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by Mike Dulay,
Assistant Division Chair, Social Sciences Division
“SLO” (student learning
outcomes) elicits a response from me that can be characterized as
nothing better than disgust because it echoes all that is wrong with our
inability to break from a “K-14” system. Although on paper we are no
longer part of the K-12 system, we are also not a university. We’re
something else; and too often I hear us defined as something less than a
university but more than a high school. This has forced me to ponder my
identity as a community college faculty member, and to examine the
reasons for the distaste that SLOs seem to evoke.
The problem is the ruler.
As students we all spent a significant part of
our lives in universities, and we’ve internalized their unit of
measurement: research as scholarship. We’ve also internalized the
dichotomy between teacher and learner, or professor and student. Taken
together, this divide and unit of measurement distinguish us from our
K-12 colleagues. The ruler of academic research grants university
professors the right to define truth and share it because they are the
experts—they discovered and framed it with their research. Their
outcomes must be self-defined. Tradition has allowed them to craft
their own ruler.
Unfortunately, K-12 teachers are not granted
such respect. Their mastery of truth is questioned by virtually all who
surround them, and this has led their system to devolve into a culture
of assessment and accountability. Their outcomes are measured by their
students’ responses to measures of goals (i.e., truth) that have been
defined externally (i.e., by curriculum “experts”). Their ruler is
abusive, and their unit of measurement is externally imposed
scholarship.
At GCC, we have been allowed to exist under a
fatherly leader, who is firm but flexible and who knows his faculty. A
stranger might not be so kind, and our size will certainly be an
obstacle in the establishment of intimate relationships. How, then,
could we help invite the future president to see us on our terms (with
our unit of measurement)?
I propose a different ruler altogether: one
that measures our distinguished position between the K-12 and university
systems. Our ruler should be defined by the two attributes that most
distinguish us. One, our students are wildly diverse (i.e., age,
academic ability, ethnicity, etc.), and we are responsible for teaching
far more students than our four-year counterparts. Two, the level of
academic achievement among our faculty characterizes us as scholars in
our own right. We, then, are teachers and professors, and our ruler is
obvious: teaching & learning as scholarship.
Expert teachers have adaptive expertise across
three domains: their discipline, general pedagogy, and the pedagogy best
suited for their discipline. As such, they thrive in situations where
their expertise in any one domain is stretched or challenged by a
situation (e.g., having 18- and 45-year-old students, or students who
are enrolled in ESL and graduate school, in the same class). The
greatness of community college professors lies in our ability to adapt
to such situations on a regular basis so that we can help all students
learn. SLOs dilute our adaptive expertise by emphasizing outcomes and
the products of learning over the processes of learning. Defining and
measuring an outcome does not assure that its pedagogical underpinnings
are understood. In fact, such outcomes are nothing more than shallow
facades (of understanding) that can be used as external definitions of
teaching and learning. That is not the ruler or unit of measurement
that best serves the scholarship of teaching and learning.
SLOs are a simplified version of a model known
as “SLOAC” (Student Learning Outcome and Assessment Cycles), which
implies that assessments will lead to revisions in teaching to better
increase outcomes. Again, the emphasis is placed on products/outcomes
and not on the understanding of processes. Worse still, “SLOAC”
captures an attempt to simplify an older tradition of academic inquiry
known as Participatory Action Research (PAR). This form of scholarship
places the researcher at the heart of the inquiry, and it presumes that
the researcher will be changed as a part of the research process.
Rather than beginning with an outcome, participatory action research
begins with a problem. My students, for example, have the problem of
not being able to produce projects in response to curricula built around
problem-based learning. Why? The central answer to this question is
me. I must worry about what I am doing before I begin to hold my
students accountable, and before anyone else can hold me accountable.
To deal with my curricular problems, I would propose action that is
rooted in the scholarship of teaching and learning. I might read
How People Learn or
Real-Life Problem Solving and
then delineate actions that would address my problem. I would then
assess the impact my actions might have had on the learning of my
students. Finally, I would reflect on the entire process as a means of
identifying future problems and framing future actions. Documenting my
movement through these cycles is scholarship. It distills the truth
from the mythology of teaching, and it holds me accountable to me. As
the opportunity to shape our future draws near, I can think of nothing
more critical to my professional livelihood as a scholar of teaching and
learning than to take an active role in defining our ruler.
Participatory action research is a model that, in my opinion, holds the
most promise for self-determined measurement. I can’t help but wonder
what other plans for proactive self-determination are blooming on
campus.
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