On faculty development and effectiveness

I do faculty development workshops and seminars for many schools (but not my own. John 4:44 and all that), public, private, theological schools, and congregations. Many of the leaders in those schools, principals, administrators, and deans, invite me to come do “faculty development.” But most of the time what they actually ask for is a seminar or workshop on an instructional issue to help the faculty be more effective in their classroom. So I usually wind up offering an in-service training on instructional methods and approaches, classroom discipline, curriculum and lessons design, etc.

Which is all good and necessary, and, I get paid well (which is also a very good thing). I’m always willing to help school leaders work at making their faculty better at what they do, but it seems that there’s a big difference in understanding about what constitutes “faculty development” in their minds and mine. While I share important information at those workshops, and faculty express interest and appreciation for the event, I suspect most of the faculty will not actually apply the information in their teaching, nor seek to understand it to the extent that they might be able to apply it consistently.

Faculty development, in my view, consists not primarily about “training” in effective teaching and instruction—as important as that is. Rather, faculty development is mostly about the inculcation of corporate values and vision, the creation of a “culture” of learning, and the cultivation of a corporate institutional “character” of a faculty. It’s related to what I mean when I speak of the necessity to arrive at the point when we can talk about “the [name of your school or church] way” and all know what that means. Such is what characterizes the best learning institutions, whether a school, college, university, seminary, or church Sunday School.

Until we are able to arrive at that point we’ll lack clarity about curricular issues. We will lack discernment about what constitutes a “core curriculum” or lack the ability to practice curricular integration, or lack an ability to agree on primary models and approaches to learning, or make decisions about the difference between what is most important to teach and what is merely interesting to teach. Lacking an overt and shared culture of learning we should give up any notion that we have the ability to engage in the “formation” of our students. Education, at heart, is about the inculcation of values and character—intentionally and purposely so, not by happenstance.

To put it another way, is there an answer to the question, “What does it mean that someone is a graduate of OUR school?” You can get an education at any other school. What does it matter that you got it here, at our school? Until you do “faculty development” to the point that there is clarity about that—and a shared corporate commitment to the values and educational philosophy that informs the answer to the question—then your school or educational enterprise will never be the best it can be.