Standards-based education reform, which is common in the
K-12 education arena, has recently made inroads in many U.S. colleges and
universities, including the University of Florida. Universities have begun to
employ a variety of initiatives, including student-learning compacts and
identification and assessment of course and program-area student-learning
outcomes. While it makes sense for institutions of higher education to
standardize their curricula across similar courses and to identify clear,
measurable learning objectives for students, these outcome-focused reform
efforts continue to ignore the elephant in the room, namely, instructor quality
and training.
In addition to general calls for U.S. education reform,
policy makers, scientific organizations, and academies, and even the Obama
administration, have identified the science, technology, engineering, and math
fields as an educational reform priority. Sadly, however, most of these calls
for systemic, nationwide STEM-teaching reform do not include a focus on
postsecondary education. To obtain certification, STEM teachers at all other
levels of formal education are required to demonstrate proficiency in their
content areas, and pedagogy as well. In contrast, in the U.S.
postsecondary-education system, content-area expertise of STEM faculty members
is highly valued, while little to no attention is paid to pedagogical knowledge
and skills.
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