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Derek Bok urges improvement in teaching
Harvard president emeritus Derek Bok, speaking on Friday at a Teagle Foundation conference, encouraged faculty to apply the creativity and innovation of their scholarly pursuits towards student intellectual development. Acknowledging that graduate school does not necessarily teach professors to be good teachers, Bok urged new approaches, such as a Harvard program that provides grants for professors willing to use new teaching methods, so long as they evaluate student learning outcomes. This continues a theme that Bok has been advocating for some time; in a 2005 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he expounded on the need for trustees to take a more active role in assuring student learning, including encouraging special funding for faculty to experiment with different teaching techniques.
Bok deserves credit for encouraging schools to take the initiative in improving their accountability and learning standards. College administrators and trustees ought to heed his advice.
Posted by Sandra E. Czelusniak on October 13, 2008 at October 13, 2008 02:12 PM
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