For well over 20 years we have heard that higher education does not reward teaching. We have also heard that research accomplishments come first in determining tenure and promotion decisions, and teaching second. At the same time, the imperative to increase our valuing of teaching continues. The Spellings Commission Report calls for new forms of teaching and directs FIPSE to promote innovative teaching and learning models. Boyer’s argument in Scholarship Reconsidered for broadening our understanding of faculty work to include forms of scholarship other than discovery, including a scholarship of teaching, underlies much of the conversation regarding faculty roles to this day. Yet acceptable teaching is too often defined as “not disastrous in the classroom,” particularly for stellar researchers. If there is no damage, no lawsuit, no newspaper headline about bad teaching, nothing illegal or immoral, then the teaching must be OK if the research record is great.

This leads to an interesting series of questions: What if higher education actually responded to these calls to increase the value of teaching? What if colleges and universities demanded higher levels of teaching performance for tenure, for example? Would that make a difference? Perhaps and perhaps not—making a commitment to higher levels of performance is one thing, but achieving higher levels of performance is another.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville made a commitment to meritorious teaching for promotion and tenure in 1994-95 when the faculty senate and the provost negotiated new promotion and tenure policies. The new promotion policy included the following statement: “A candidate for promotion shall demonstrate, at the level commensurate with rank, at least meritorious performance in teaching, and at least meritorious performance in either scholarship or service and satisfactory performance in the other.” The commitment to meritorious teaching raised four questions: How would we define meritorious teaching? How should we document it? How could we evaluate it? And how might we help faculty become meritorious teachers?

The four questions turned out to be interconnected, and all four presented challenges. The first question, how to define meritorious teaching, was far more challenging than it first appeared. The problem was that satisfactory teaching at SIUE was considered good teaching. To receive satisfactory rankings, faculty were expected to have strong student course evaluations; stay up-to-date in their field, incorporating new developments; use appropriate pedagogies; develop quality syllabi, handouts, and exams; and meet all normal responsibilities such as office hours. The challenge, then, was to determine what was better than good.

If meritorious teaching must be something better than good teaching, is that simply a matter of degree? One could look for higher course evaluations, better or more handouts, more-developed syllabi, more office hours, or better class management. But where do we draw the line? Looking for super-quality syllabi or extra-appropriate pedagogies made no sense. The temptation is to slide the scale down so that what had been defined as satisfactory teaching now becomes meritorious, because the difference between quality and super-quality, between appropriate and extra-appropriate, is indefinable.

The same problems arise when looking at the differences between meritorious and satisfactory teaching as a matter of practice or of differences in student learning. Using improvement strategies, involving students in research or engaging activities such as service learning, and demonstrating quality student learning are expectations of satisfactory teaching. All these approaches are suspect when they are used to differentiate between different levels of quality teaching, because they are necessary conditions for good teaching.

The year after SIUE reworked its promotion and tenure policies, faculty began the Faculty Roles and Responsibilities Initiative (FRR), part of the Illinois Board of Higher Education’s Priorities*Quality*Productivity mandate. FRR developed a multipronged approach to implementing a commitment to meritorious teaching by developing a meaningful peer-review system (course portfolios and reciprocal classroom interviews), exploring broader issues such as technology in the classroom and AAC&U’s Greater Expectations, balancing faculty roles, and redefining rigor. Exploring the scholarship of teaching and learning, framing questions of quality teaching in broad intellectual terms, and modeling scholarly pursuit in teaching and learning became the means of defining, documenting, evaluating, and developing meritorious teaching.

FRR adopted the analytical framework from Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate by Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff (1997), which includes six standards for scholarly work that apply both to teaching as a scholarly activity and to a scholarship of teaching and learning. The six standards of scholarly work are clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods, significant results, effective presentation, and reflective critique. Lee Shulman’s claim that “intellectual communities form around collections of texts” (Course Anatomy: The Dissection and Analysis of Knowledge, AAHE Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards, 1996) provides a useful heuristic at SIUE for making concrete the abstract framework provided by Scholarship Assessed. Peer review activities provide a variety of texts, from course portfolios to published articles, including model promotion-tenure dossiers in the library.

Each year, the dossiers that make the strongest case for promotion or tenure are selected for inclusion in library course reserves. We started with six dossiers the first year, and there are now 25. Some of the early dossiers have been removed because they are no longer models of best practice. Faculty with dossiers in the library participate in workshops and faculty development activities. The professional schools and the College of Arts and Sciences are represented. These dossiers indicate how to document meritorious teaching. The analytical framework answers questions of definition and evaluation. FRR provides assistance for faculty to become meritorious teachers.

Improvements in the quality of student learning are found across SIUE. These are supported by an array of activities and programs, including the commitment to meritorious teaching. One of the strongest contributions from that commitment is the rewarding of faculty who participate in other parts of the array, including internal grant programs, assessment activities, and faculty development programs.

While SIUE cannot claim to have found the answer to raising the value of teaching, we have found that there is no single answer. The answers rely on differences in degree, kind, practice, and student learning, but only if they are looked at through the lens of a scholarship of teaching and learning, supported by rich texts and institutional commitment. SIUE’s commitment to meritorious teaching was simple compared with the challenge of implementing that commitment. We have made much progress, but also know there is far to go yet.

David Sill is a senior scholar at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Contact him at dsill@siue.edu.

This article first appeared in Magna Publications' newsletter Academic Leader. If you are an academic dean, provost, academic vice-president, department chair/head or have any role in academic leadership, then Academic Leader is for you! But don't take our word for it--try it free for 3 months and make the decision for yourself!