Assumptions that devalue university teaching

Abstract

Teaching continues to be devalued ‐ the question is why? It is argued here that the devaluing is the result of five assumptions held about teaching: teaching excellence is nothing more than a matter of technique; teaching requires no training or ongoing professional development; pedagogical practice and scholarship can exist without standards; the wisdom of practice contains no real knowledge of importance; and content (not students or learning) should drive instructional decisionmaking. Characteristic of North American perspectives, these assumptions may be held intuitively, but are manifest in the practice of instruction. They are inaccurate and, in order to redress fundamental instructional inequities, they must be changed.