Departmental overloading of popular professors covertly undermines engaged teaching
Evidence
For years, I envied those professors who taught more conventionally, because they frequently had small classes. Th rough out my teaching career my classes have been too large to be as effective as they could be. Over time, I’ve begun to see that departmental pressure on “popular” professors to accept larger classes was also a way to undermine engaged pedagogy. If classes became so full that it is impossible to know students’ names, to spend quality time with each of them, then the effort to build a learning community fails. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 404
Categorization
- QUESTION: How much is this active sabotage vs. benign resource allocation? Worth probing whether other institutions treat enrollment popularity rewards similarly.
- XREF: connects to: Academic institutions structurally reward conventional teaching and punish engaged pedagogy — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 403; Teacher-proofing curricula reduce experienced teachers to semi-skilled low-paid workers; Teacher deskilling under management pedagogies weakens education as a democratic force — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 196 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Faculty have largely accepted the erosion of their university governing power
#qualifies(0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 395