Pedagogy Institute Idea Nixed

Just days before the curricular review’s report was released last month, members of the committee that focused on pedagogy were informed that their most innovative suggestion—the creation of a research institute for cutting-edge teaching methods—had been nixed by the review’s Steering Committee.

A month later, members of the Working Group on Pedagogy are still debating what that decision ultimately means for learning at Harvard.

“The idea, we thought, was so good, the potential was so good and people were so excited about it,” said Assistant Senior Tutor of Mather House Aaron Allen, a member of the pedagogy working group.

“It was very surprising that it was cut,” he said.

Allen said the idea came up when the working group struggled to find research to make recommendations on teaching.

“We don’t really have a sense of what kind of pedagogy goes on in the classroom,” Allen said. “In order to fix what students are complaining about we need something to go on.”

He said the institute was designed to resolve these problems by conducting the necessary research.

But Jones Professor of American Studies Lizabeth Cohen, co-chair of working group, said the needed research data exists, and that “what we need to do is get this research funneled to people who can use it.” She also said the recommendation for a research institute would distract Harvard from its goal of improving teaching.

“We didn’t want to turn pedagogy into research and then make it less important than a relationship between teachers and students,” she said. “There is a worry that we would do the Harvard thing and turn what should be about interacting into scholarship.”

Cohen said that enhancing faculty-student relationships was the guiding principle that informed the working group’s discussions.

“From the beginning we determined that at the heart of a Harvard education should be interaction between faculty and students,” she said. “A lot of our efforts went into trying to find ways to enhance that.”

Allen said the pedagogical recommendations that were in the report marked a shift in Harvard’s culture.

“We are a research institute. We want to be a teaching institute as well,” he said.

These recommendations include the implementation of a January term between the fall and spring semesters, increased funding for student research, better use of classroom space, smaller class sizes and the exploration of reducing section size from 18 to 15 students.

The review also calls for course evaluations to occur twice a term—at mid-term and the end of the term—and for those evaluations to be completed online. These evaluations will also allow for faculty to add in course-specific questions.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Allen said that current CUE evaluations do not provide faculty with the information they need to improve their teaching.

“You’re evaluating based on a review for a book. [Answers to the question] ‘should you take this class’ are not terribly useful for improving pedagogical experience,” he said.

Despite these improvements, several committee members remained disappointed that the pedagogy institute was not recommended in the final report. Reiterating a familiar complaint, they expressed frustration that they were unable to influence the Steering Committee’s decision as much as they would have liked.

“It was a one-way communication,” said Baird Professor of Science Gary Feldman, also a committee member. “We were given the report four days before it became public and at that point there was only the chance to modify a word here or there rather than have a serious discussion about the issues.”

Student committee member Joseph K. Green ’05 said he had not been given a substantial explanation for why the idea of the institution never made it off the ground, but speculated that financial considerations influenced the decision.

“The only reason I’ve heard is that it’s not worth the resources,” said Green, expressing a sentiment shared by Feldman. But he said he found this to be “totally not a legitimate reason, in my opinion.”

Cohen said financial considerations were not the driving force behind the decision but added that “I think I’d rather we hire more faculty and improve the faculty-student ratio than invest a huge amount of money in a research tank.”

Allen offered a different theory.

“I would actually say that it was cut for political reasons,” Allen said.

The institute would have brought the Faculty of Arts and Science’s three principal pedagogical resources—the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, the Harvard Writing Project and the Instructional Computing Group—under one roof. And Allen said the creation of such an umbrella organization “would restructure administrative lines of command, and perhaps create more lines of command.” This would, he said, reduce the influence of the existing institutions’ administrators, who would now find themselves under the direction of the institute.

While the report did not initially include the suggestion, Associate Dean of the College Jeffrey Wolcowitz, the principal writer of the report, left the possibility open for the creation of an institute in the future.

“Several very good suggestions from various working groups didn’t make their way into the report in the way some people wanted, but that doesn’t mean that they were rejected or will not be considered further in the future,” he wrote in an e-mail.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.