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Who is “qualified” to teach, and what is it that makes them qualified?
An accreditation kerfuffle at Wayne State in which the accrediting body declared that a professor who’d been teaching philosophy courses for over 50 years would not be eligible to teach the same courses going forward because their degree is in English has me pondering these issues.
This is an obvious case of privileging credentials over experience, and one viewed by most as an injustice, because presumably an unqualified instructor wouldn’t have escaped notice for 50 consecutive years, right?
Academia clearly has a bias toward formal credentials, but a PhD by itself does not certify the holder as someone capable of effective instruction since teaching quality is not actually part of what is judged for the credential. The PhD is a certification of significant scholarly achievement, but not so much effective teaching.
In English departments, faculty with literature PhD’s routinely teach composition, and have done so for many decades, despite (historically) very few of those faculty having any training whatsoever in the teaching of writing.
Why do we allow the credential to substitute for expertise in this case? And really, what percentage of “teaching” faculty have little to no background in, you know, teaching?
Depending on how you weigh credentials versus experience, I fear that I wasn’t strictly “qualified” for quite a few of my teaching assignments over the last twenty years.
Certainly, as a newbie grad student with zero experience I wasn’t qualified to be teaching Developmental English and First-Year Composition, but of course the structure of credentialing allows for inexperienced grad students to work under the cover of the institution, presuming that they are appropriately supported by those with experience.
(Not a guaranteed proposition back then, nor even now.)
At Virginia Tech, I was hired into the communication department despite holding graduate degrees (MA, MFA) in English Literature and Creative Writing. The course, Communication Skills, combined elements of intro to communication theory, first-year writing, and public speaking. I had teaching experience in only one of those things (first-year writing).
But I had practical, real-world experience in the others via a post-grad school career as a marketing research consultant. In reality, the class was impossible to staff soley based on academic credentials unless you could find someone with graduate degrees in both communication and English. Those of us who taught the course were rooted in one discipline and expanded our reach to another. I’d never even taken a public speaking course, and yet, there I was, teaching it.
A similar process repeated itself when I moved on to Clemson. I was back in English, this time teaching technical writing, despite never having taken a technical writing course, let alone engaged in formal instruction on tech writing pedagogy. Sure, at the marketing research firm I had done reams and reams of technical writing, but was that a substitute?
It gets worse (or better?). While at Clemson, among other things I taught both courses in humor writing and an undergrad/grad literature course in American Humor. I’d published hundreds of humorous pieces and several books categorized as humor and was editing a popular humor website, but I had zero formal book learnin’ about humor.
My non-existent literature PhD was not on American humorous literature, though if I’d done a PhD, it might’ve been.
By formal credential, I should’ve been allowed to do very little of this work. Along the way, though, I believe I experienced something better than “credentialing.” I was both “vetted” and “supported.”
At Virginia Tech, not only did I go through an interview process with the course coordinator who was able to judge the applicability of my experience to the course material, additionally, throughout my time there, those of us teaching Communication Skills were part of a team, meeting frequently to share experiences and approaches to pedagogy. I was nervous to teach unfamiliar material like public speaking, but the support made it possible for me to use the knowledge and experience I did have about teaching, and apply it to this new realm.
Similarly at Clemson, the technical writing course came with a pre-designed curriculum and copious supporting and explanatory materials. No one expected me to start from scratch, but I was also allowed to find a way through the material in a way that worked for my particular approach to pedagogy.
With the humor stuff, because of my previous experiences in transitioning into unfamiliar courses, I realized I had a framework for developing my own approach to teaching these disciplines, so I designed the syllabi, presented them to the powers above and was approved.
As if by magic, each time I taught a new course, I was now officially “credentialed.” If Virginia Tech allowed me to teach public speaking, surely I was capable of teaching public speaking elsewhere.
So what should count as experience? As expertise?
What is the threshold for proving expertise anyway? Do these historical frameworks for qualifications make sense with the work of today’s higher education institutions?
Modesty aside, I like to think that I’ve acquired some expertise when it comes to teaching in general, and teaching writing in specific. At the same time, I’ve never published anything on pedagogy in a peer reviewed academic journal. By both necessity ($$$$’s) and philosophy (I privilege audience over prestige), I’ve chosen to do my work in pedagogy publicly, primarily in this space.
I’ve heard from people with whom my work resonates. Working publicly has also exposed me to others who share the same concerns about teaching writing and contingent labor and who have been profoundly influential on my own thinking. What is this if not participation in a scholarly community?
But in academia, none of it “counts” even though it is this kind of participation that not only has allowed me to afford to keep teaching by supplementing my income, but also played a significant role in helping me improve the quality of my work.
A PhD is a meaningful credential; so is publishing scholarship in a peer reviewed journal. But what do they mean relative to the on-the-ground labor of instructional staff at higher education institutions?
Isn’t support for faculty once they arrive far more important than the credentialing they receive prior to starting their post-graduate careers?
And as the shape of higher ed labor continues to change, how will we value those who make lack a credential, but have also prove themselves necessary?
As you can see, I’ve got some questions.
