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Response and Reflection
Larry Cuban. (1999) How
Scholars Trumped Teachers: Change without Reform in University
Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990. New York: Teachers
College Press.
I
thoroughly enjoyed this text among the readings in this course I have
completed this far. Cuban manages to capture the many dichotomies
in higher education, some of which, I have pondered myself. A
perfect example is that university faculty are employed to teach the
minds of tomorrow, but are evaluated and promoted by their research and
publications. Even at smaller universities that would be
classified as teaching institutions by the Carnegie classification
system, quality research still becomes a necessary outcome expected
from faculty members though more emphasis is placed on teaching.
Throughout How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Constancy and Change in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research,
Cuban emphasizes the role of faculty in terms of teaching, research,
advising, and curriculum. He uses a case study at Stanford university
to explain the concepts and develops a power conceptual model to
explain the ideas. The overarching theme of the text is
educational reform over time.
The second chapter of the text introduces his conceptual framework for
understanding change by focusing on two interrelated dimensions:
breadth and depth. More specifically, Cuban defined depth into
two distinct categories: incremental and fundamental. Incremental
refers to small steps, such as additions, enhancements, or alterations
to the existing processes, technology, cultures and structures.
Fundamental changes refer to change aimed at core beliefs,
behaviors, and structures. Relating to breadth, Cuban describes
broad focused as aiming at a change that impacts the entire system,
while narrow focused aims to focus smaller subsystems. He
illustrates these two dimensions and related categories as a matrix and
provides solid examples within Stanford university to describe the
distinctions among these categories of change. Interestingly, he
also demonstrates a change initiative sometimes targeting one category,
will end up moving from one category to another. He describes how
changes that were intended to be fundamental, over time, become
incremental or how changes that were intended to become broad in scope
became narrowly focused. He concludes the chapter explaining
situations where change occurs without reform.
In the subsequent two chapters, Cuban uses Stanford University's
history department and school of medicine as individual case studies.
In both cases, teaching had dramatically decreased as measured by
the number of contact hours and number of individual courses, either
lecture, lab or seminar, an individual faculty member was required to
teach in an academic semester or quarter. Another interesting
facet, was the increasingly disproportionate number of courses in an
academic unit - especially in the history department. In 1911,
approximately five faculty taught just under forty different courses.
By 1991, just under forty faculty taught just under two hundred
different courses. Regardless of many reform initiatives, as noted by
Cuban, these courses evolved from a range of faculty interests and
demonstrate that faculty interests had been institutionalized in the
formal curriculum. The history department also evolved from a
strong teaching culture to a culture of faculty favoring research.
The history department had fundamentally transformed over the
years: culture in the department was to become scholars first and
teachers second.
A similar pattern and outcome occurred in the school of medicine,
though a different path lead to the same ends. The curriculum in
the school of medicine had formally focused on teaching in lab,
seminars, and lectures in the medical curriculum. Laboratory had
been viewed as a fundamental approach learning medical curriculum, yet
over time, the total number of preclinical and clinical lab hours
decreased. Meanwhile, lecture as the formal delivery mode had
increased over time. Further, institutionalization of the
elective system in 1968 had changed the formal medical curriculum.
After many years, some faculty acknowledged that many students
were avoiding critical content in the curriculum, such as immunology.
Consequently, a formal required curriculum had been
re-established in 1984. These changes were intended to be
incremental, yet grew to be fundamental changes in the institution.
Just as the history department evolved, so did the school of
medicine. Both academic units now embrace a strong culture for
research.
The final chapter is Cuban's book is titled How Research Trumped Teaching in History and Medicine,
where he makes most of his conclusions and provides a relevant
discussion. Most interestingly, he points out that although both
academic units have undergone numerous educational reforms and
different teaching innovations, classroom practices have largely
remained the same. Lecturing continues to dominate the mainstream
classroom. He also points out the misunderstanding that lecturing
has become confused with learning because of its overwhelming
popularity and constancy in education. Though lecturing remains
the preponderance of delivery, Cuban does recognize the growth of
innovative pedagogies that have emerged from faculty that believe
"teaching for student understanding rather than factual coverage has
motivated many professor to practice their craft differently than their
colleagues" (p. 170). He further notes that advising, seen as
informal teaching, has continued to be a dismal failure over the years.
Consequently, hired staff have been dedicated to the task in most
organizations by the 1980s and 1990s.
Cuban also discusses the impact of departmental and professorial
autonomy on advising, curriculum, teaching and research. Cuban
highlights that this autonomy can both negatively and positively impact
practice. The most obvious outcome being the institutionalization
faculty interests and a growth in the culture of research. The
university-college, from the dawn of its existence (based on the German
and English education systems), is plagued with dichotomy.
The question of teaching versus research question really reduces
down to whether or not the two elements are compatible or incompatible.
Cuban provides both perspectives, though neither are conclusive.
Undoubtedly, there is a finite amount of time, energy, and money
in any education system. Determining how much emphasis should be
placed in one category or another appears to be the prerogative of the
faculty and a department. In both cases, research trumped
teaching.
As a closing note to the excellent read, I strongly believe that this text should be required reading for all
individuals in doctoral training. The points brought to light by
this text with Cuban's straight-forward and descriptive writing style
and his ability to convey ideas with real stories make this book a
great learning tool. Being an emerging educator, many of the
points he addresses are things that I have spent numerous hours
thinking and talking about with professors and peers. Just what
am I getting myself into? How do I survive? This book helps
me understand the system, its cultures, and some of the organizational
aspects of higher education that would have otherwise been left to
ignorance.
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