Teaching is undervalued relative to research within academia

Evidence

My commitment to engaged pedagogy is an expression of political activism. Given that our educational institutions are so deeply invested in a banking system, teachers are more rewarded when we do not teach against the grain. The choice to work against the grain, to challenge the status quo, often has negative consequences. And that is part of what makes that choice one that is not politically neutral. In colleges and universities, teaching is often the least valued of our many professional tasks. It saddens me that colleagues are often suspicious of teachers whom students long to study with. And there is a tendency to undermine the professorial commitment of engaged pedagogues by suggesting that what we do is not as rigorously academic as it should be. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 403 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

I don’t think we can divorce theoretical work and pedagogy. At the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies there were only three academics, so the organic intellectuals we were trying to produce were not only ourselves but our students. So the question of pedagogy as a form of intellectual production is crucial. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 272 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Departmental overloading of popular professors covertly undermines engaged teaching — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 404; Academic institutions structurally reward conventional teaching and punish engaged pedagogy — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 403; Teaching is itself a form of intellectual production — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 272

Broader Connections

• Academic institutions structurally reward conventional teaching and punish engaged pedagogy #corroborates (0.92) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 403
• Departmental overloading of popular professors covertly undermines engaged teaching #expands (0.78) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 404
• Teaching is itself a form of intellectual production #complicates (0.76) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 272