Aaup june2010 home•makers

Home•Makers of the Academy:The Valuing—and Devaluing—of Teaching

Dr. Wilkins-O’Riley ZinnProfessor, School of Education

Faculty Director of Teaching and Learning • Center for Teaching, Learning, and AssessmentSouthern Oregon University • Ashland, Oregon 97526 • [email protected]

http://wilkinsorileyzinn.wordpress.com/

What is honored in a country will be cultivated there. • PlatoThe aspects of things that are most important for us

are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. One is unable to notice something because it is

always before one’s eyes. And this means we fail to be struck by what, once

seen, is most striking and most powerful.

• Ludwig Wittgenstein

What you measure in a system and how you

measure it will limit what you see and therefore

what you can do.When an element is not measured, it is invisible—but it still affects the

system.• Joseph O’Connor & Ian McDermott (1997, p. 111)

Theory is not something set apart from our lives. Our assumptions

about reality and change influence our actions constantly. The question is not whether we

have a theory, but how aware we are of the assumptions behind our actions, how conscious we are of

the choices we make—daily—among different theories.

• Charlotte Bunch

There are many workers whose labor provides for the needs, growth, and

maintenance of society and its institutions, but whose

contributions are undercompensated.• Martha Albertson

Fineman (2004, p. 289) The very least you

can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the

most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a

distance but live right in it, under its roof.

• Barbara Kingsolver

A successful life is lived through

understanding and pursuing one’s own

path, not chasing after the dream of fulfilling

the expectationsof others.

• Chin-Ning Chu

From childhood right up through graduate school. . .people have

been shown to base their assessments of their academic abilities on the perceptions of teachers and parents—even

when this assessment is contradicted by hard data such as grades or test scores. One aspect of the phenomenon of “reflected

appraisals” is that recognition by a highly respected person can leave

a lifelong imprint.• Anna Fels (2004, p. 76)

The study also stresses the significance of personal

connections that these first-generation college students made with professors, peers, and others through in-class and out-of-class

experiences, including work. Professors were important to the participant’s academic successes

far beyond their duties as instructors and often enhanced the participants’ lives by simply communicating that they cared.

•Sandria Rodriguez (2001, p. 236)

The assumptive world of the academic professional and the reward system that supports it fosters for manya disconnection from one’s own institution, community and society needs and even from one’s own colleagues and

students. Some faculty report a disjuncture between who they are and what they do.The vision of the new American scholar that is emerging from a variety of quarters promises

to provide a broader and more connected conception.• R.E. Rice (1996, p. 11)

Zinn Home•Makers 1

Abstract

Autoethnographic exploration of my own teaching practices and those of other teachers led to the development of a theory of creative and connective teaching that identifies elements of effective teaching that are often invisible or undervalued in traditional systems of academic rewards, leading me to posit that there is a link between the historical role of the homemaker and the academic home•making evidenced in caring, connective teaching. While lip service may be accorded the value of teaching in the academy, there is still little recognition of the time-intensive nature of teaching-for-learning, although it correlates with adult learning theory as well as with motivation theory, learning-centered instruction constructs, and the promotion of integrative, self-directed education. Explorations of institutional home•making can lead to a clearer understanding of the kinds of work educators do—visible and invisible—and the cost to them, their students, and their institutions when their meaningful work is not recognized and respected, regardless of their position within the institution.

This lack of recognition for multiple varieties of productivity can be equated with cultures that value the work of the breadwinner over that of a homemaker whose unpaid labors may be meaningful to the family and the community but receive no remuneration. The demotivating aspects of the devaluation of what individuals perceive to be necessary work can also be detrimental to retention of faculty whose work with and for students matters to their institution. Because home•making activities can be linked to student recruitment and retention, their devaluing is puzzling. In order to maintain enthusiasm and commitment in the face of budget cuts, increased demands for accountability, and the intensification of work caused by the 24/7 response-ability made possible by technology and mandateering (mandatory volunteer work, Zinn, 2004), tenure-track faculty must be able to define their work in ways that are intrinsically motivating and that contribute to personal satisfaction, allowing for individual diversity while also meeting institutional needs. Contingent faculty also benefit when the institution values teaching.

In addition, institutions of higher education are increasingly reliant on contingent faculty to do academic home•making without recognizing the hidden costs of such reliance for the institution and for the teachers themselves. If those hired primarily to teach do not define their jobs in ways that help attract and retain students, they are the academic equivalent of housekeepers. If they are home•makers, they are likely to engage in significant additional unpaid work in multiple categories such as advising and mentoring. Particularly vulnerable to exploitation are non-tenure track faculty whose fulltime jobs are year-to-year, and who may feel compelled to engage in additional work and mandateering in order to insure their employment.

Equity and access in higher education cannot be achieved without committed faculty who value and engage in teaching that includes advising, mentoring, and providing networks of success for all students, including those traditionally marginalized groups particularly in need of home•makers’ support. Higher education must recognize, respect, and reward teaching that creates social capital and civic engagement, and connects students with learning, with themselves, with each other, with faculty, with institutions, with communities, and with the world.

Prefatory note: I am an autoethnographer, artist, and poet.This paper is presented as a multigenre collage/montage creation.


Girl•Bot goes here


Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will be of any service to them.• Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, explaining his teaching methods, Charles Dickens (1854), Hard Times

Just the Facts, M’amWilkins-O’Riley Zinn

West Wind Review (2006)

Show me the data.Show me the numbers.

Show me the chart the graph the quadrangle of meaning so I’ll knowwhat to think what to do who I am. Why.

Show me the data.Crunch ‘em grind ‘em wheedle ‘em.

Churn out the facts, the truth, the real stuff.Show me the data.

Tell me how many people hate to eat rats,and if it’s not the majority,

why I’ll sauté some for supper.Show me the data.

Let’s see what we know about whether people likebeing tied to posts in the desert while being bitten

by small furry mammals flung at themby chanting crowds of arthritic tap dancers.

Show me the data.It isn’t clear to me if we should consider requiring all drivers

to affix rhinestone buckles to their foreheadsto reflect the glare of oncoming headlights.

Show me the data.I’m wondering if students would opt for being

superglued to their desks during testsor if I should simply tie them down

with ropes braided from the hair of Venusian virgins.Show me the data.

I’m not sure whether I’d prefer eating Spaghettios directly from the canwhile having my toenails pierced by ten-inch nails

or eating a quiet meal of Indonesian currywith a few close friends and a good yet inexpensive bottle

of California chardonnay.

Show me the data so I can decide if I shouldget out of bed brush my teeth eat breakfast drive my car go to work fall in love.

Show me the data.So I can know.

Who to be.

You are to be in all things regulated and governed by Fact.We hope to have, before long, a Board of Fact, composed of Commissioners of Fact,

who will force the people to be a people of Fact, and of nothing but Fact.• Gentleman, Charles Dickens (1954), Hard Times


Teachers who love their students are of course by that very fact teaching their students the nature of love, although the

course may in fact be chemistry or computer science.That is why universities and colleges grow cold and sterile in

their innermost being.If a professor doesn’t know his [or her] students, s/he

obviously can’t love them.S/he may be fair and decent to them in the abstract, but

they. . .need above all to be loved and cared for.And, in a curious way, the professor, although s/he seldom realizes it, needs them as much as they need him [or her].

So long as he refuses to take them to heart,they are simply an inconvenience,

a burden, a part of his [or her] “teaching load.”• Page Smith (1990, p. 204)

Home•Makers of the Academy: The Valuing and Devaluing of TeachingDr. Wilkins-O’Riley Zinn • Southern Oregon University

Because of its association with women and women’s work, home•making and related concepts are often gender-identified. I have met many home•makers in the academy who give primacy to the work of teaching and whose gender

identification is not female. I believe that our best work, whoever we are, represents those things we value. I am a home•maker who believes that my work as a scholarly teacher matters to my students and to the professoriate.

[T]he women did a lot of jobs that involved “people skills”. . .that were vital to the success of a project.Later, however, those skills weren’t thought of as work at all.

In fact, they all but “disappeared” from the company’s point of view.• Rosalind Barnett & Caryl Rivers (1996)

The invisibility of women’s labor lies at the heart of feminist critiques of work and family.We often link feminism to the entry of women into the workforce, but. .[w]omen have always worked. . .

Yet a powerful contemporary myth holds that women in the home do not work, or when they do,their jobs are “natural,” merely performed for love, not money;

domestic work does not count in the same way that men’s labor does.• Estelle B. Freedman (2002, pp. 123-124)

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist;it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges;

it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with;

it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.• John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991 and education activist

What is the purpose of education? Without answering this essential question it is difficult to discuss the value of teaching—and teachers—within the academy. If education is only a pragmatic good and the teacher’s job is simply to prepare students for jobs after graduation, then teaching and its products are more easily quantified: who passed tests, got licensed, was hired? If, however, students coming to institutions of higher education hope for more from their experience, the work of teachers must provide more as well.

Motivating students and engaging them in significant, personally meaningful learning are crucial elements of academic home•making since students often view their education as the key to a more fulfilling and satisfying life. For more than a decade, I have been informally surveying incoming college freshmen, asking them why they are in school. Although there are some who are filled with purpose related to sports and other


activities, a passion for a particular major, or a vision for their life after graduation, many report feeling pressured by the expectations of others, hope to find purpose once they are in school, or simply do not want to be in college except as a way to get away from the restrictions of home or to postpone facing “real life.” At the end of his first year in college, one of my first-year seminar students wrote:

This year draws to a close thankfully. College is a hell of a placeto meet people and party, but school work is required. So all thestudents do the work, not to get outstanding grades, but to remaineligible to be in college, not to learn, but to hang out with their friendsand have a good time. This is not the rule that all students live by,but a sizeable amount of people feel the same way I do, becausethat is why they are here too. I don’t have a major, so there is no goalfor me to work towards and the classes I take I take because I needthe credits, not to learn about Statistics or Geology. I know I’m notalone either; many college students do this each term. What are mygoals for next year? Well, they are the same as this year: meet new people and party with them, and oh yeah pass classes so I can stick around a couple more terms. (Anonymous, 2000)

This student found a major as a sophomore, discovered his passion during an internship, and is now working at a job he loves. Throughout his years at the university, caring teachers listened, questioned, nagged, prodded, pushed, and challenged him, helping him develop and mature as he moved from student to learner to lifelong learner. As I talked with him during his years in school, he willingly acknowledged that when he arrived at school, he wasn’t ready to learn, but that the persistence of faculty who got to know him and who believed in him were pivotal in changing his attitude.

Through autoethnographic exploration of my own teaching practices and those of other teachers with the concomitant development of a theory of creative and connective teaching that identifies elements of effective teaching that are often invisible or undervalued in traditional systems of academic rewards, I have come to believe that there is a link between the historical role of the homemaker and the academic home•making evidenced in caring, connective teaching. This link provides a key to understanding why traditional research continues to be more highly valued than teaching in many systems of academic roles and rewards.

Teaching might even bethe greatest of the arts

since the medium isthe human mind and spirit.

• John Steinbeck


This is not a new problem. In 1926, Lucy Maynard Salmon, a teacher and history scholar who established the first history department at Vassar, wrote:

Education is so organized that every college or universityinstructor is expected both to teach and to do research work.Theoretically both are on an equality, but since promotion andincrease in salary usually depend on research rather than onteaching ability, however much an intention may be disclaimedby academic authorities, the weight of interest tends to be thrownon the side of research. . . . .some of the partial failures in collegefaculties can be explained by this attempt to standardize all college instructors and to expect equal interest and success in both lines.A more perfect understanding of individual abilities and tastes ofmembers of college faculties would make it possible to fit the roundpeg into the round hole more effectively than is sometimes nowthe case. (in Adams & Smith, 2001, p. 172)

Despite additional voices throughout the twentieth century (Apter, 1993; Caplan, 1994; Crittenden, 2001; Duberman, 1975; Fels, 2004; Fineman, 2004; Fox, 1994; Gmelch, 1998; Hayes & Flannery, 2000; Kaschak, 1992; Langland & Gove, 1981; Lerner, 1993; Lenz & Myerhoff, 1985; Marshall & Gersti-Pepin, 2005; Martin, 2000; Meyerson, 2001; Miles, 1998, 2001; Orgel & Zwerdling, 1966; Rhode, 1997; Smith, 1990; Tokarczyk & Fay, 1993; Valian, 1998; Wenninger & Conroy, 2001; Wilson, 2004) who have explored differentials in the valuing of men’s and women’s ways and work as well as the need for recognizing the worth of womanwork, the problem persists. This lack of recognition for multiple varieties of productivity can be equated with cultures that value the work of the breadwinner over that of a homemaker whose unpaid labors may be meaningful to the family and the community but receive no remuneration.

The demotivating aspects of the devaluation of what individuals perceive as their good work (Ciulla, 2000; Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, & Damon, 2001; O’Malley, 2000; Palmer, 1998; Thomas, 2001; Whyte, 2001) can also be detrimental to retention of contingent faculty whose work with and for students matters to their institution. Because home•making activities can be linked to student recruitment and retention, their devaluing is puzzling. In order to maintain enthusiasm and commitment in the face of budget cuts, increased demands for accountability, and the intensification of work caused by the 24/7 response-ability made possible by technology and mandateering (mandatory volunteer work, Zinn, 2004), all faculty must be able to define their work in ways that are intrinsically motivating and that contribute to personal satisfaction, allowing for individual diversity while also meeting institutional needs.

As part of my exploration of academic home•making I utilized thematic analysis (vanManen, 1990) to analyze data from hundreds of surveys related to fun in learning from which six key themes emerged, with the teacher identified as the most important element. The themes of fun in learning, each followed by sample key words from surveys, are:

Choice: multiple options, freedom, possibility, not just one way, self-expression, creativity, studying something I care about.


Relevance: meaningful, applied to my life, not empty, not busywork, connected to my interests, serious, practical, purposeful, made a difference, needed it in my future, significant.

Engagement: forgot the time, wanted to keep working, didn’t watch the clock, came in early, stayed late, couldn’t stop, involved, interested.

Active learning: hands-on, made things, not just at our desks, movement, projects, activities, went places, field trips, helped others, service, real work, mattered to people.

Teacher attitude: caring, open, accepting, respectful, enthusiastic, welcoming, knowledgeable, kind, provided guidance, helpful, built relationships, friendly, knew interesting things, didn’t just teach from the book, interested in me, forgiving, liked students, humorous. Many memorable idiosyncrasies were also reported.

Camaraderie: working with friends, groups, sharing, discussions, part of something, community, felt safe, learned from each other, relationships, belonging, togetherness.

Fun in learning is not about frivolity or foolishness, although it can include shared laughter and other experiences that build community and create safe spaces for intellectual engagement. Instead it is primarily about the satisfaction that comes from serious connections with meaningful educational and intellectual experiences. These themes are significant because activating them in the academic lives of students often requires intentionality—and intensive, time consuming work—on the part of teachers.

Because the teacher was identified as the most significant element in making learning fun, an additional aspect of my research focuses on teacher effectiveness from which a theory of creative and connective teaching (Zinn 2004, 2008) emerged.

Years later at the state university, a professor in the education department had asked Chris whyhe wanted to be a schoolteacher at all. “There has to be a reason, Chris,” the professor had said.

“All of us have to have a reason and a good one too.One that will stand up when the going gets rough as it always does sooner or later.No one goes into this racket because of the money because there’s no money here.

And that crap about doing one’s bit for mankind is also pretty lame.If a man has a big yen for that sort of thing he could join the Salvation Army and have a much easier time

of it. Tell me, Chris. What reason are you going to give yourself?”

• Grace Metalious (1960), The Tight White Collar, p. 65


Creative & Connective Teaching & Reaching for LearningOngoing data collection utilizes autoethnographic pentangulation (Zinn 2003) includes self as source of knowledge: introspection, reflective journaling, questioning, metacognition; observation/field notes; talking with others; formal research/scholarly literature; informal research/popular culture. By utilizing this methodology, connections among disparate sources of knowing lead to increased understanding of multiple perspectives as the learner explores her or his personal culture contextualized by the other cultures in which s/he lives and works. From this non-linear data collection, learners may begin to construct theories to explain their world as well as to gather research that supports and expands understanding.

Invitation: welcoming all students with their multiple and diverse perspectives and voices, accepting learners where they are and helping them gain enabling skills, recognizing who (and how) they are, expecting that they want to learn and are capable of doing so, supporting their learning, committing to helping them move forward, working with them to build safe spaces for intellectual and personal risk-taking, guiding intellectual growth, modeling lifelong and passionate learning, mentoring, engaging them in learning, laughing with them, relieving stress, trusting them, soliciting their interests, inviting them to build on what they know and to trust themselves as learners.

Inspiration: stimulating thought, demonstrating and expecting creative and critical thinking and knowing, nurturing learning passions and self-directed learning, believing in possibility, teaching with enthusiasm, making learning active and thought-provoking, coaching, being hopeful, modeling respect for all, valuing the beautiful and the useful, insisting on quality work, teaching the difference between being responsible and being held responsible, promoting mindful approaches to learning.

Information: knowing something worth sharing, teaching in integrative ways, advising, providing relevance, differentiating between the essential and the interesting, evaluating sources, encouraging questioning, learning about students and using that information to individualize and differentiate, utilizing meaningful and varied ways to teach and to assess learning, modeling a life of continuing learning and research, being an interested observer of the world and bringing it into the classroom.

Integration: creating community and networks of support, modeling and nurturing listening and caring, reflecting, providing links between the classroom and the world, valuing diversity and using it to enrich classroom life, knowing students outside the classroom, bringing the world into the classroom, finding and maintaining opportunities that link students work in the classroom to work in the community, creating civic awareness and engagement, encouraging concern for social justice along with effective ways to work within systems, promoting multidisciplinary inquiry, supporting students’ development of leadership and other interrelational skills.

Implementation: encouraging students to transfer and apply what they have learned in meaningful ways across disciplines and in their lives as they synthesize and integrate material from varied sources, encouraging creativity and innovation, being open to things students (and you) may not have thought of, encouraging hope and possibility, seeking and honoring ongoing input from all participants, using that formative input for improving, changing, growing.


Even students who arrive ready to study and to learn may not know exactly why they are in school. Sometimes they come to colleges and universities with ill-defined dreams because they believe in the promise of higher education to make their lives better. The found poem that follows is comprised of statements from students (freshmen and transfers) entering Southern Oregon University in the fall and represents some of these dreams:

Why Am I Here? I Want To Be Fast!A Found Poem

Selected Student Responses Southern Oregon University 2004-2008Wilkins-O’Riley Zinn

I am in college to run cross country and track. I want to be fast.Plus to get a secure job. Mostly, though, I just want to be really fast.

I came to figure out more about myself and who I’d like to be.

I’m really here to find out what I’m interested in.

I’m here to insure a better future for myself and my two-year-old daughter.

I’m here selfishly. I’m here to figure me out, learn things to make me happy, and become the person I want to be. Granted, I’m not sure what kind of person that is yet, but I’m

working on it.

I’m here trying to take my art farther than it is. I don’t think my overall learning—math, English, etc.—is important in the least compared to my art (to be honest).

I am here to learn to better myself and hopefully to gain the tools I’ll need to fulfillsome dreams I don’t yet have.

If I have to work for the rest of my life, at least I want it to be something that I love.

I’m here because I believe the people who’ve told me that college opens doors.Secretly, also, I want to pin down my passions.

This is the best place for me to become a better me.

I am here because I want to gain a broader perspective of the world and I want to figure out what I truly want to do with my life.

I put off my higher education many years ago. I am thirty-seven and I am at the point where I am looking for a deeper knowledge of many things in life—some things not

taught in a classroom even.

This is completely last minute becauseI finally believed in myself enough to try to get into college.

I want to make myself proud.Zinn Home•Makers 10

I am here to find my passion and to live the rest of my life doing what I love.

I am here to learn what my talents are so that I can use them in life.

I’m here to help me live a happy life.

Neither of my parents went to school. I hope to break through and better my life.

I’m not sure I can ever really know what I want to do with my life I’m here to try to find out.

I am here to become smarter.

I want to be able to fulfill all my dreams.

I’m here without a major and I’m trying to figure out what I really want to do.

I’m in college because I’m tired of blowing my life away. I feel pressured by my family NOT to blow my life away in school, but I want to get into a field that I really enjoy.

I just don’t know what it is. Everyone is expecting me to fail.I want to prove them wrong.

Access is easier to provide than success. Access can recruit students, but to retain them, they must see themselves as successful, purposeful, and interested learners. For faculty who hope to engage students in learning rather than simply delivering information, there is also the time-consuming and intellectually challenging task of differentiating for classes whose members range from those who lack basic skills to those who may already be able to demonstrate mastery of course content. As access increases and the higher education population becomes increasingly diverse, these challenges are magnified. While it would be wonderful if all students entered the classroom intrinsically interested in what is being taught and intellectually prepared for further education, the truth is that many of them are neither interested nor ready. As teachers struggle with the tension between an imagined ideal and the sometimes less-than-perfect reality of the classroom, even those who prefer research and/or service activities may find themselves spending increasing time meeting the demands of their teaching loads. When this work is invisible and undervalued, the result is disheartening.

Being a successful student is not automatic, nor does it come naturally for many. Students who have never experienced academic success despite having the potential to do so may not know how to independently navigate the expectations of higher education, and students who are adept at the kinds of academic compliance that may have been rewarded with good grades in high school can feel betrayed when something more is expected of them. Interest is also a learned skill for many. Success builds resiliency and persistence, and student success is often dependent on the faculty and staff whom students encounter when they enter a system.

Results of the High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE) released in 2007 by the Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education Policy and conducted with 81,000 high school students in twenty-six states revealed that seventy-five percent of


them reported being bored in class (Yazzie-Mintz, 2007). These students and many others, even those who are committed to learning, may arrive at colleges and universities never having learned to interact with learning in meaningful and intentional ways, having given little thought to what does interest them intellectually. Their inability to engage in learning affects their success and also affects faculty who may find it difficult to sustain their own enthusiasm when faced with students’ sometimes active disengagement. For contingent faculty, the additional work necessary to ensure student success requires them to be home•makers and not simply housekeepers hired to do a specified job—teach—and leave. Ensuring that learning happens is a far greater instructional challenge as faculty commit to helping students develop skills and attitudes that will contribute to their success in higher education and in life beyond school.

Six Secrets of Success in SchoolA Skills of Interest Application of the Themes of Fun in School

Wilkins-O’Riley Zinn, 2004

ChoiceI know how I learn and I understand that this may not be the same in every context. I actively seek opportunities to maximize my learning by integrating my interests and

passions into my coursework.Relevance

I find purpose and connections among things I'm studying. I connect personal resonance and pragmatic reality.

I know who I am and what interests me.Engagement

I attend class and deliberately find ways to be actively interested. I care about my learning and am truly present through thoughtful interaction in and out of class. I apply

course content to my life and to other courses.Active Learning

I don't just attend class; I am an integral part of making the class interesting because I am interested.

I seek out additional information related to what I am learning.Teacher Attitude

What makes teaching fun? I put myself in the place of the teacher and make my interest apparent.

I go beyond requirements and produce quality work.Camaraderie

I talk with others in and out of class--instructors and classmates. I get involved in clubs, study groups, sports, student government, and/or other activities. I am interested

learning about other people and their cultures andI know how to listen and be a friend.

In The Predictable Failure of Education Reform, Seymour Sarason (1990) proposes two key reasons for the failure of reform efforts. One reason is that students do not see


school as relevant to their lives. The HSSSE survey results indicated that nearly forty percent of students who reported being bored by school noted that the material “wasn’t

relevant to me” (Indiana University, 2007). The other reason, Sarason claims, is “the assumption that schools exist primarily for the growth and development of children,” going on to say that this “assumption is invalid because teachers cannot create and sustain the conditions for the productive development of children if those conditions do not exist for teachers” (p. ix). The differential valuing of faculty work and faculty workers can inhibit the intellectual productivity of those who prefer focusing their research on student success in the classroom.

There is a formula for drudgery in William Carl Ruediger’s 1932 book, Teaching Procedures. If interest is missing, Ruediger asserts, almost any kind of activity can be boring and unpleasant. Student boredom is not simply a problem for high school teachers. Educators at any level who can connect their subjects and themselves to students’ lives and interests are more likely to create learning environments that promote student success and increase achievement. This take significant additional work, particularly when interdisciplinary connections are involved.

Insert formula for drudgery

The best advertising for any college or university is its alumni—satisfied students who believe that their time at the institution enriched their lives. Yet often, students fail to make meaningful connections between what they are learning in classes and the hopes and dreams they come to school to fulfill. Relevance is very personal and requires that students be provided with opportunities to connect with their learning passions and interests as well as with the skills, attitudes, and enabling knowledge they’ll need in order to pursue them. Institutional, cultural, and societal relevance—which often focus on the need for workers and citizens—are more generalizable and easier to integrate into teaching, but are not a substitute for an individual student’s perception of relevance and resonance. Balancing these individual and societal needs is challenging and requires development of the teacher’s creative and connective abilities, again time-consuming and ongoing, the academic equivalent of cleaning, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and preparing meals.


Five Minds for the FutureHoward Gardner, from Mike Baker (October 13, 2006), “What type of minds to nurture?”

Disciplined: master academic subject, craft, profession; apply oneself to learning.

Synthesizing: absorb, sift, select, make sense of vast amounts of data.

Creating: forge new ground; find new ways of doing things.

Respectful: recognize and respect the “otherness” of those different from ourselves.

Ethical: actively striving to do good; trying to make the world a better place.

Regardless of age, ethnicity, job title, or other kinds of diversity, those who identify primarily as teachers share challenges negotiating norms related to roles and responsibilities in higher education where the traditional system of academic rewards does not necessarily serve them well. Academic models that focus on roles, responsibilities, and rewards as traditionally defined within a male designed and dominated system, with scholarship being accorded primacy over teaching and service, often fail to provide respect and recognition for womanwork, the kinds of home•making activities and attitudes within an institution that represent the scholarship of teachers (Zinn, 2004) and create connection and a sense of community for students and for faculty and staff, regardless of the gender identification of the person performing them.

This womanwork—or academic home•making—includes committed, creative and connective teaching that helps create social capital and civic engagement, and that connects students with learning, with themselves, with each other, with faculty, with institutions, with communities, and with the world. It also helps provide networks of success for an increasingly diverse student population that includes (but is certainly not limited to) often-marginalized groups such as second-language learners, adults and other non-traditional students, first generation students, and others in need of remediation for a variety of reasons, including males who may have lagged behind in developing requisite literacy skills, all of whom may need additional assistance in order to negotiate institutional norms. While student support services can provide many kinds of help, teachers who define their work in ways that motivate students and engage them in significant learning can significantly impact retention and recruitment.


As a former high school dropout prevention specialist who has also directed and served as a counselor in federal TRIO programs targeting first-generation, low-income, and/or

disabled students, I believe that institutional home•makers can help attract and retain students, and that all participants in the life of the campus, students included, should consider themselves dropout prevention specialists:

Six Keys of Dropout PreventionWilkins-O’Riley Zinn (2008)

RelevanceI have reasons to be here that are meaningful to me.

RigorExpectations are high,

and work is scaffolded to support my achievement.

RecognitionMy efforts are seen, appreciated, and celebrated.

RespectI am treated like a unique and valuable person.

RelationshipsThere are people here who care about me

and about whom I can care.

ResponsibilityI am supported in the developmental processes

of becoming a lifelong learnerand can make meaningful contributions here.

As an educator, I have experienced first hand the devaluing of teaching within the academy and within the larger culture of the United States. As a working woman for more than four decades—with twenty years of private sector experience before I became a teacher—I have experienced the devaluing and invisibility of aspects of my work in multiple contexts. As an adult student, I have also experienced culturalectomy through the imposition of male-dominant perspectives related to disciplinary valuing, learning and teaching methodologies, and ways of demonstrating the acquisition and application of knowledge (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Lerner, 1986; Rodriguez, 2001; Spender, 1980; Tong, 1993; Wenninger & Conroy, 2001; Zinn, 2004). Although adult learning theory is familiar to many faculty, those who adhere to traditional ways of dispensing knowledge sometimes do not utilize its constructs to engage students.


Busywork is not engaged learning and the proliferation of online learning opportunities sometimes provides students with opportunities to fill hours with pointless activities

designed to prove that they are participating. Things like copying definitions from a textbook or responding to a treadmill of postings is unlikely to seem significant, particularly to adult learners. The traditional and passive classroom activities that require memorization and little else are not engaged learning. Insights about adult learners drawn from Malcom Knowles' (1990) theory of adult learning include the following:

• Adults want to know why they are learning something.• Adults need to learn experientially.• Adults approach learning as problem-solving.• Adults learn best when the topic is of immediate value.

For adult learners, questioning, research, and theory-making often begin with a question about what's happening in their lives, community, nation, world. They observe, talk to others, formulate nascent theories, and look to expert sources of information for understanding. This active questioning can be particularly meaningful when it’s applied to community-based learning and other kinds of applied and/or service activities. Again, teaching that includes these kinds of opportunities is significantly more time-consuming than lecture-test methodologies. In addition to interesting and engaging students, these things are also preparing them for their post-education lives.

Discovery Skills of InnovationFrom “How Do Innovators Think,” by Bronwyn Fryer (Sept. 28, 2009), Harvard Business Review

In a large-scale six-year study of creative executives, researchers Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen identified what they call five “discovery skills” related to innovation. Those skills are:

1) Associating, a “cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.” Identified as the “key skill.”

2) Questioning, the “ability to ask ‘what if,’ ’why,’ and ‘why not’ questions that challenge the status quo.”

3) Observation, the “ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior.”

4) Experimentation, “trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds.”

5) Networking, “with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.”


An additional adult learning concept, mattering (Schlossberg, Lynch & Chickering, 1989) has been linked to student retention and perseverance. Connections in and out of the classroom can help enhance students’ belief that they matter. Mattering includes:

• Attention: students believe that they are recognized/seen as individuals. Instructors can address this through comments on papers, encouraging students to get to know one another, and learning student names.

• Importance: students believe that instructors/advisors care about what the student's goals are. Updated information is provided, advising goes beyond the formulaic and is linked to student needs. Absences are noticed.

• Dependence: students feel that they are an integral part of class and that others depend on them. They are not allowed to be invisible in discussions and other class interactions.

• Ego-extension: students believe that others are/will be proud of their accomplishments.

• Appreciation: students are recognized for who they are and what they have done, receiving credit for life experience, for example. The multiple life roles that adult learners are juggling are seen and taken into account. Learners are trusted.

MOTIVATIONThree needs suggested as innate and inherent to humans

(Deci, Valerane, Pellitier, & Ryan, 1991)

1) Competence--understanding how to attain various outcomes and be able to perform the requisite actions;

2) Relatedness--developing secure and satisfying connections with others in one's social milieu;

3) Autonomy--self-initiating and self-regulating one's own actions.

How does formal education address these needs?


United States Department of Education • June 6, 2002 Draft GuidanceImproving Teacher Quality

No Child Left BehindA Partly Found Poem from a Faculty Meeting Document

Written by Wilkins-O’Riley Zinn while she was both a student and a teacher

Systematic.Empirical methods.

Observation or experiment.Rigorous data analysis.

Reliable and valid data across evaluators.Experimental or quasi-experimental.

Appropriate controls.Random-assignment experiments.

Replication.Build systematically.

Rigorous.Objective.

Scientific review.Peer-reviewed journal.

(It should be noted that a practitioner journal or education magazine is not the same as a peer-reviewed academic journal.)

Control groups.

Scientifically based teacher quality researchis research that applies rigorous, systematic,

and objective proceduresto obtain valid knowledge relevant

to improving student academic achievement.Pursuing practices grounded in scientifically based researchwill have a positive impact on student academic achievement

and will help to strengthen the teaching profession.

I have observed that I am irrelevant.I cannot be replicated although perhaps I might be cloned.

I am subject, not object.In-valid.

Made sick by(mortis) rigor:

harshness rigidity severity sternness strictness stringency hardship ordeal exactitude adversity precision difficulty

An uncontrollable system, dear teacher.A student.


The classroom efforts of those who view their primary role as teachers is a valid form of research and scholarship, although its products and processes are often focused on an internal rather than an external audience. Definitions of the scholarship of teaching and learning such as those proposed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the work of Lee Shulman (2003) require a kind of time and energy for gathering data and reporting it to an external audience that is different than that of the scholarship of teachers who also model the scholarship of lifelong learning (Zinn, 2009) for their students. Ernest Boyer’s expanded model of scholarship (1997) that includes the scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching recognizes the variance among faculty productivity and passions, but may be interpreted in ways that still put the public dissemination of effort at the forefront of expectations.

When he was asked why he didn’t publish his first book until he was sixty-six, author Frank McCourt responded that it was because he had been teaching high school. He goes on in his memoir, Teacher Man (2005) to say that high school teaching leaves no time to write, unlike professors who also seem to have plenty of time for affairs and academic infighting (p. 3). McCourt has perhaps seen too many movies and read too many novels.

I have been both a high school teacher and a university professor, and a primary difference in my work as a faculty member in teacher education is this: the preparation takes more time because my audience is adult students who will soon be teachers themselves or who are practitioners in search of relevant coursework to help them be more effective educators. I spend less actual time in the classroom and much more time outside of it developing demonstration and application materials that link theory and practice and that also illustrate the kinds of teacher creativity necessary for effective teaching and classroom leadership and management. I also spend much more time mentoring and advising students. My colleagues in other disciplines share similar challenges. The scholarship of teachers includes:

• Modeling ways of interacting with—and creating—a classroom community that aids retention and nurtures significant intellectual engagement.

• Supporting the development of intellectual skills and attitudes and addressing learning gaps.

• Providing supportive advising and mentoring that go beyond the formulaic to engage students in uncovering personal life and learning passions, including insuring equity and access and providing networks of success and support for traditionally marginalized students.

• Mediating developmental processes as students move from student to learner to lifelong learner, and taking responsibility for supporting them as whole people.

• Creating concrete examples of applied scholarship that illustrate research in service to the classroom, making content relevant to students’ lives, linking it across disciplines and into real life applications.


• Demonstrating the richness of intellectual exploration and the value of lifelong learning while modeling knowledge production through research and analysis as well as consumption, particularly important because of the need to provide concrete evidence of the critical thinking necessary to evaluate an ever-increasing body of knowledge and infauxmation.

• Guiding students’ efforts as they negotiate potential pitfalls linked to the proliferation of self-sponsored, technology-mediated writing.

• Developing demonstration and implementation units that bridge the theory to practice gap and illustrate the processes involved in self-actualizing creativity (Maslow, 1959) that utilizes knowledge in meaningful and resonant ways.

• Utilizing teaching methods that make evident the hidden curriculum taught by instructional choices, and that also address multiple kinds of learner diversity.

• Committing to varied and multi-faceted assessment with an emphasis on timely formative input for improvement and multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery of educational objectives.

• Demonstrating the integration of personal, creative, academic, and activist passions into the teaching life, providing a healthy model of life choices to counteract the cultural image of what I call “Mr. Holland’s Opus Syndrome,” or the teacher’s sacrificing of self for students.

Learning abilities identified at Harvard University as essential for adapting to a rapidly changing world of work

John Taylor Gatto (2005), "The Curriculum of Necessity or What Must an Educated Person Know?"

• The ability to define problems without a guide.• The ability to ask hard questions which challenge prevailing assumptions.• The ability to work in teams without guidance.• The ability to work absolutely alone.• The ability to persuade others that your course is the right one.• The ability to discuss issues and techniques in public with an eye to reaching decisions

about policy.• The ability to conceptualize and reorganize information into new patterns.• The ability to pull what you need quickly from masses of irrelevant data.• The ability to think inductively, deductively, and dialectically. (Note: dialectic, debate to

resolve a conflict between two contradictory or seemingly contradictory ideas, with truth on both sides; grappling with essential tensions).

• The ability to attack problems heuristically. (Note: heuristic, trial and error solutions, discovery learning, rather than using set rules).

How and when do students develop these--and related--abilities?


As a teacher who formerly worked in high school, community college, and university retention and student success programs, I believe that the strategies used to nurture student success in remedial and alternative programs as well as federal programs like TRIO Student Support Services would be beneficial for all faculty to engage in, although not all faculty should be expected to do so if this is not where their academic and professional interests lie. Unfortunately, it takes additional time to become involved with students on this level, and it is unlikely that even the best of teachers will persist in viewing themselves as retention specialists if this work is not recognized for promotion and tenure. When it is not so recognized, contingent faculty, hired to teach, are not likely to view their work as highly valued by their tenure-track colleagues.

Creating such a hierarchy of valuing makes it difficult to create an inclusive faculty community. While lip service may be accorded to the valuing of effective teaching in the academy, there is still little recognition of the time-intensive nature of teaching-for-learning even though it correlates with adult learning theory as well as with motivation theory, learning-centered instruction constructs, and the promotion of integrative, self-directed education for students. This devaluing affects students as well since teaching enthusiasm can erode over time, particularly when faculty are faced with increasing challenges related to reaching and teaching students. Richard Huseman and John Hatfield (1989), in their book, The Equity Factor, discuss this reality:

The Equity Factor(Richard C. Huseman & John D. Hatfield (1989, p. 23)

Axiom 1: People evaluate relationships by comparing what they give to a relationship with what they get from it.

Axiom 2: When what people give does not equal what they get, they feel distress:Over-reward=guilt.Under-reward=resentment.

Axiom 3: People who feel distress because they give more than they get will restore equity by:

• Reducing inputs by doing less or poorly in multiple ways.• Increasing outcomes by asking for promotions, raises, transfers, benefits, security, etc.• Ending the relationship.

Important outcomes people want from their jobs (p. 43):

1. A sense of accomplishment.2. Recognition for good work.3. Competitive pay.4. Making use of one’s abilities.5. Challenging work.


Explorations of institutional home•making and the scholarship of teachers and lifelong learners can lead to a clearer understanding of the multifaceted work—visible and invisible—done by educators who define themselves primarily as teachers, and the cost to them, their students, and their institutions when the richness of their meaningful work is not recognized and respected. However, restructuring of rewards to recognize the value of academic home•making is unlikely to be successful unless a fundamental issue is addressed: the culture of the United States generally values the attributes of males and females differently, and structures of concrete rewards seldom give preference to ways of being and doing that are considered feminine. Being a home•maker is not about feminizing the professoriate. It is about recognizing the multiple purposes of institutions of higher learning and equally valuing all of those who help achieve those varied purposes, whether they are related to research, service, or the research and service of reaching—and teaching—students. Until these issues are resolved and equity and parity become reality, it is likely that the home•makers of the academy will continue to labor without adequate respect or recognition for their efforts.

Having strongly endorsed research as the most appropriate criterion for promotion, Bowen and Schuster (1986) had second thoughts. “In the groves of academe, to question the importance of research approaches

heresy. Still, we cannot help but wonder whether the stampede toward scholarship—or what passes for scholarship—serves the nation’s needs or the long-run interests of those campuses which historically have been strongly committed to excellent teaching. We fear that the essential balance between teaching and

scholarship has been lost, that the scales are tipping too far toward the latter in many institutions.”• In Page Smith (1990, p. 9)

[W]e valorize activities associated with work for wages and the accommodation of wealth,while we take for granted dependency work and the production of human beings.

Yet raising the future generation is certainly of at least equal value and significance to societyas that of the economic activities we subsidize and facilitate.

• Martha Albertson Fineman (2004, p. 33)


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Fun in Learning Survey QuestionsFeel free to respond or distribute to others. Send responses to [email protected].

1) Write about a time when learning was fun for you. If you can, describespecific experience(s), including age, grade level, subject matter, etc. (or you may choose to describe an out-of-school experience).

2) Do you have a particular memory of a wacky, engaging, creative, unusual, intense, or otherwise “fun” teacher? If so, describe her or him.

3) If you’ve ever taught anybody anything, did you do something to make the experience fun and engaging? Include as many specifics as you can.

4) Feel free to describe a time when learning was NOT fun for you.

And I strive to discover how to signal my companions. . .to say in time a simple word, a password like conspirators: Let us unite, let us create for Earth, a brain and a heart,

let us give a human meaning to the superhuman struggle.• Nikos Kazantzakis

A Call from Grace

by Wilkins-O’Riley Zinn

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truththat is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak,the divine floods of light and life flow no longer into our souls.•Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1890 speech, National Woman Suffrage Association

Most of us don’t fall from grace in our lives just because.We fall because of siren calls:

contemptuous callsdisparagingdisbelievingdisinterestedcalls.

Calls that question.Guilt-inducing voices that tempt us to believe that

the gracethe truththe vocationof our livesmean nothing.

We allow ourselves to be called not tobut away from what we know to be meaningful

by those who ask that weprove it

or tell us that wecan’tdon’twon’tmake a difference.

And if we heed such calls we never will.

An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time.To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.

It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of crueltybut also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.

If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning

top of a world in a different direction.And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beingsshould live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

• Howard Zinn (2004), “The Optimism of Uncertainty”