Whenever we are compelled to partake in one of these education department-sponsored shell games I want to make a simple request of those who have taken it upon themselves to be our teaching betters: Could I please see your teaching evaluations? I have always believed evals to be a blunt instrument rather than a sharp tool, but it's the most obvious measure we have. I have always assumed, and believe that my suspisions would be borne out were I ever to have access to the evidence, that education professors don't actually perform any better than the rest of us. So why is it that they get to impose their pedagogical norms on content, writing, and analysis related fields?
And don't get me started on interference from state legislatures. Even when well meaning, their demands end up being so catastrophically foolish and shortsighted as to defy reality. If any of this sounds familiar to you, read Schwyzer's self-described "polemic."
2 comments:
Last time I checked our University-wide grade distributions, education was one of the few departments in the social sciences with a very high GPA -- they give out A's like candy. Since high grades are very strongly associated with high student evals, you'd pretty much be playing into their hands.
What I've seen of our education classes suggests that they are very creative pedagogically. Not sound, perhaps, but creative as hell.
I'll never forget our associate dean (an English and Ed instructor) telling us that we could get our students to do more writing without increasing our grading load if we just let them do peer evaluations.....
Ahistoricality --
You make a very good point with regard to Ed departments and grading. The old joke at my PhD alma mater was "why do you have to roll your windows up when you drive by (the Ed School building name redacted)?" Because they are firing EdD's at anyone who passes by.
Even so, I'd love to see their evals -- mine are pretty good. I'll never max out the scale because I'll always have students who find me to be a bit too assertive, "arrogant," or whatever, but my evals are fine. I'd just like a sense of what we are dealing with.
And yes, every study that has ever been done has shown that there is a strong correlation between grades and evaluation numbers. The same has been shown with looks. this is why standard evaluations are so deeply problematic.
In any case, I don't want to keep thinking about this tonight. I still have a little bit of time left in my weekend, and I want to enjoy it!
Cheers --
dcat
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