I wrote this brief piece, for a collection that never happened, back in 2010. There was no Teaching Excellence Framework back then, although the idea of excellence as something to aim for in teaching was clearly already in the air. (People don't seem to have avoided marks ending in 9 back then, either.) This blog isn't a great place to air an argument about teaching, but it's better than leaving it sitting on my hard drive.
Against excellence! (Or, 'good enough' is good enough)
As a student, I was taught by some genuinely excellent teachers. One in particular stands out. He gave every impression of being thoroughly bored with his subject and the class (and doubtless wasn't putting it on), but had huge reserves of knowledge and enthusiasm which he would, reluctantly, draw on if you asked the right question. He took me on one side once and urged me to consider doing further study; the piece of work I'd handed in the previous week was one of the best things he'd seen in years, he said, and the last person who'd handed in something of that quality was now a lecturer. The mark he gave it was 69.
Measuring excellence in teaching raises problems on a number of levels. While it may be directly observable, it can't be directly measured: proxy measures are required. It's hard to see what proxy measures would be both reliable and valid. As my experience suggests, the reliability of academic results can be undermined by the variation between generous and parsimonious markers; other confounding factors include the variation between one year cohort and another and the inescapable and unpredictable variation between one teaching year and another.
Standardised feedback measures avoid some of these pitfalls, but have their own drawbacks in terms of validity. Any measure which offers students the chance to express their feelings about their teachers is liable at best to be distorted by personal factors - and at worst, to be gamed outright. A teacher who consistently praises every student who speaks in class, never contradicting or offering correction, will be better liked overall - and get better overall feedback - than one who engages with students by correcting misconceptions and prompting them to clarify their ideas.
Moreover, excellent teaching does not necessarily indicate a consistently excellent teacher. Two undergraduate course units I have known showed striking differences in teaching methods and equally striking differences in the key student-based measures, results and feedback. One unit featured lectures designed to engage students in multiple different ways, using graphics, animations and interactive exercises. The other offered students the chance to listen and take notes for 100 minutes at a time, while contemplating text-based slides varied only by colour-coded headings.
One unit had excellent results and enthusiastic student feedback; the other, mediocre results and dreadful feedback. The teacher was the same person (myself); nor can the teaching methods be blamed, as it was the second, less interactive unit which had the good results and feedback. One relevant factor is that the first unit was compulsory and the second optional; another is that the first was a 'methods' unit. Perhaps the most important difference is that the first unit had been taught for several years with only minor changes, while the second had just been developed from scratch.
An excellent teacher is, perhaps, one who communicates enthusiasm for and curiosity about the subject. However, this is a quality of a particular teaching situation, not of the teacher involved. Anybody, in the right situation, has the capacity to communicate enthusiasm; nobody can succeed in doing so in every situation. The quality of being an excellent teacher, in this sense, is a chimera - and the data produced by trying to trap it with standardised measurements is liable to be misleading at best.
The work of the psychologist Donald Winnicott is relevant here; in particular, his model of the relationship between the infant and the 'good-enough mother'. A key concept is 'potential space': the psychological zone of possibilities between infant and carer. This must be created and maintained by a 'good-enough' caregiver: "If the caregiver interferes with and dominates the space, then the space and its potential are compromised. If the caregiver is negligent, there will be no defined, protected space where 'the work of play' can happen." (Allen 2002: 151) Teachers, similarly, "create environments of one sort or another ... Teachers can, like parents, neglect, overwhelm, support, protect, or threaten their charges." (Allen 2002: 152)
However, what is at issue is not simply creating a safe space, for infant or student. In the course of infant development, the 'good-enough' caregiver becomes a less significant part of the infant's 'potential space'; as the infant grows in independence, the play itself becomes more real. "The good-enough mother ... starts off with an almost complete adaptation to her infant's needs, and as time proceeds she adapts less and less completely, gradually, according to the infant's growing ability to deal with her failure" (Winnicott 1974: 12). Something similar may apply to teachers:
we might say that the "good enough teacher" is one who provides the circumstances for the student to use the teacher's presence and absence for her own flourishing ... The good enough teacher is one who proves to be enough of a presence so that the student can be sure that she has a person to fall back on if needed, but also enough of an absence that the student can gain an educational agency that is all her own. (Bingham 2004: 249)
It is the teacher's responsibility to create an imaginative space within which the student can safely experiment with new ways of thinking, and then to progressively withdraw from that space, enabling the student to emerge as an independent learner. The initial state of responsive and understanding 'presence' is important, but so is the later 'absence' - which can be understood both literally and in terms of resistance, independence of mind, responding to queries in ways which the student may not find immediately useful. To be 'good enough' in practice, it is crucial to recognise what point an individual student has reached in the journey out of a state of dependence - and to help the student continue the journey.
Excellence as a teacher cannot be measured validly and reliably, and may not even exist. We should focus instead on being 'good enough', developing relationships with students which move from attentive 'presence' to resistant 'absence' - not a spectacular achievement, but one which makes learning possible.
References
Bingham, C. (2004), "Pragmatic Intersubjectivity, or, Just Using Teachers", Philosophy of Education 60:245-253
Allen, G. (2002), "The 'good enough' teacher and the authentic student'; in Mills, J. (ed.) (2002), A pedagogy of becoming, New York: Rodopi
Winnicott, D. (1953), "Transitional objects and transitional phenomena", International Journal of Psychoanalysis 34:89-97
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