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Faculty beliefs and the need for teaching improvement

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View the page of Heather Kanuka

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Heather Kanuka explores faculty beliefs about teaching and learning in different institutional settings and over time.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 5, 2024

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This video is a transcription of a discussion centered on a study that examines faculty beliefs about teaching and learning, building on earlier work by Patricia Cross from 1976. The conversation highlights the context and methodology of a replication study conducted at two Canadian universities—one research-intensive and the other teaching-intensive. The researchers adapted Cross's survey to assess how faculty beliefs have changed (or not) over the past 40 years, particularly in light of the differing institutional contexts.

Key points discussed include:

1. **Aims of the Study**: The study sought to explore faculty beliefs about teaching and learning, comparing responses from different institutional types to see if significant differences existed, as well as attempting to identify any changes over four decades.

2. **Literature Context**: The discussion references a long-standing critique of traditional teaching methods and emphasizes the persistence of student complaints regarding educational quality over the years. Historical figures like Socrates and more recent reports, such as the Boyer and Dearing reports, are mentioned as having highlighted the need for reform in university teaching practices.

3. **Methodology**: The methodology involved an online survey with good response rates, utilizing a modified version of Cross's original survey. The survey results indicated that most faculty members feel they are good teachers and that teaching quality remains a responsibility assigned to individual instructors rather than institutions.

4. **Findings**: The findings revealed that faculty beliefs about their teaching quality remain predominantly positive, with about 97% rating themselves as above average. Despite perceived teaching effectiveness, there is a consensus that institutions do not adequately recognize or reward good teaching. The study found that despite demographic changes among faculty and the emergence of teaching-intensive universities, there were striking similarities in beliefs from the original study to the current findings.

5. **Conclusions and Implications**: The study suggests that there has not been substantial change in teaching beliefs or practices over the years, raising questions about the effectiveness of teaching quality reforms. Factors such as self-perception, student evaluations that indicate satisfaction, and potential biases (like the Dunning-Kruger effect) impacting faculty self-assessment were discussed.

Overall, the conversation encapsulates a critical examination of university teaching practices, the resistance to change, and potential implications for future research in educational methodologies.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Study Inspiration and Methodology**: The authors conducted a conceptual replication of Patricia Cross's 1976 survey on faculty beliefs about teaching and learning, focusing on two Canadian universities with different institutional convideos—a research-intensive university and a teaching-intensive university. By adapting the original survey to modern convideos, they aimed to explore how faculty beliefs may have changed over the course of 40 years.

2. **Consistent Findings on Faculty Self-Assessment**: Across both institutional types, the study found that a vast majority of faculty (97%) rated their teaching as good or above average, mirroring the findings from Cross's original study. This suggests little change in faculty self-perception over four decades, indicating a persistent belief among educators that they are performing well despite ongoing critiques of teaching practices in higher education.

3. **Recognition of Good Teaching**: Both studies revealed that faculty members felt there was insufficient institutional commitment to recognizing and rewarding good teaching, a perception that remains unchanged over the years. This lack of systematic recognition may contribute to the stagnation in teaching practices, as there is little incentive for faculty to alter their teaching methods if they feel adequately recognized without making changes.

4. **Critiques of Teaching Methods and Practices**: Historical critiques of higher education teaching, dating back to Socrates and including significant reports like the Boyer Commission and the Deering report, highlight longstanding issues such as the ineffectiveness of the lecture method and a lack of student-centered teaching. The authors noted that despite various recommendations over the years, little progress had been made in altering teaching practices.

5. **Potential Explanations for Resistance to Change**: The video discusses various factors that may contribute to the resistance to changing teaching practices in higher education. These include a general satisfaction with current teaching performance among faculty, a reliance on student evaluations that perceive teaching positively, and the psychological concepts of self-enhancement bias and the Dunning-Kruger effect, which suggest that faculty may lack awareness of their teaching deficiencies due to limited feedback and professional development in pedagogy.

These points summarize the essence of the video, covering its methodological aspect, findings, and implications related to faculty beliefs about teaching.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video:

1. **Purpose of the Study**:
- "We picked up on that and, um, 40 years later explored faculty beliefs about teaching and learning."

2. **Connection to Previous Research**:
- "The survey by Patricia Cross was conducted in 1976, and we theorized that faculty in different institutional convideos would have different beliefs about teaching and learning."

3. **Historical Convideo**:
- "There's an incredibly large body of research on teaching in higher education. It spans decades, and if we include Socrates, it spans centuries."

4. **Consistent Criticism**:
- "The criticism over time [...] have been remarkably consistent, um, mostly focusing on how bad the lecture method is, passive students and how instructors are teaching centered rather than learner centered."

5. **Findings on Faculty Self-Assessment**:
- "When more than 90% of faculty members rate themselves as above average teachers and two thirds rate themselves among the top quarter, the outlook for much improvement in teaching seems less than promising."

6. **Perception of Teaching Quality**:
- "So we have this attitude that we're all just, uh, not doing a very good job teaching in higher education, and, but we believe that we are doing an amazing job teaching in higher education."

7. **Patricia Cross's Conclusions**:
- "The three main findings of her survey were... the perception surrounding the locus of responsibility for teaching quality is conflicted."

8. **Overall Reflection**:
- "Maybe there's really nothing to improve if we look at that."

9. **Feedback and Change**:
- "The key way, uh, to change practice is to give feedback. The way instructors get feedback is through student evaluations."

10. **Dunning-Kruger Effect**:
- "We know from the [...] Dunning-Kruger effect that people with low expertise [...] almost always give overly positive self-evaluation."

These quotes capture the essential themes, findings, and reflections offered in the video regarding faculty beliefs about teaching and learning, the historical convideo, self-assessment of teaching quality, and the need for feedback and professional development.

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Here are some articles that might be similar to the video you , focusing on faculty beliefs about teaching and learning, comparisons of educational practices, and the implications of research in higher education:

1. **"Shifting Faculty Beliefs: Evaluating Educational Reform in Higher Education"** - This article discusses the evolution of faculty perceptions regarding teaching effectiveness and educational reforms over the last few decades, drawing on multiple studies to highlight persistence in traditional teaching beliefs.

2. **"Teaching Quality and Faculty Self-Assessment: A Historical Perspective"** - This piece examines the long-standing issue of faculty self-assessment in teaching quality, comparing modern-day attitudes with those from historical educational studies, including foundational works by Patricia Cross.

3. **"Institutional Convideos and Their Impact on Faculty Teaching Practices"** - This research explores how different types of institutions (research-intensive vs. teaching-intensive) influence faculty beliefs and practices related to teaching and learning, providing comparative data across multiple universities.

4. **"The Perseverance of Traditional Teaching Methods: A Comparative Study"** - This study outlines the ongoing critiques of traditional teaching approaches and assesses faculty attitudes towards educational reform initiatives, highlighting similarities and differences over time.

5. **"Faculty Perceptions of Teaching Effectiveness: A Survey Analysis"** - A detailed analysis that utilizes survey methodologies similar to those of Cross, this article presents data on faculty self-perceptions, teaching quality, and institutional recognition.

6. **"Addressing the Dunning-Kruger Effect in Higher Education: Implications for Faculty Development"** - This article discusses the Dunning-Kruger effect in the convideo of higher education, focusing on how faculty self-perception of teaching abilities can impact educational quality and the need for faculty development programs.

7. **"Student Complaints and Faculty Responses: Analyzing the Gap in Higher Education"** - This article investigates the persistent issues of student dissatisfaction with teaching quality and examines faculty attitudes towards these concerns, building on the historical critiques noted in your video.

8. **"Change and Resistance in University Teaching Practices: Reflections on Four Decades of Educational Research"** - This reflective piece discusses the resistance to change in teaching practices despite decades of research advocating for reform, providing insights into faculty beliefs and institutional challenges.

These articles collectively address themes of faculty beliefs about teaching, institutional convideo, historical perspectives, and implications for educational practices, closely aligning with the focus of your video.

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Myself and the co-authors came across a study

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that Patricia Cross did.

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And, it got us thinking, you know, the study explores,

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what Patricia Cross did with her survey,

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beliefs about teaching.

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So we picked up on that

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and, 40 years later

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explored faculty beliefs about teaching and learning.

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But we also included different institutional settings

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and what these differences might look like 40 years later.

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So what we did was we surveyed faculty at two Canadian

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universities, in Western Canada.

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One was a research intensive university

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and the other teaching intensive.

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Uh, and what we did was a conceptual replication

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of a survey Patricia crosses.

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We had to modify it in places,

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but generally, we kept most

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of the questions exactly the same.

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The survey by Patricia Cross was conducted in 1976,

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and we theorized

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that faculty in different institutional contexts would have

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different beliefs about teaching and learning.

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So, relatively new in Canada is,

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the teaching intensive universities.

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We don't have a lot of, research intensive 15, so

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that's quite unlike our neighbors to the South.

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But there are, over the last decade

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or two, quite a number

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of teaching intensive universities.

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I found really the most fun part of this study.

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I really enjoy being an academic and a researcher.

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And part of a lot of the fun are studies like this, that,

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that have a lot of fantastic background to them.

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So there's an incredibly large body

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of research on teaching in higher education.

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It spans decades,

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and if we include Socrates, it spans centuries.

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Uh, and they've all been criticized from Socrates

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onward maybe before.

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We just don't have any record of it.

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Uh, the criticism over time, including with Socrates,

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have been remarkably consistent, mostly focusing on

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how bad the lecture method is, passive students

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and how instructors are teaching centered

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rather than learner centered.

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And there's been an awful lot of recommendations that seem

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to be ineffective at changing teaching practices.

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So the recommendations over time,

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we could look at John Dewey who, really was

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the, the originator of experiential learning.

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And we are still trying to promote this kind of,

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recommendation for teaching in higher education.

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So over time, there's been a lot of research, a lot

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of recommendations with very little change

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in teaching practices.

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Um, so yeah, we came across

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This study by Patricia Cross at Nebraska University.

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Uh, she's, she's not from Nebraska University,

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but she was asked, to go there to condition a study

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in 19 75, 76, to continue to expand

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and improve its knowledge on the teaching learning process,

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and utilize the knowledge, the results from her research

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to improve their teaching programs, both on and off campus.

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So that was the, focus of her study.

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When we were doing the literature review, I came across,

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a number of, good articles to illustrate

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how long this has been going on.

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One was by Upton Sinclair in 1923.

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He wrote the book, and it's online.

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It's a fun read if you ever have the time to go read it.

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It's called the Goose Step, a Study

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of American Education.

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And what Upton did was,

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he highlighted three longstanding student

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complaints over generations.

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So remember, this was a hundred years ago

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that this book was written.

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And, he said, you know, we've got three big problems,

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boring classes, poor information from which

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to choose classes, and an education system

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with little personalization.

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And I challenge anybody to say that any

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of this has changed a hundred years later.

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So repeated, critiques,

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Patricia Cross's study was good in that we had the survey

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and it was focused on teaching beliefs,

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and it was quite comprehensive.

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And he, she challenged,

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to see if there would be any changes

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with the new generation.

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So it was kind of timely 40 years later to think, huh,

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has anything changed in 40 years since this survey?

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And we had all the good data there for us

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to do a replication, study.

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So, little bit more research background.

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That was in the seventies.

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Uh, Sinclair's book was in, it was a hundred years ago.

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And then we have Socrates,

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but moving a bit more into the future, we have, you know,

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our late 1990s, we have the Boyer Commission, which was done

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by the United States, Carnegie, foundation, I think,

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and then the Deering report in the uk.

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They both came out at about the same time,

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with searing criticisms of,

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teaching in higher education,

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particularly at the undergraduate level.

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So, fast forward 20 years later, two decades,

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do we see any changes arising from the Boyer report

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or the during report?

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Not really. Um,

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but we also have a, another movement happening

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arising from both, the during report

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and the Boyer report, which is a scholarship

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of teaching and learning.

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So this was a big movement to reconsider,

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teaching at the undergraduate level.

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What have we seen with changes here two decades later?

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Probably not a lot.

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So, it was kind of intriguing

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to replicate this study

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and using data instead of just recommendations.

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And most of the research is on perceptions, a lot of it

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with case studies

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and small interviews to take a large scale study

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and actually see how teaching beliefs have changed.

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We did an online, cross-sectional analysis survey.

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We, randomly selected

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names from my institution

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and my, co-researcher, Erica Smith,

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which was from a teaching intensive, university.

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And we sent out this survey.

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And surprisingly from, my university,

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which is a research intensive,

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we got a really good return rate.

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We got a good return rate too from the teaching intensive

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university, but not quite as good.

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So we had about 520, return.

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I think I sent out about a thousand,

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I can't remember the exact number,

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but I think the, the return rate was around 50%.

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And for the te teaching intensive, it was around 40%.

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So pretty good return rate.

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I don't always get those good return rates with my research.

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But this one, we did, so we,

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the Patricia Cross, survey had 92 items,

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which is a long survey.

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Uh, we had boxes for comments.

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I was really quite disappointed we didn't get a lot

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of comments, but given the length of the survey,

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I probably shouldn't be surprised that we didn't get a lot

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of extra feedback.

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So, but what we did get was some really good data

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and really good numbers upon which we did a comparative

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analysis with a replication survey.

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Um, as might be expected, we had to change some

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of the questions to update them, especially

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with the off-campus, use of technologies.

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But other than that, we were, we remained,

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pretty careful keeping the questions exactly the same.

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So the question Patricia Cross, asked was,

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what did, we'd likely, she asked if a new generation

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of faculty would, would, we would see these changes.

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And she was quite convinced if you read her work,

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that we would see a new generation that, you know, we have

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to wait for the old folks to get out.

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Um, and for the new generation to come in

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and predicted that we would see changes over time

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in teaching practices.

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Um, her, her big, the, the big conclusion

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With Cross's study was, and,

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and this is a quote from her study, when more than 90%

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of faculty members rate themselves as above average teachers

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and two thirds rate themselves among the top quarter,

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the outlook for much improvement in teaching seems

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less than promising.

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And this is rather significant

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because if you think you're doing a good job,

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what's the inspiration

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for changing your teaching practices, right?

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So, we have this attitude

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that we're all just, not doing a very good job teaching

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in higher education, and,

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but we believe that we are doing an amazing job

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teaching in higher education.

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The Patricia Cross survey had three,

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overarching conclusions that were important.

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And the three main findings

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of her survey were prevailing beliefs

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that teaching at the university was already quite good.

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The second one, perceptions that there should be,

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but was not an unambiguous commitment to the reward

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and recognition of goods teaching at the same level

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as research still a problem,

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and perception surrounding the locus of responsibility

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for teaching quality, that's conflicted.

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So, and this is a, a big one,

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and I think, Graham Gibbs from, he's from the UK too,

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I can't remember which university,

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but he's written some fantastic, papers

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on teaching quality.

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We're quite conflicted on what that looks like.

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So in spite of the demographic differences, so at the time,

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Nebraska University had a young faculty,

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most were associate, which would be the same

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as lectures, in the uk.

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They were associate professors.

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You know, fast forward 40 years,

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we've got at both institutions,

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although the U of A, the research intensive university has

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far more majority of professors are now full professors.

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Um, so we have a, a changing,

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quite a significantly different, demographic.

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There's more women now in the faculty than there was,

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at the time in the seventies.

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Uh, a lot of diversity of faculty.

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And then we have these two different institutions

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where we have a teaching intensive institution

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where we theorized we would see very significant differences

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in beliefs about teaching from the research

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intensive university.

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And Nebraska in the us

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is a research intensive university as well too.

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So we thought that we would see some, some, some

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interesting differences.

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Um, but what we found was

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remarkably similar beliefs in that most faculty.

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So do you believe that your teaching is good? Very good.

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Above average? Well, you know, 97%,

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just like the cross survey, think that, yep.

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Uh, you know, my teaching's pretty darn good.

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And, do you think the institution recognizes

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and rewards good teaching?

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Nope. Uh, it's difficult to recognize.

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So exactly the same as a cross study, lo locus

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of responsibility, who's, whose responsibility is it for?

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Teaching quality is the institutions, your deans,

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your chair, where does that rest?

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And it's still the same as a cross study.

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It's with the professor.

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The individual instructors are responsible

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for the quality of instruction.

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And, two of the things that we included, the,

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those are the three main things

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that Patricia Cross highlighted.

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But two other things. There was so many interesting things.

12:54.125 --> 12:56.045
I, I mean, there was 93 items,

12:56.305 --> 12:59.605
but we took some of the, the nuggets out

12:59.705 --> 13:02.125
and one was ways to improve teaching

13:02.125 --> 13:03.565
because we haven't seen changes.

13:04.545 --> 13:09.485
Um, still exactly the same updating course material,

13:09.665 --> 13:12.685
and smaller grad undergraduate class sizes.

13:13.385 --> 13:16.085
Uh, and the most important motivator is

13:16.405 --> 13:17.525
personal satisfaction.

13:17.745 --> 13:20.645
And, I can attest to do there,

13:20.645 --> 13:22.925
there's nothing better than having a great class.

13:23.665 --> 13:27.005
So that's the motivators and those are the data,

13:27.665 --> 13:31.205
and they are remarkably consistent over time

13:31.865 --> 13:34.525
and between different kinds of institutions.

13:34.785 --> 13:38.245
The good thing about qualitative research is you can find

13:38.305 --> 13:39.845
out why with quantitative,

13:39.845 --> 13:42.325
what we did is you find out what's happening.

13:42.465 --> 13:43.765
So we can only surmise.

13:44.705 --> 13:49.125
So I have a, I have a number of things that, that I think,

13:49.665 --> 13:52.925
maybe teaching practices are good, maybe,

13:53.335 --> 13:54.845
maybe we aren't so terrible.

13:55.545 --> 13:59.965
And, you know, if we look at student, evaluations,

14:00.545 --> 14:03.285
and even though the during, the,

14:03.535 --> 14:06.845
Boyer report did not include this, the during report did,

14:07.115 --> 14:09.005
they looked at student evaluations

14:09.265 --> 14:11.725
and said, huh, you know, students think

14:11.725 --> 14:15.325
that the teaching's pretty good in Canada, we do the same.

14:15.465 --> 14:18.325
We have a Canadian University of Consortium survey

14:18.325 --> 14:21.925
that we do, and we ask questions about,

14:21.995 --> 14:23.725
what they think about their teaching.

14:24.505 --> 14:29.365
And the student feedback on that is remarkably consistent

14:29.465 --> 14:32.765
to what professors think that they think that yep.

14:32.785 --> 14:34.885
Mm-hmm, my teaching was pretty good there.

14:35.465 --> 14:38.205
So, we have some consistency.

14:38.805 --> 14:40.085
Students think it's pretty good.

14:40.495 --> 14:42.165
Professors think they're pretty good.

14:43.125 --> 14:44.995
Maybe the teaching is just pretty good.

14:45.175 --> 14:49.875
You know, maybe, maybe there's, there's really nothing

14:50.015 --> 14:51.685
to improve if we look at that.

14:52.625 --> 14:57.055
Um, so the only time we know from research too,

14:57.055 --> 14:59.735
that the only time that teaching practices will change,

14:59.835 --> 15:02.535
and there's quite a lot of hundreds of studies on this,

15:03.035 --> 15:05.215
is if instructors perceive there's a problem.

15:05.875 --> 15:09.095
So the, the key way,

15:09.115 --> 15:11.695
to change practice is to give feedback.

15:12.195 --> 15:14.455
The way instructors get feedback is

15:14.455 --> 15:16.015
through student evaluations.

15:16.155 --> 15:19.055
And if student evaluations say, you know,

15:19.085 --> 15:21.525
your teaching's pretty good,

15:21.825 --> 15:23.845
and changes are unlikely to happen.

15:24.905 --> 15:26.885
The other thing that could be happening here

15:27.035 --> 15:30.325
that we put in the paper, you know,

15:30.345 --> 15:31.885
and this is kind of a fun one

15:31.885 --> 15:35.805
because it's sort of, is self-deprecating to

15:36.575 --> 15:37.925
professors like myself,

15:38.025 --> 15:40.845
but it's a self enhancement side, bias

15:41.425 --> 15:45.005
and the Dunning Krueger effect, could be a play here.

15:45.625 --> 15:49.645
And they did, a quite a lot of research where people

15:49.675 --> 15:53.725
with low expertise and, you know, let's put it on the table.

15:54.345 --> 15:57.765
Uh, professors in the uk they have

15:57.765 --> 15:59.685
to take a teaching certificate,

15:59.745 --> 16:01.285
but in North America, they don't.

16:01.505 --> 16:04.975
We get no,

16:06.495 --> 16:09.615
required professional development on how to teach.

16:09.835 --> 16:13.815
Uh, there are teaching centers, but by

16:13.815 --> 16:14.895
and large,

16:15.275 --> 16:17.735
we don't know a lot about teaching when we go into it

16:17.755 --> 16:19.175
as sort of by trial and error.

16:19.595 --> 16:22.415
And so we know from the, the Duning Kruger effect

16:22.445 --> 16:25.815
that people with low expertise,

16:26.075 --> 16:29.935
almost always give overly positive self-evaluation.

16:30.155 --> 16:33.385
So, I don't know, maybe we're just really lousy

16:33.605 --> 16:36.705
and the Dunning Kruger effect is happening

16:36.735 --> 16:38.025
with our survey results

16:38.035 --> 16:40.465
where we really don't know how lousy we are.

16:41.725 --> 16:44.625
So those are some of the,

16:45.895 --> 16:47.665
conclusions I think that we can draw.

00:00 - Myself and the co-authors came across a study that Patricia Cross did. And, it got us thinking, you know, the study explores, what Patricia Cross did with her survey, beliefs about teaching. So we picked up on that

00:18 - and, 40 years later explored faculty beliefs about teaching and learning. But we also included different institutional settings and what these differences might look like 40 years later. So what we did was we surveyed faculty at two Canadian universities, in Western Canada. One was a research intensive university and the other teaching intensive. and what we did was a conceptual replication of a survey Patricia crosses.

00:50 - We had to modify it in places, but generally, we kept most of the questions exactly the same. The survey by Patricia Cross was conducted in 1976, and we theorized that faculty in different institutional contexts would have different beliefs about teaching and learning. So, relatively new in Canada is, the teaching intensive universities. We don't have a lot of, research intensive 15, so

01:19 - that's quite unlike our neighbors to the South. But there are, over the last decade or two, quite a number of teaching intensive universities. I found really the most fun part of this study. I really enjoy being an academic and a researcher. And part of a lot of the fun are studies like this, that, that have a lot of fantastic background to them. So there's an incredibly large body of research on teaching in higher education.

01:52 - It spans decades, and if we include Socrates, it spans centuries. and they've all been criticized from Socrates onward maybe before. We just don't have any record of it. the criticism over time, including with Socrates, have been remarkably consistent, mostly focusing on how bad the lecture method is, passive students and how instructors are teaching centered rather than learner centered.

02:22 - And there's been an awful lot of recommendations that seem to be ineffective at changing teaching practices. So the recommendations over time, we could look at John Dewey who, really was the, the originator of experiential learning. And we are still trying to promote this kind of, recommendation for teaching in higher education. So over time, there's been a lot of research, a lot of recommendations with very little change in teaching practices.

02:56 - so yeah, we came across This study by Patricia Cross at Nebraska University. she's, she's not from Nebraska University, but she was asked, to go there to condition a study in 19 75, 76, to continue to expand and improve its knowledge on the teaching learning process, and utilize the knowledge, the results from her research to improve their teaching programs, both on and off campus. So that was the, focus of her study. When we were doing the literature review, I came across,

03:34 - a number of, good articles to illustrate how long this has been going on. One was by Upton Sinclair in 1923. He wrote the book, and it's online. It's a fun read if you ever have the time to go read it. It's called the Goose Step, a Study of American Education. And what Upton did was, he highlighted three longstanding student complaints over generations.

04:03 - So remember, this was a hundred years ago that this book was written. And, he said, you know, we've got three big problems, boring classes, poor information from which to choose classes, and an education system with little personalization. And I challenge anybody to say that any of this has changed a hundred years later. So repeated, critiques, Patricia Cross's study was good in that we had the survey

04:34 - and it was focused on teaching beliefs, and it was quite comprehensive. And he, she challenged, to see if there would be any changes with the new generation. So it was kind of timely 40 years later to think, huh, has anything changed in 40 years since this survey? And we had all the good data there for us to do a replication, study. So, little bit more research background.

05:03 - That was in the seventies. Sinclair's book was in, it was a hundred years ago. And then we have Socrates, but moving a bit more into the future, we have, you know, our late 1990s, we have the Boyer Commission, which was done by the United States, Carnegie, foundation, I think, and then the Deering report in the uk. They both came out at about the same time, with searing criticisms of, teaching in higher education,

05:33 - particularly at the undergraduate level. So, fast forward 20 years later, two decades, do we see any changes arising from the Boyer report or the during report? Not really. but we also have a, another movement happening arising from both, the during report and the Boyer report, which is a scholarship of teaching and learning. So this was a big movement to reconsider,

06:01 - teaching at the undergraduate level. What have we seen with changes here two decades later? Probably not a lot. So, it was kind of intriguing to replicate this study and using data instead of just recommendations. And most of the research is on perceptions, a lot of it with case studies and small interviews to take a large scale study and actually see how teaching beliefs have changed.

06:32 - We did an online, cross-sectional analysis survey. We, randomly selected names from my institution and my, co-researcher, Erica Smith, which was from a teaching intensive, university. And we sent out this survey. And surprisingly from, my university, which is a research intensive, we got a really good return rate. We got a good return rate too from the teaching intensive

07:05 - university, but not quite as good. So we had about 520, return. I think I sent out about a thousand, I can't remember the exact number, but I think the, the return rate was around 50%. And for the te teaching intensive, it was around 40%. So pretty good return rate. I don't always get those good return rates with my research. But this one, we did, so we, the Patricia Cross, survey had 92 items,

07:39 - which is a long survey. we had boxes for comments. I was really quite disappointed we didn't get a lot of comments, but given the length of the survey, I probably shouldn't be surprised that we didn't get a lot of extra feedback. So, but what we did get was some really good data and really good numbers upon which we did a comparative analysis with a replication survey. as might be expected, we had to change some

08:06 - of the questions to update them, especially with the off-campus, use of technologies. But other than that, we were, we remained, pretty careful keeping the questions exactly the same. So the question Patricia Cross, asked was, what did, we'd likely, she asked if a new generation of faculty would, would, we would see these changes. And she was quite convinced if you read her work, that we would see a new generation that, you know, we have to wait for the old folks to get out.

08:40 - and for the new generation to come in and predicted that we would see changes over time in teaching practices. her, her big, the, the big conclusion With Cross's study was, and, and this is a quote from her study, when more than 90% of faculty members rate themselves as above average teachers and two thirds rate themselves among the top quarter, the outlook for much improvement in teaching seems less than promising.

09:13 - And this is rather significant because if you think you're doing a good job, what's the inspiration for changing your teaching practices, right? So, we have this attitude that we're all just, not doing a very good job teaching in higher education, and, but we believe that we are doing an amazing job teaching in higher education. The Patricia Cross survey had three,

09:44 - overarching conclusions that were important. And the three main findings of her survey were prevailing beliefs that teaching at the university was already quite good. The second one, perceptions that there should be, but was not an unambiguous commitment to the reward and recognition of goods teaching at the same level as research still a problem, and perception surrounding the locus of responsibility for teaching quality, that's conflicted.

10:15 - So, and this is a, a big one, and I think, Graham Gibbs from, he's from the UK too, I can't remember which university, but he's written some fantastic, papers on teaching quality. We're quite conflicted on what that looks like. So in spite of the demographic differences, so at the time, Nebraska University had a young faculty, most were associate, which would be the same as lectures, in the uk.

10:47 - They were associate professors. You know, fast forward 40 years, we've got at both institutions, although the U of A, the research intensive university has far more majority of professors are now full professors. so we have a, a changing, quite a significantly different, demographic. There's more women now in the faculty than there was, at the time in the seventies. a lot of diversity of faculty.

11:17 - And then we have these two different institutions where we have a teaching intensive institution where we theorized we would see very significant differences in beliefs about teaching from the research intensive university. And Nebraska in the us is a research intensive university as well too. So we thought that we would see some, some, some interesting differences. but what we found was

11:50 - remarkably similar beliefs in that most faculty. So do you believe that your teaching is good? Very good. Above average? Well, you know, 97%, just like the cross survey, think that, yep. you know, my teaching's pretty darn good. And, do you think the institution recognizes and rewards good teaching? Nope. it's difficult to recognize. So exactly the same as a cross study, lo locus of responsibility, who's, whose responsibility is it for?

12:27 - Teaching quality is the institutions, your deans, your chair, where does that rest? And it's still the same as a cross study. It's with the professor. The individual instructors are responsible for the quality of instruction. And, two of the things that we included, the, those are the three main things that Patricia Cross highlighted. But two other things. There was so many interesting things.

12:54 - I, I mean, there was 93 items, but we took some of the, the nuggets out and one was ways to improve teaching because we haven't seen changes. still exactly the same updating course material, and smaller grad undergraduate class sizes. and the most important motivator is personal satisfaction. And, I can attest to do there, there's nothing better than having a great class.

13:23 - So that's the motivators and those are the data, and they are remarkably consistent over time and between different kinds of institutions. The good thing about qualitative research is you can find out why with quantitative, what we did is you find out what's happening. So we can only surmise. So I have a, I have a number of things that, that I think, maybe teaching practices are good, maybe, maybe we aren't so terrible.

13:55 - And, you know, if we look at student, evaluations, and even though the during, the, Boyer report did not include this, the during report did, they looked at student evaluations and said, huh, you know, students think that the teaching's pretty good in Canada, we do the same. We have a Canadian University of Consortium survey that we do, and we ask questions about, what they think about their teaching. And the student feedback on that is remarkably consistent

14:29 - to what professors think that they think that yep. Mm-hmm, my teaching was pretty good there. So, we have some consistency. Students think it's pretty good. Professors think they're pretty good. Maybe the teaching is just pretty good. You know, maybe, maybe there's, there's really nothing to improve if we look at that. so the only time we know from research too, that the only time that teaching practices will change,

14:59 - and there's quite a lot of hundreds of studies on this, is if instructors perceive there's a problem. So the, the key way, to change practice is to give feedback. The way instructors get feedback is through student evaluations. And if student evaluations say, you know, your teaching's pretty good, and changes are unlikely to happen. The other thing that could be happening here

15:27 - that we put in the paper, you know, and this is kind of a fun one because it's sort of, is self-deprecating to professors like myself, but it's a self enhancement side, bias and the Dunning Krueger effect, could be a play here. And they did, a quite a lot of research where people with low expertise and, you know, let's put it on the table. professors in the uk they have to take a teaching certificate,

15:59 - but in North America, they don't. We get no, required professional development on how to teach. there are teaching centers, but by and large, we don't know a lot about teaching when we go into it as sort of by trial and error. And so we know from the, the Duning Kruger effect that people with low expertise, almost always give overly positive self-evaluation.

16:30 - So, I don't know, maybe we're just really lousy and the Dunning Kruger effect is happening with our survey results where we really don't know how lousy we are. So those are some of the, conclusions I think that we can draw.

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