IMPROVING COLLEGE TEACHING Peter Seldin Teaching in colleges is marked by historic paradox: though institutions constantly talk up its importance, they evaluate faculty primarily on the basis of scholarly achievements outside the classroom. Teaching is what almost every professor does, but it seems to suffer from that very commonness. It occupies the greatest amount of most professors' time, but rarely operates at the highest level of competence. There seems to be an ingrained academic reluctance to regard teaching in the same way the profession regards every other set of skills: as something that can be taught. Professors who take painstaking care for method within their discipline of chemistry, history, or psychology, for example, all too often are unreflective when it comes to teaching. Some professors even regard teaching as so straightforward that it requires no special training. Others find it so personal and idiosyncratic that no training could ever meet its multiplicity of demands. But most share the common folk belief that teachers are born and not made. "He (or she) is a born teacher," is said of too many good teachers as a copout by those who aren't. And some good teachers fuel this belief by agreeing, "I guess I'm a good teacher. Things seem to go well in the classroom. The students say they like what I do. But I don't really know how I do it." In fact, the marginal truth in this belief applies no more to teaching than to any other profession. If there are born teachers, there are born physicians, born attorneys, and born engineers. Yet those who are naturally great at these professions invariably spend an unnatural amount of time acquiring skills and practicing in the vortex of intense competition. Potentially great teachers become great teachers by the same route: through conditioning mind, through acquiring skills, and through practicing amidst intense competition (Eble, 1988). The interest in improved teaching has mushroomed rapidly in recent years, burrowing into all areas of the country and all types of institutions. Colleges and universities are moving from lip-service endorsements of the importance of teaching to concerted and sustained efforts to improve programs. Faculty and administrators flock to teaching conferences; government agencies and private foundations offer financial support, and a wave of new books on the subject appear. Yet the concept of improving teaching is hardly new. Years ago its emphasis was to improve subject matter competence. To further such competence, sabbatical leaves and attendance at professional meetings were encouraged. Claimed as rationale was a deeper understanding of the content of a discipline. Practically no attention was paid to how that understanding could best be imparted to students. Today, this early approach has been turned around. Now the concept is based on three assumptions: first, the primary professional activity of most professors is teaching; second, instructional behavior is not inborn, but rather a learned web of skills, attitudes, and goals; and third, faculty can be taught how to improve their classroom performance. The "new" emphasis on teaching stems from "new" social and political forces. Demographics have changed the student population and their educational needs. The advent of educationaltechnology has forever altered concepts about teaching and learning. And public outcries demanding reaching accountability have roused legislators and governing boards to actions. All forces rally for improved teaching. BARRIERS TO IMPROVEMENT How have the faculty responded to efforts around the nation to develop their teaching competence? Regrettably, they have mostly dragged their heels. Why? Several reasons come to mind. First, there is a core belief embedded in many teachers that only someone knowledgeable in a discipline can talk meaningfully about it. They believe that general ideas about teaching don't easily translate into the discipline-specific terms and concepts that a teacher of a particular course can readily act upon (Angelo, 1994). Second, some teachers fail to recognize the need for improvement in their own teaching. They think that they are already doing a good job in the classroom, a perception that reduces their interest in teaching improvement programs. For example, in a survey of nearly 300 college teachers, Blackburn et. al (1980) found that 92 percent believed their own teaching was above average. For Angelo (1994, p.5) that finding evoked Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, "a place where all the woman are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." Third, the generic nature of many teaching improvement programs sometimes doesn't respond to a given teacher's highly personal and specific needs. Said a Wisconsin professor, "Why should I invest time and energy in programs that don't directly relate to the teaching problems I face?" Fourth, many faculty have yet to be motivated to cross the threshold of a teaching improvement program. inertia more than opposition has kept them on the sidelines. As a California professor said as she shrugged, "Some day I'll probably take part in a teaching improvement program. But not right now." WHY IMPROVE TEACHING? The reasons for improving teaching are found in four different yet interconnected areas. They are reasons related to: 1) institutions of higher education, 2) faculty members, 3) students, and 4) society and societal forces (Cole, 1978; Seldin, 1993). Institutional Reasons Today, there is virtually endemic dissatisfaction with the faculty reward system. The typical system overvalues research and scholarship and undervalues teaching. One by-product of this tilted reward system is the inattention paid to teaching by graduate schools in their doctoral programs. (For a report on one institution that does pay attention, see the chapter by Black.) At bottom, the values predominant in higher education generally do not support teaching. Yet the intensified competition for students today requires that institutions strengthen their claim of offering outstanding teaching. Colleges where superior teaching is the rule rather than theexception, and where it is sufficiently recognized and rewarded, enjoy a distinct advantage in the competition for students. Despite the growth of the faculty development movement over the past two decades, as a practical matter, only a relatively small percentage of faculty take