I have observed, sometimes in myself and sometimes in colleagues, a certain tendency to be ironically unaware of (or inattentive to) a crucial disconnect between what we say and what we do. We’re good at talking the talk, but we are not so good at walking the walk, particularly in terms of our audience awareness.

As regular blog readers know, I read a variety of pedagogical periodicals in which I almost always find content relevant to all teachers, not just those in the periodical’s discipline. I have written previously about how the positioning of pedagogical scholarship so extensively within the disciplines concerns me. I know there are instructional issues that are discipline specific, but my long years of reading this literature have convinced they are far fewer than those issues shared by all disciplines. But that’s background for what I wanted to write about in this entry.

In a previous blog entry, we revisited the market metaphor and its applicability to higher education. Robert Knapp pointed out some of the comparisons that stimulate thought, analysis and hopefully response. But he concluded, as most in higher education have, that overall, a business model does not capture what higher education aspires to be about.

I’m always on the lookout for new teaching metaphors and I found a good one this weekend.

I remember the first time something in the newsletter generated all kinds of reader response ... well, the very first time was when I used “criteria” when I should have written “criterion”, but the first response to substance involved an article suggesting that higher education ought to be run more like a business. The response was overwhelmingly negative—some of it thoughtful, a lot of it visceral. It is a metaphor that still rankles and does not do justice, given the aims and purposes of higher education. But as Robert H. Knapp, Jr. points out, the metaphor does highlight some comparisons to which educators should attend.

Management professor David A. Whetten, who now directs a faculty development center, admits with honesty that for some years he didn’t think there was much he could learn from people who “studied” education. After all, he was in the classroom doing education and had learned much from that experience. In a wonderful piece [reference below] he explains how a conversation with his golf instructor resulted in an important insight about the nature of experiential learning.

Did you see the nice collection of comments posted in response to the blog entry on rubrics? I love it when you add your comments! Something more on rubrics will be coming shortly but there was also a blog on critical thinking with the advice that a course should contain no more than 50 new concepts. My good friend and colleague Larry replied that he thought that was too many. In an email note to me he was a bit more blunt wondering where in the world that number came from. I expect it’s an arbitrary figure—somebody’s good guess. It may well be wrong. Quibbling over it is probably not worth the time, but it does raise several other points well worth consideration.

Ethical action and decision-making has always undergirded higher education practice. For example, issues such as academic freedom and how to balance financial realities with the need for quality both have an ethical dimension.

Here’s a list of some practical suggestions taken from a, “miniature guide for those who teach on how to improve student learning.” (Web address below) The guide was prepared by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, both well-known experts on critical thinking.