INSIDE DOUGLAS COLLEGE / JANUARY 16, 1990

 

e Teaching

Excellence

TOWARD THE BEST IN THE ACADEMY

Distributed courtesy of:

CENTRE FOR CURRICULUM AND
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Fifth Floor, 1483 Douglas Street

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W 3K4

Fall 1989

 

 

Reforming Undergraduate Education
One Class at a Time*

A continuing question for those
of us in education is—What can and
should be done to improve the qual-
ity of undergraduate instruction?
The reports that constitute the higher
education reform movement of the
1980's have taken this as their major
emphasis. However, while these
reports express plenty of dissatisfac-
tion with the quality of instruction,
there are few constructive sugges-
tions for what to do about it.

Part of the problem is that there
is an unexamined assumption that
underlies most of the educational
reform movement. It is that educa-
tional reform consists of making
large highly visible policy decisions,
such asinstallation of statewide test-
ing or intensive systems. There is
very little attention given to the
potential impact of thousands of
small classroom reforms that might
add up to real and substantial
change. We fail to consider what
each teacher acting in his or her own
classroom might do to achieve re-
form.

I propose that the biggest and
most long-lasting reform of under-
graduate education will come when
individual faculty or small groups

 

”

“This article was adapted from K. Patricia
Cross, “The Need for Classroom Research,”
in To Improve the Academy, J.K. Kurfiss (ed.).
Stillwater, OK: POD Network in Higher
Education and New Forums Press, Inc., 1987.

ofinstructors adopt the view of them-
selves as reformers within their im-
mediate sphere of influence, the
classes they teach every day. I be-
lieve that it is time for classroom
teachers to seize the initiative and
begin doing the type of research that
will improve the learning of their
own students. I call this Classroom
Research. The purpose of classroom
research is to help teachers evaluate
their own instructionaleffectiveness,
to explore new solutions to the prob-
lems of their own students, and to
foster intellectual stimulation and
professional renewal for themselves
as teachers.

The concept of classroom re-
search springs from six basic as-
sumptions:

1. The quality of student learn-
ing is directly related to the quality
of instruction.

2. That teachers need to know
what their student are learning in
their classrooms.

3. That inquiry and intellectual
challengeare sources of professional
renewal for teachers.

4. That the research most likely
to improve instruction is that con-
ducted by classroom teachers for-
mulating and investigating ques-
tions that they want answered.

5. Thatself-improvementismost
likely to result from specific feed-
back relevant to one’sown goalsand
behaviors.

6. That there is nothing so mys-
terious or esoteric about research on
college teaching that it cannot be
done by anyone capable of teaching
at the college level.

Let me give a concrete example
of what classroom research might
look like. Let us assume that our
classroom teacher is curious about
the dropout problem, decides to
interview some students who
stopped coming to class, and finds
out that a certain amount of discour-
agement sets as the semester’s work
begins to build. As she reflects on
this observation, it occurs to her that
she usually hits her stride asa teacher
about the fifth week of the semester
and feels ready to tackle some of the
more difficult units about that time.
She notes that the high dropout rate
in her own classes occurs about five
weeks into the school year, and she
concludes that she might try a
number of things in her own class-
room to reduceneedless dropouts—
perhaps give an especially satisfy-
ing assignment, maybe rework or
reschedule the difficult unit, maybe
call in a few students and talk with
them about the unit or about the
class, perhaps offer special encour-
agement, make a referral, drop a
note, make a call.

Another type of classroom re-
search that might be of interest to
individual instructors would involve

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