In the military, we often talk about “balancing near-term operational risk against future risk.” Of course, the here and now often wins out. Or, as Lewis Carroll Alice’s said, “But then, shall I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way — never to be an old woman — but then — always to have lessons to learn!”

I suspect the answer to your question is not likely. Perhaps that issue should be raised by the wise, tenured professors instead of wondering what sort of “a free lunch will be put on?” Maybe there is some rich soil here and there among those rocky educrats.

Ok..more to the point.

The most important things my students learn in my classes can’t possibly be measured by any government-provided instrument.

I’m curious if any discussions come up about longitudinal studies on former students. While there are design issues to be sure, I think such studies might provide some objective insight into capturing the “future value” of today’s learning.

If I were teaching well-prepared law students, it would indeed be far more collaborative. Teaching fifty 18 year-olds who come from Armenia and Argentina, from Ghana and Guatemala, from China and Colombia, necessitates a simpler format.

I should give some background: I am an undergraduate in my final year at a liberal arts college. Last year, I studied abroad in Ireland. My experiences between the two universities have led me to prefer a teaching style more in line with “learning facilitator” than the traditional teacher, who “professes” what there is to learn from the material and the subject. I think of it more as a spectrum than as a dichotomy. Yes, the teacher should be recognised as as the authority. But I believe a healthy [large] amount of challenge to that authority is beneficial. When teachers act as discussion leaders, guiding and shaping the course of discourse, I find a higher yield in learning. But the classroom, most fundamentally, should be a site of discussion, not didacticism.

In Ms. Guinier’s lecture, she spoke anecdotally about her own experiences with research into the success of female law students. What she had learned was that learning was treated like a game; classrooms were like sports fields. The goal was to win. Most people, under this framework (the one fostered by traditional teaching), are losers. When, on the other hand, the classroom was treated more like a site of collaborative learning (the emphasis here on the inclusion of the professor under the category of learning), everyone gained more.

What frustrated me about your post is that you seemed to have dismissed an opportunity to learn. As a teacher, that’s remarkable. True, the training day seems to have been handled rather ridiculously (’learning facilitator’ is a term bound to inspire incredulity), but you didn’t try to look past how they were saying things to what they were saying. I think there’s more than a grain of wisdom in the approach they were trying to communicate. Your point about SLOs is apt, but should not be lumped in.

You care about being a gardener. Being a “learning facilitator” (still not a term I like) is not in opposition to this metaphor for teaching. Perhaps a different teaching style is like using a different type of tool to garden–it will get to different types of soil in a different way. And I think it would be worth pondering & testing, before bemusedly rejecting.

(This all wasn’t stated at well as I’d like, but as this is my means of procrastination on homework, alas, I run up against the limits of a justifiable tangent.)

It is the new passive-aggressive version of Authority. By all means increase control, but call it accountability. Confuse everyone with the language of egalitarian utopia, as you intensify inegalitarian structures.

It is the language of New Management as well, as we all know. Theoretically a change from old organization-chart thinking; in practice, Dilbert.

You say you’re “no longer inherently opposed to being held accountable.” No moral person should be; and yet, if the accountability is relentlessly upwards and increases the structural control of someone who subordinates you, surprise! your liberty may be at risk. And in this case, “liberty” equals academic freedom.

It is the turn of the Foucaultian screw. And I wish Foucault were alive to write about it.

I teach seven classes with 45-50 students in each; I have no TAs and do all the grading myself. That’s 325-350 final exams which have to be graded in 72 hours every semester. There’s a limit to what sort of assessment tools I can employ in those conditions.