Something which I thought was interesting… (Suzanne)

This article, from Northwestern University in the US, presents the results of an interesting study: apparently, the less a university-level instructor is paid, and the lower their rank, the more likely they are to be better teachers. Tenured professors are considerably less well-rated in quality of teaching surveys than their graduate teaching assistants (known as ‘tutors’ in our system). Theories as to why include emphasising research as opposed to teaching as the dominant criterion in hiring, promoting and granting tenure to academics.

Although the study only considers one university and isn’t necessarily intended to translate to others, particularly non-American others, I have to say that this has kind of been true in my law classes. The best two lecturers I’ve had were both sessional part-time academics. And the highest ranking one was the worst lecturer.

On the other hand, my music lecturers have generally been better teachers than my music tutors, although I am excluding practical teachers because of the unconventional way in which teachers are assigned (we have a different person, who is usually a performing artist without an official academic designation, presenting the masterclasses each week, and you choose your private teacher yourself, so the latter is almost never bad and the former doesn’t yield the kind of data we need for this comparison.)

Finally, if we include guest lectures and talks, the prominent speakers almost always top the class (no pun intended) in these. After all, Peter Singer and High Court Justice Kirby were presumably not hired for their positions due to teaching ability (well, maybe Peter Singer was, but I think his work in ethics was probably a bigger factor), and both were rather engaging speakers.

I think it would be really interesting if the other bloggers could weigh in on this… who have been your best teachers?

Anyway. I hope everyone is having a happy new year and spending lots of time with family and friends 🙂