Recent studies have shown that American students greatly underperform many of their global peers in the science sections of standardized tests. The US has the largest economy in the world and spends a disproportionately large percent of its GDP on scientific research, so why aren't our students excelling in science? The problem may not be purely financial: science programs in both rich and poor nations are not educating students as effectively as they should. A new study from Nature Publishing Group (NPG) suggests that emphasis on research at the expense of teaching at the university level may be partially responsible for the scientific underperformance of advanced students worldwide.
This survey was the first phase in the NPG's multi-part endeavor to uncover the weaknesses in global scientific education and suggest potential solutions. (The endeavor coincides with NPG's launch of Scitable, an education-focused Web portal.) Here, the goal was to identify whether faculty attitudes toward teaching may be negatively affecting the education and performance of students in science. To get at this issue, NPG surveyed 450 university faculty members in over 30 countries to get their views on their research and teaching responsibilities.
When asked about their priorities, 77 percent of the respondents said that they valued teaching and research equally, 16 percent responded that teaching was more important to them than research was, and only 6 percent believed that research was the higher priority. From these responses, it seems that most faculty members should, if anything, bias their decisions in favor of teaching rather than research.
However, when asked to hypothetically appoint a new hire to a tenure-track position, nearly half of the faculty would hire an exceptional researcher with no teaching experience over a highly experienced teacher who had no research background or a candidate with some experience in both areas. Clearly, a widespread inconsistency exists here; if the respondents value teaching more than research, or even consider the two pursuits equally important, why are they generally unwilling to hire the candidate with stellar teaching experience?
According to the NPG results, faculty members may be trying to align their decisions with the philosophy of their institution, rather than according to their personal priorities. A majority of respondents believed that their home universities valued research over teaching, while merely a quarter believed that the two were valued equally. At least according to the faculty, most institutions do not seem to prioritize teaching.
It appears, then, that many universities—and by extension, their faculty—treat research and teaching as a zero-sum game: as more time and energy is invested in one endeavor, the amount of resources that can be allocated to the other drops. Since most scientific funding and prestige are bestowed upon faculty for accomplishments in research, undergraduate education may fall by the wayside as scientists strive for success in the lab rather than the classroom.
NPG suggests that, in order to improve scientific education, this contradiction must be resolved; in order to excel in science generally, education and research should not be at odds with each other. Academic institutions must take a look at their priorities to determine whether their hiring and workload policies are in fact detrimental to student success.
The report suggests that compensating faculty for time spent teaching would improve education in two ways: it would encourage faculty to teach and provide them with funds to run their labs while they are in the classroom. Making money available for things other than working at the bench or writing research grants, however, isn't currently a priority. NPG proposes that there may be an untapped pool of donors that appreciate the value of excellent teaching, and would be willing to contribute to such a cause.
Bestowing prestigious awards on excellent teachers might also be a way to promote improvements in teaching at a university level. For instance, top researchers aim for the Nobel Prize as a measure of achievement, so a similarly prestigious prize for education might inspire similar competition and drive. Finally, at the individual level, NPG urges faculty to "vote their conscience" and begin making decisions for their departments that will benefit education and realign institutional priorities.
This survey shows a great divide between the priorities and actions of faculty members, and suggests that the worldwide zero-sum mentality between teaching and research must be re-evaluated. Although the solutions proposed by the report are somewhat vague, they all converge on an important global goal: to reassess our educational values so that research does not continue to prosper at the expense of quality teaching. Hopefully, the further material that NPG plans to release will provide more details about the logistics and feasibility of these suggestions.
Those who are signed into an account at Scitable can download a copy of the report.
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