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teaching staff post: nah, doesnt feel right

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Wouter Groeneveld 2023-01-17 18:13:31 +01:00
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---
title: "Teaching Staff Without Practical Experience"
date: 2023-01-17T16:44:00+01:00
tags:
- academia
categories:
- education
- learning
---
Don't you also think it's strange that typical classroom teachers don't have any practical experience in the topic they're attempting to teach? This phenomena isn't limited to higher education, but could be applied to high school as well. Immediate exceptions I can think of could be physical educators that are or have been professional athletes, or language teachers that also earn a living as a translator, but these seem to be the exceptions.
Last week, I was at a higher education study information convention where last-year high school students can inform themselves on which further educational options to pursue. A colleague and I got talking and he was baffled that at our faculty, a lot of professors that teach practical courses limit themselves to conveying the theoretical message through classic lectures, while outsourcing lab exercise coaching sessions to teaching assistants. According to him, the reason is simple: they don't know how to solder or how to program something.
The more I thought about that, the more I'm inclined to agree. Software engineering courses are taught by academics that are expert researchers but junior software engineers. How are we supposed to teach students the ropes if we don't know common pitfalls ourselves? Lecturing---the one-way street of delivering information---about the [Gang of Four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns) without a _real-life_ example is a guaranteed way to confuse students. The problem is only amplified by providing simple made-up examples to (1) manage huge student groups and the time-consuming grading process, (2) not repeat the examples from previous academic years, and (3) for the love of god stay well between the boundaries of your own course.
It feels as if the software engineering program is more prone to the problem. For one, the trends and world evolves rapidly, but also, academia and industry are _miles_ apart and much less connected than say veterinary, where most professors only work as a professor half-time and devote the bigger part of their career to actually operating and other more practical jobs in association with a university clinic. Why isn't this the case with computing? See what I did there, I'm already generalizing.
I used to be a fencer, and the best fencing clubs were the ones where the trainer was still a highly respected and active fencer. As a kid, I looked up to the trainers that effectively participated in the warm-up and technique training exercises, not the lazy or old ones that just told us what to do but didn't do anything themselves.
Consider the apprentice/master teaching model, where one or a few apprentices have to work hard under the master's wing to prove themselves. The apprentice is put to the test multiple times a day, is bombarded with philosophical questions, but most of all, is expected to _watch & learn_, as they say. For software engineering, there seems to be very little to _watch_ at universities these days.
---
Why didn't I have to prove myself when I was hired as a teaching assistant? I found that very odd: everyone just expected I taught adequately. I expected the professor or another veteran to sit in my classes in order to give feedback, but 4.5 years later, that never happened. When I asked why not, the answer was a shrug and a "you're doing fine". To get tenure, you have to work very hard for years and jump through various hoops (which are probably on fire). Oh, and you need a PhD. But nobody will ever give feedback on _how_ you teach: whatever. Sure, a committee will care, but only about the numbers: as long as your student evaluations are up to snuff, you're good, right?
Yet, at the same time, to teach the last few grades in high school, you need a special Master's degree called a [Master of Educational Studies](https://onderwijsaanbod.kuleuven.be/opleidingen/e/CQ_50268973.htm#activetab=diploma_omschrijving) that's a full-time year of studying pedagogical theories and frameworks, with another year of contents if you want to teach something you didn't study. My brother-in-law is doing just that, and noted that many pedagogy professors never ever taught in high school. Okay...
The severe shortage of educational staff in Belgium has never been that high, yet it seems to be directly proportional to the amount of ridiculousness involved in the teaching world. Who do you want to be teaching you? Someone who's been at the craft for years and years and fused with it, or someone who got the course shoved in their basket, perhaps because of "staff shortages"? During my high school years, I've had teachers who, when it comes to course contents, are just two weeks ahead of the students. I sincerely hope that's no longer the case but fear it still is, and those teachers taught me nothing.
Perhaps we need to come up with another interpretation for "teaching" and "teacher". When I was a coach in the industry, I was guiding juniors while working, which is much closer to the apprentice/master model, and now that I think about it, I'd rather have a coach coaching me than a teacher teaching me---or even worse, a lecturer lecturing me.