Getting Better: The Century-Long Effort to Reform College Teaching

The Phyllis J. Washington College of Education invites you to a lecture by Dr. Jonathan Zimmerman--Professor of History of Education and the Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Washington Post. In 2020, Johns Hopkins University Press released his latest book, The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America.  

Dr. Zimmerman writes, “Everyone complains about the weather, Mark Twain famously quipped, but nobody does anything about it. That's how it is with undergraduate teaching, which has been the focus of complaint *and* reform for more than a century. As universities grew from tiny rural outposts into modern bureaucratic behemoths, students denounced their instruction as dull, repetitive, and impersonal. So reform efforts typically aimed to "personalize" it, via small-group activities and technological innovation. Paradoxically, these campaigns have improved the quality of teaching but have also inhibited its development as a field of expertise: the more we associate teaching with personal qualities and characteristics, the less "professional" it becomes. We now have a growing body of knowledge about what constitutes good (and bad) teaching. The big question is whether we have the political and institutional will to alter our classrooms in accord with it.” Dr. Zimmerman’s talk is generously supported by the Wes Moholt Lecture Fund, which supports regarded lecturers in the fields of education, history, science, and technology.