enough to enter the dance, we must impress upon ourselves the fact that a misplaced comment can devastate our students. Accordingly, we must remain cognizant of the fact that the great teacher empowers rather than overpowers. We also must bear in mind the fact that one’s touching the hearts and minds of the students should not result in gaping holes that necessitate triage. We must pay heed to the fact that the student-teacher bond, once broken, may be irreparable.

Still, remaining cognizant of the fragility of classroom dynamics is one thing; having the energy to rise above the physical fatigue and run a relaxed, open classroom is yet another. The assumption of these various pedagogical roles - evangelist, coach, or dancer - that facilitate the students’ intellectual evolution from mere comprehen- sion to synthesis involves an amalgam of theory and practice that saps one’s personal resources. The ringing successes and the abject failures that occur on a daily basis within the learning context also challenge the teacher who wishes to retain freshness and that most saving of all graces, humor.

It is very clear from the dossiers I have been considering that the truly great teacher manages to stave off these spirit-robbing, ener- vating forces. The trick is to find refreshment, enlivening sources. Speaking for myself only, I derive such renewal from research activ- ities. Grappling with new ideas not only excites me but also leaves me more empathetic to my students’ struggles with class materials. Doing research, furthermore, makes me recall why I chose the life of the mind; and when I then walk into class, I am reminded of what a privilege it is to share with others my passion for law and what I have learned. Doing research with students, talking about teaching with my colleagues, attending teaching symposia, cooking up exciting classroom exercises that maximize my pedagogical effectiveness - all these constitute additional poultices when I am sick in spirit. For me, this much-needed revitalization in addition derives from continual self-audits, the asking of such questions as: why didn’t this approach work; how can I more fully engage the unmotivated; how can I more successfully reconcile the tensions between relinquishing control of


t h e classroom and keeping the students on course; how can I more properly balance the efforts I devote to facilitating student learning and the students’ responsibility for their own learning? For it is through these refinements of the praxis of our craft and through reflection that I and others may gain insights as to why we feel depleted.

Perhaps the answer actually is quite simple. As is the case in those most cherished and most vital human relationships, for the great teacher true satisfaction may well derive from the willingness to re- commit all over, each day, in each class meeting-indeed wherever one encounters a “teachable moment.” Thus, no matter how much time we put into reading dossiers or examining the evidence that purports to show greatness in teaching, we are left with the unen- viable task of trying to quantify the unquantifiable and describe the indescribable, hence the confounding nature of the undertaking. A great teacher is the sum of all the indicia of excellence we can identify but ultimately is more. A great teacher’s willingness to enter into the mysterious, the metaphorical, puts him or her apart from the rest of us. On the other hand, each of us on a daily basis has an opportunity t o leave indelible marks on the students’ hearts and lives. Our intimate involvement with our students in this most exalted of human endeavors-the shaping of the mind and the spirit-rep- resents an extraordinary privilege. Perhaps, then, it is in the striving- for, if not the bringing-to-fruition. that we achieve deep fulfillment and grace. As teachers, this is our call to greatness; and we must remain ever vigilant of and thankful for the gifts conferred on us by the boundless generosity of spirit that moves our students to enter into the dance with us as we together approach the ineffable.


PHILLIP J. SCALETTA JR. I have taught law courses at the Krannert School of Management

of Purdue University for 30 years and was the Director of the MBA Graduate Programs for several years and have had many of the same experiences as Bill Voltz in evaluating faculty members for promotion and tenure, for teaching awards, etc.

I too have several standards for evaluating teaching performance. They are as follows:

(1) I agree that the teacher should be very knowledgeable in the field and course material in which he or she is teaching. This is necessary t o gain the respect of the students. As I tell young professors, if you don’t know the answer to a student’s question, don’t try to fake an answer, simply admit that you don’t know and you will find the answer, and when you come to the next class be prepared to answer the student’s question fully and accurately.

(2) A great teacher is always prepared for class, starts class promptly and retains control of class, guiding and controlling discussion.

(3) In addition to being knowledgeable about the material, a great teacher has to be able to communicate with examples which students understand such as reference to current legal matters. For example, the O J . Simpson trials were great tools to explain the differences between criminal and civil law. Not all scholars of the law are able to communicate these legal principles to students. This is a skill that was not taught to us in law school. This is a skill that takes practice and hard work to master.

Sincerity, honesty and motivation in your classroom activity are key factors in being a great teacher. Do you really like these students? Do you get up in the morning anxious to meet the students in class? Does your energy and excitement motivate the students? Motivation is a teaching skill. A good coach motivates his or her players to play up to, and many times above their capabilities. A great teacher is a great motivator as well as a teacher.

(5) A great teacher knows each of his or her students by name. This is a skill that is learned. Many teachers have t h e students fill in a seating chart. Then have it typed and enlarged so it can be easily read by the teacher. Then use this seating chart to call on students, insert notations as to quality of student’s responses, absences, tardiness etc. Soon the teacher will know his or her students by name.

(6) A great teacher’s influence does not end when the bell rings ending the class. Great teachers make themselves available to talk and discuss matters with their students. A great teacher is a mentor and a role model inside and outside the classroom.

(4)


(7) A great teacher is a person with dignity and pride of accomplishment. A great teacher commands respect not only for his or her knowledge and expertise but also for his or her stature, appearance and bearing. Students like the teacher who comes to the local pub and lifts the mug with them, but do they really respect that person as a mentor, or just as a “good buddy”. Being the most “popular” teacher is not synonymous with being the “great” teacher.

(8) Last but not least, testing and grading. Grading must be fair and impartial. Tests should be fair and prepared to test knowledge, not just to meet the requirement of giving an exam. A good examination is not simply a series of true false or multiple choice questions from a test bank that can be mechanically graded with no effort by the teacher. A teachers responsibility does not end with the last class. A good comprehensive test with opportunities for the student to express himself or herself in short answer or essay questions at least gives the student the feeling he or she had a fair chance to relate what her or she learned. Fair testing and grading is just as important as the classroom education. Testing is feedback to the teacher as to whether he or she inspired and motivated the students.

1996 I Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher I129

WILLIAM H. VOLZ

After twelve years as a college student and nineteen as a professor, I felt that I could say with some confidence that I have been in the presence of a handful of great teachers in a university setting. Upon reflection, however, I realized that 1 had considerably less confidence in flatly stating who these great teachers were and even less confidence in stating what it was about them that differentiated them from their colleagues who were not.

Having recently finished a ten year term as dean of a business school, I can look back a t many hours of provocative committee deliberations with faculty and students about the quality of some faculty member’s teaching. Whether the discussions focused on a teaching award, a salary increase, a promotion to a higher professorial rank and even that enviable status of employment security we call tenure, the distinct impression left by these many hours of committee work is that our progress toward defining excellent teaching has not been very impressive. My concern is that if we are still struggling to define high quality teaching among our colleagues, what are our prospects of deciphering greatness?

I can not conceive of a definition of great teaching that is not intimately connected to great learning. Great teachers excite, motivate and inspire. They change forever the lives of their students. Great teachers ignite an intellectual flame that burns throughout the student’s life.

My inquiries and other efforts at describing a great teacher eventually identified three defining characteristics. As a foundation, greatness rests firmly on an accomplished expertise. Great teachers are invariably experts. They have a broadly based command of the literature of a least one discipline and, whether they are accomplished scholars or not, great teachers have strong opinions and intriguing insights into virtually every aspect of that literature. In the academic quest for the hearts and minds of those who are interested in learning more, great teachers are players, not spectators.

Next, great teachers offer their students no illusion of an expertise gained effortlessly. The demands they make of their students reflect the intellectual rigor they know is demanded by their discipline. While not invariably curmudgeons, the primary loyalty of these great teachers is to the integrity of the tenets of their academic discipline and not to their students’ egos. Answers to questions that are ‘darn close’ to correct are simply not good enough. In the parlance of the student lounge, these professors are tough, not easy. A compliment on your work from one of them is treasured all the more because the student knows the rigor by which it has been judged.


Lastly, great teachers hold a deep affection for the material they are teaching. Their students sense that they feel privileged to teach it. There is a clearly discernible emotion in these classrooms. There is pleasure. Perhaps most importantly, these teachers can project t o their students the delight that comes from learning the subject matter. Great teachers convey knowledge based on rational thought. But, the process of teaching and learning is marinated with emotion sufficient to achieve what for many will be not less than a spiritual

If great teaching is accompanied by great learning, it seemed that a sensible first step toward identifying great teachers may be to discover which faculty were most popular among our students. At the innumerable student receptions that a dean hosts, I made a point of asking students, “Who was your favorite teacher?’ and “Why did they make such a favorable impression?’ Their responses were sometimes surprising and often very strongly felt. To say that our students were not dazzled by professorial rank would be an understatement. Part-time faculty, lecturers and graduate students who had not with- stood the rigors of a doctoral program were often tapped as favorites, even by our very best students. A few of the faculty were mentioned with impressive regularity over the years. But, virtually every faculty member received the nod from someone, even those who consistently did quite poorly on student evaluations of their teaching. On more than one occasion, 1 have witnessed the curious contradiction of a glowing student compliment for a faculty member in the very course sections where department chairs encountered “long lines” of others complaining about a variety of shortcomings.

Three straightforward characteristics seemed central in the teaching of those who were regularly mentioned among the students’ favorite teachers. First, their courses were well organized. Material was presented in an orderly progression. The students I talked to sensed that they as individuals were making progress in understanding the subject matter in the course. Second, these teachers were perceived as fair in their grading policies. As an extension of the organization of the course, the ground rules for grading were laid out at the start of the course and not changed. Tests reflected what had been emphasized in the classroom discussions and there was prompt and clear feedback on all of the course’s graded assignments. Third, these favorite teachers project that they care, both about the students and the course. They are much more likely to learn the students’ names, display an interest in a student’s input into a class discussion and show concern when a student is not performing well. Further, several students noted that their favorite professors pro-

joy.

1996 i Toward the Definition of a Great Teacher I 131

jected a professionalism in the classroom in their promptness, their appearance and the thoroughness of their preparation.

I saw no indications that shortened reading assignments, shortened class periods or easy grading gave faculty an advantage in gaining a favorable evaluation by students. To the contrary, teachers seen as undemanding seemed to be regarded as something of a shared embarrassment. The great majority of students sensed that they had a stake in a thorough preparation for a professional life. Many saw weak preparation as harming their chances of professional success. Others associated undemanding course work with reduced prestige for their degree.

Interestingly, when identifying these favorites, the students were clearly influenced by the power of a kind of “recency” effect. Students often tapped as their favorite a professor whose course they had just recently completed or, in a few instances, in whose course they were currently enrolled. We should not underestimate the remarkable power over students generated by each and every faculty member as they present their expertise in the classroom setting. Perhaps, it is only with the passage of time that we can differentiate an exciting professional competence from something that can fairly be labeled as greatness. The popularity of a favorite teacher may be something quite different from an appreciation for greatness.

Much of the literature of modern communication theory focuses on increased teaching effectiveness. I have been struck by how many of the books and articles seem to huddle around two quite different orientations. One is an unabashedly liberal critique of university teaching that articulates barriers to student learning found in the teacher’s socio-economic and cultural biases. There is a frequent emphasis on disparities in power in the teacher-student relationship and the troubling use of the privileged language of university and professional life to maintain those disparities. A second substantial body of writing approaches teaching as a form of personal selling. This pragmatic body of literature emphasizes the increased effectiveness that results from listener-oriented, customized presentations that make generous use of the remarkable developments of multi-media classroom technologies. In this literature the teacher is often viewed as something of a personal trainer or a coach.

Both of these orientations reflect the increased demands on t h e professoriate for teaching effectiveness and teaching productivity. University professors are dramatically more expensive than when 1 joined the profession and many of us are feeling the inevitable pressures of cost cutting by our employers. Teaching additional clags sections, larger class sizes and new course preparations are an un- comfortable fact of life for many of us. Distance learning, videotaped


lectures and a host of other revenue-enhancing, cost-cutting innova- tions will be part of many of our futures.

Recently, I heard an astronomer say that his doctoral students were much better mathematicians than he ever was. But, he feared that they didn't love the stars. I believe that great teachers inspire a love of learning in an academic discipline. The egos and the intellects of great teachers can craft the inquiries that elicit from their students the higher levels of appreciating a discipline. Students are central t o the lives of great teachers. But, in an important sense their loyalty and their passion are wedded to their discipline.

I am troubled by a concern that there may be a very real cost to shifting our teaching and, subsequently, our scholarly paradigms from an attempt at reaching some subtle truth to a facilitation of some improved, measurable learning outcome. If university teaching is seeking the benefits of greatness, then we should be supportive of our colleagues who aspire to communicate the intellectual integrity of a discipline. We should recognize a distinct value in those who see themselves shepherding the initiate through the canon rather than fostering enhanced achievement scores or orchestrating a personal evaluation that elicits a return engagement for consulting services a t an executive development workshop. We must take care to assure that in our privileged calling we are not pursuing something more ephemeral, less spiritual-that we are not playing to be a favorite.

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TOWARD THE DEFINITION OF A GREAT TEACHER