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       Faculty members responsible for undergraduate education also contribute (and are judged by their institutions on) scholarship and service. While "Shaping the Future" addresses "New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology". it is both important and useful to place the recommendations of Section VII with regard to teaching and learning in the context that includes responsibilities for scholarship and service, as the body of the report and other sections of its recommendations affirm. Taken by themselves, the recommendations of Section VII to SME&T faculty for their educational responsibilities lack some of the context which is essential if these recommendations are to be of significant consequence and practical value.  

       The assignment of responsibility for student learning to each and every faculty member is absolutely imperative. It should be affirmed and reaffirmed by individual faculty members, departments, department chairs, deans and provosts, presidents, chancellors, federal policy makers, and private and public funding agencies. Affirmations must not be simply rhetorical, they must be embodied clearly in the reward structures of promotion, tenure, salary, grants and honors. In no institution should the role of faculty members be discussed without this fundamental responsibility. Explicit in this assignment is a responsibility for more than what has traditionally been termed "good teaching". It is essential that all accept the definition that "good teaching" has no other meaning than the facilitation of "student learning".  

       The following major topics seem to us to merit further careful scrutiny and thoughtful planning and discussion.  
  

• What is the role of research (by students and faculty) in the reshaped undergraduate educational environment?

• How will faculty members gain the requisite expertise and professionalism in their responsibilities for teaching and learning?

• How should faculty members facilitate good educational practices (in instruction and learning) among their faculty colleagues, instructional assistants, and students?

• What are the responsibilities of faculty members to respond to diverse student communities, and to students who are resistant to the educational and learning environment shaped by the faculty members?

• What are the responsibilities of faculty members to provide "capstone experiences" for their students -- opportunities for synthesis, reflection, and preparation for the future?

• What are the infrastructure requirements for effective pedagogy?

       Role model institutions (and role model faculty members) exist for much of what is advocated in Shaping the Future. In many predominantly undergraduate institutions, there is successful integration of concerns for students and their learning in classes, laboratories and research and faculty pedagogical and research and scholarly activities. We urge NSF to explore and document the different institutions in which these goals are met (or nearly met) and to support dissemination and emulation. NSF ought to accept the challenge to identify, honor, and reward institutions and individuals that are effective in the tasks embodied in this report. However, even for institutions that might be eligible for such honors, we suspect that these goals will continue to be challenging, even daunting.  

       In the following, through commentary and questions, we pose some of the issues of depth, texture, and implementation that our Day of Dialogue and continuing discussions should address. 

       Though recommendations for departments, administrators, and institutions of higher education are contained elsewhere in the report, it is essential to reiterate that recommendations to faculty members regarding their responsibilities for education are hollow unless teaching is fully and appropriately valued. There is no greater threat to good educational practices than the all too common quantitative measures of scholarship (numbers of publications, presentations, grants and dollars) and service (numbers of committees) which are juxtaposed against amorphous criteria for instructional performance. Scores on multiple choice student course evaluations or numbers of students enrolled or majors graduated are not sufficient measures of whether educational responsibilities have been met.  

  
      A first challenge then, to all who share a commitment shaping an improved undergraduate educational environment, is to develop routine principles and measures that can be applied to ascertain those who meet the educational standards for faculty members.  

  
       A second challenge for institutions (colleges and universities and their promotion and tenure committees, and our host the National Academies), professional societies and funding agencies (including NSF which commissioned both the report we are discussing and this day of debate) is to recognize and honor good instructional practices. In the practical culture in which faculty members may seek to respond to the challenges in Shaping the Future, awards from funding agencies and professional societies in both numbers and dollars go predominantly to research; prolific scholarship without student participants is more recognized than steady scholarship with students; responsibilities and time management are measured in terms of "released time" and "teaching loads"; research grants come laden with applause winning "overhead" funds while educational grants require matching funds and extensive (often uncompensated) time commitments and bring minimal coverage of indirect costs; graduate thesis advisers rail against wasting talent on teaching instead of pursuing postdoc and research staff positions; "summer salary at two-ninths" is available on many research grants while stipends for summer work on pedagogy and instructional reforms languish at hundreds of dollars; research grants and career development awards go preferentially to those recruited with large startup packages; large research grants are widely considered the best measure of quality while steadily productive research-active faculty members with modest needs find few agencies willing to even consider proposals; research supervision of undergraduate student apprentices most often goes uncompensated and little recognized, and, where possible, it is left to postdocs and graduate students rather than being viewed as a faculty responsibility Faculty members who rise to meet the educational challenges in Shaping the Future must be met more than halfway by the encouragement and guidance of dollars and recognition, as well as rhetoric. If NSF and institutions share a value in student- centered research activities, there should be a funding structure which ensures its vitality across the nation. It is time for serious re-examination of the inconsistency of tenure and promotion standards valuing teaching, scholarship and service in the context of a "free-market" system of faculty salaries euphemistically called "nine-month salaries paid over twelve months" with the option to sell (or buy off) time in summers and academic years in units of courses not taught. The full-time employed professional, expected to contribute to teaching and research with students and provided with steady support for direct research costs (with no option for supplemental or substituted salary), which is the model found in Europe and Canada, though fraught with its own difficulties of elitism and longer professional apprenticeships for junior faculty members, is worth serious consideration if the rhetoric of professional responsibilities of faculty members is to be made consistent with the realities of financial incentives and rewards.  

  
      A third challenge to funding agencies and colleges and universities is to provide resources for effective instruction. The foremost of these resource limitations class size. How is it that we applaud the debates over secondary and primary school class sizes set in the range of 20-30 students and hold to the value of "freshman seminars for critical thinking" limited in size to 1525 students, yet we tolerate introductory SME&T courses of sixty, eighty or hundreds of students? What kind of knowledge of or response to individual student learning is possible in that setting, and what kind of affirmation or responsibility for individual students can faculty members undertake with such a student-faculty ratio? While there are effective uses of demonstrations, discussions, and cooperative activities which are alternatives to lectures in large classes, most faculty members are simply overwhelmed by the responsibilities to manage large numbers of students, salvaging little time for effective teaching and less for the assessment of student learning. Of nearly equal importance is facilities -- laboratories for measurement of natural phenomena; materials and instrumentation for phenomena which students can explore, and with which they can innovate, hypothesize and ponder; computational equipment for data acquisition, data analysis, and simulations, advanced instrumentation for projects and research. More than a decade ago the warning bells were sounded about decaying infrastructure in higher education for teaching and research in SME&T fields. While progress has been made and documented, the simple laws of technical obsolescence and performance depreciation together with continued inflation must remind institutions and funding agencies that continued support for infrastructure (equipment, facilities, supplies) is part of the operational cost of higher education. The declining national and institutional funding of instructional equipment is of serious concern. While some faculty members have long succeeded by designing clever projects when instrumentation and facilities were lacking, neither the nation nor the students are well served by technically impoverished educational facilities. 

       "Shaping the Future" places a high value on inquiry-based learning, a knowledge of what SME&T practitioners do, and the excitement of cutting edge research. This goal is realized in many institutions through the practice of research by Faculty members. Research enlivens and enriches the educational environment both from its effect on the faculty members as teachers and from the opportunities for students to do research with their faculty mentors. Faculty members who are research active have first-hand experience with what "practitioners do" and thus have a storehouse of personal experience to relate to their students in their classes. Faculty members contributing to cutting edge research must remain conversant with the practices and literature which they can also more readily offer to their students. And by maintaining state-of-the-art research in their laboratories, faculty members offer their students first-hand experience with what practitioners do and with cutting edge research as well. Research, hands-on and inquiry driven, replete with challenges and frustrations, full of demands for persistence and understanding, frequently requiring synthesis and generalization, is one of the most effective and engaging forms of education.  

       The teacher-scholar model has been a paradigm for large segments of higher education. It is the basis for the scholarship and teaching requirements of most institutions for appointment, promotion and tenure. It is not, however, the model for the faculty members who teach most of the introductory SME8rT courses -- those in the community colleges. Nor does it seem to be within the resources of those institutions to offer research opportunities for their faculty members. Hence inquiry-based instruction must necessarily be adapted differently in different contexts.  

       Whatever their institutional contexts, when faculty members specialize in information, facts and methods to be taught, without the doubts and debates inherent in the process of inquiry so essential to research, the instructors and the disciplines become sadly stale to the students. In the burgeoning information age, there is little room for faculty members to be effective gate keepers to information. Added to traditional alternatives of textbooks and journals are now the audio and visual resources of the world wide web. Unless faculty members focus on gathering, synthesizing and judging new information, in the manner practiced in research, they are likely to be replaced by information browsing3ools and technologies.  

       There are teacher-scholars who are effective in both facilitating student learning and in the creation of new technical knowledge. Colleges and universities which match their rhetoric with rewards and recognition for teacher-scholars have attracted, nurtured, developed, and sustained a brilliant set of role models. The educational and learning experiences for students are enriched by personal interactions with faculty members whose personal and intellectual vigor is evident in classes, laboratories, tutorials, and research projects. These faculty members draw energy and inspiration from the vigor of their engagement in research, the stimulation of working with students on cutting edge projects, the renewal through synthesis and drafting of grant proposals and articles, and the energy of critique of manuscripts and proposals.  

       Good researchers are not necessarily good teachers; nor is there much evidence to support the notion that good teachers are necessarily hampered if they do no research. The potential and real difficulties and disasters are well known. Research active faculty members may see no links between their research content or methodologies and their teaching; they may practice a gatekeeping approach to information or may resort to efficiencies of lecture, surrogates, and multiple choice assessments to save time for separate research activities. Active researchers might have a larger body of expertise, which may be particularly useful for more specialized courses; but successful teaching is about guiding student learning, not about doling out information. Teaching is a demanding profession, difficult to sustain without perspective on pedagogy and without stimulation of new instructional ideas. Good teaching is not to be confused with entertainment -playing to the audience. The question must not be "did students 'like' the class", though students who are bored or unengaged are less likely to learn. Nor is the measure of good teaching whether the teacher knows the jargon and buzzwords of the latest in pedagogical practice and reform movements.  

       It is perhaps a measure of the lack of serious consideration of substantive measures of effective and sustainable teaching that a division of the house in higher education between teachers and researchers has been tolerated as a fair description, from within and without. The dichotomies proposed for higher education in many debates, often voiced by those wounded in their pursuit of recognition for success in teaching and cast in terms of conflict and distinction of teaching and research interests, are equally flawed by their emphasis on caricature.  

       Studies of where research activity correlates with successful teaching have found only weak correlations, sometimes negative ones. The positive correlations are found in the research active small liberal arts colleges, where a combination of research with students and small classes may be effective elements in bridging success in both areas. If NSF is serious about a future of seamless blending of teaching and research, the information about limited joint success should be a cause for both pause and enhanced resolve to promote those features essential to quality education and research accomplishment.  

       Where possible, and it is broadly possible, effective research involving students as early as possible in their undergraduate years combined with effective teaching leads to a richer educational environment for students. Faculty members who include research in their professional activities must be encouraged to bring that research excitement (strategies, insights, results, understanding of scientific creativity) to their students and to bring students to participate in their research.  

Students who are engaged in research discover several things about SME&T fields. They discover that nature, and professional SME&T fields as practiced, are not to be found in textbooks. They learn the difference between foundations and discovery, models and data, ideal and practical experiments, and mastery of the known versus understanding of the previously unknown. What some student loved or hated in courses -- rote work, efficient solution of problems, memorization of relationships and categories, and reliability and repeatability of experiments -- gives way to differently rewarding or frustrating mechanical instabilities, electrical noise, impurities in solutions, equipment failures, and vaguely unclear phenomena. Students learn to document their work, to discuss and debate their data, and to assess and defend their syntheses. The differences between research and classes (not only lectures and conventional labs but also inquiry based instruction) are profound. The challenges and rewards are different Faculty members, their institutions, and funding agencies must continue to affirm and fund a variety of student research experiences as an essential part of their SME&T education.  

       Integration by students of their learning, experience and knowledge cannot be neglected. The recognized need from studies of breadth and depth in higher education is for students to pull together the coursework they have done in disparate subfields, so that they come to see the whole discipline and its presumptions and practices. A high value should be placed to giving students perspective, a chance to see the distinctions among the disciplines and to draw on expertise of faculty members and their fellow students in other fields. Debates have raged over whether this need for a "capstone experience" could be served by topical courses, seminars based on current published literature, interdepartmental or interdisciplinary programs for seniors, senior theses and seminars for thesis students, research projects.  

       The goals of synthesis and capstone experiences are to help students to generalize from specific examples, integrate their learning from different courses and disciplines, prepare to address and assess new SME&T topics that will arise in the future, and the development of teamwork and communication skills. These goals are not necessarily met in senior seminars or research projects. The former maybe individualized and topically narrow, the latter may be topically or technologically focused to the exclusion of generalization or synthesis. The goal is too important for traditional course activities or late additions to the curriculum to be saddled with the task of delivering the "big picture".  

       Reflection and synthesis should be part of the learning experience in each course. Faculty members should take responsibility in designing and conducting their courses to ensure that students have a chance to put things together, find relationships, draw on knowledge and expertise developed in other courses, and step back to see the paths traveled and the options chosen and discarded. In courses this means taking time for bridging activities -- problems, assignments, applications, and discussions. In research it means that the work should not be so directed and goal-driven that the students are hustled through the choices without time to appreciate that they were being made. 

       Teaching is not a solitary task, so taking responsibility for the teaching and learning environment requires interaction with others who share the instructional tasks. For most it has departmental context and often there are others who share in the teaching duties -- if not as graders, leaders of recitation sections, or laboratory instructors, then certainly as instructors in courses which precede or follow any particular course.  

       Just as those seeking reforms in primary and secondary school found that it was important to engage parents in the instruction, instructors have a synergistic effect on student learning when they share common goals, appreciate methodologies, and measure, recognize and reward student progress in similar ways.  

To accomplish these salutary benefits faculty members must take responsibility for discussions with their colleagues, must promote discussions and debate with recognized pedagogical experts in their fields and in the field of education, and must ensure that teaching associates in each class are prepared for teamwork in achieving the learning goals of the course. Agreement among colleagues is not essential, but discussion and debate are important. Such discussions are an important way to affirm that teaching and learning are a responsibility shared collectively by the faculty. Using some departmental or institutional funds for visitors to bring an accomplished teacher can also heighten the significance of the debates and ensure that the discussions are not only local, but extended to the profession. Laboratory teaching assistants, recitation session leaders, graders, problem solving coaches, and tutors should all be acculturated to the learning goals of the course. Faculty instructors must take responsibility for discussing strategies, goals, and channels of feedback that will help each participant in the learning process contribute more effectively.  

       Faculty members, particularly those selected by and trained by a system of particular filters and selection/eligibility criteria, must come to understand that their students are not (and need not become) as they themselves once were in order to succeed. How do we who were selected for our rote memorization skills learn not to make that a pre-requisite for our students? How do we who were rewarded for gymnastic skills at multiple choice questions learn to avoid demanding the same of our students? How do we who value "back of the envelope calculations" or "off the top of the head reasoning" or "order of magnitude estimates" avoid insisting that only those who master these may be certified in our fields? For these reasons, if no others, faculty members need to learn what current research on teaching and learning tell us about the relationships and correlations of creativity and reasoning skills to performance on standard measures of student success.  

       But what of the missionary zeal with which faculty members are enjoined to affirm that every student can learn, albeit in different ways. What should be the response to students who say, "I'm an aural learner so I won't get it until I get to hear you say it." Or what of the student who says, "I can't think without putting in numbers." Or the student who claims he cannot understand anything that is written in a paper or a text. Must faculty members "value and affirm" students who fail to achieve? In its excessive simplicity, faculty members resent being held accountable for students who "refuse to cooperate" while students may fault faculty members who impose archaic requirements or measurements of performance. Surely awareness of how students learn is important for faculty members and students themselves, but we cannot misinterpret this challenge to mean that we should leave students relatively unchanged, learning as they have learned in the past. Though fraught with complexities and subtleties, affirmation that students can learn science must mean that students are challenged appropriately and encouraged effectively to succeed. There must be good evidence, and we need to see and understand it, that indicates how best to value students as individuals while ensuring that they make progress in their cognitive development and learning styles.  

       Where in this awareness and affirmation of student learning is the recognition of the role of motivation and emotional stability in the student's ability to complete work? This is not to beg the questions of faculty responsibility, rather it is to insist that education and learning must respond to the complex reality of student lives as well. While a large responsibility rests on each faculty member for outreach to students and motivation of students, there will necessarily be limits to faculty efforts and energies. A certain and clearly identified set of responsibilities and expectations for their learning rests on the students as well. What if today's students are better at learning from computers, and interactive videos, and in downloading information from the web? What if some student refuse to accept texts or lectures as activities they can "digest"? How will faculty members learn to affirm student learning even as they reject some of the teaching in which faculty energy has been invested? This will require important changes in the measures that are used to assess student progress, ones (perhaps different ones) which can confirm different forms of student progress. Is there still, or will there remain, a value for standardized results on standardized measures? Are there, or have there ever been, single measures which identified all students who had accomplished mastery? 

       How will SME&T Faculty members come to learn (and then practice) their profession as envisioned in "Shaping the Future"? The traditional answer is that those who have experienced teaching in higher education are qualified to teach with little more than a pat on the back and a few guidelines about topics, texts, and grading policies. There is little evidence to validate this. In what way is a Ph.D. with advanced disciplinary coursework, literature analyses, and a research based thesis a qualification to teach? Probably none at all. We practice an ancient guild-style apprenticeship training which is relatively indefensible. How is it that so little preparation is deemed by the professions, our institutions, and current faculty colleagues as appropriate for a role in which faculty members are responsible for subtle and diverse aspects of student growth and learning?  

       Suppose colleges and universities resolved that they would allow no employee with instructional responsibility (faculty member or teaching assistant) into a learning setting (classroom, lab, tutorial) without certification as educators as well as evidence of mastery of the discipline?  

• What might constitute mastery of the discipline? A Ph.D. thesis and postdoctoral experience in a research subspecialty should not be sufficient. 

• What educational qualifications might they certify? Mastery of pedagogical methods. Familiarity with instructional resources. Familiarity with the variety of ways in which students learn. Familiarity with aspects of cognitive development, memory, and reasoning. Experience with setting curricular goals, establishing and justifying testing and assessment methods, planning for enhanced student learning that validates a variety of styles of learning and establishing ways of mastery and competence. 

      Suppose colleges and universities resolved that they would not allow faculty employees to continue to teach without periodic participation in pedagogical refresher experiences and demonstration of mastery?  

       Good teachers listen to what students are learning, and they listen to what students say is working effectively to enhance their learning. Test answers and homework solutions are not alone in representing what students are "getting out of a course". Among the things students are learning, in contrast to what the syllabus might say or the professor might affirm, are what things are important to succeed in this course. Sometimes students learn to repeat formulas (words, definitions, phrases, formulaic solutions) without understanding the underlying concepts. Sometimes students learn that aspects of the course in which instructors may invest considerable time to accomplish student learning (discussions, demonstrations, labs) are not "valued" by examinations or grading. Sometimes students have learned about separate topics without making what seem to be obvious connections to the instructor. Faculty members should be enjoined to "listen early and often" to their students' descriptions of what they have learned and how they have learned it, what they understand and what confuses them, and what they have decided is valuable in each course. There is no excuse for a faculty member waiting until "course evaluation time" or the final exam to get this feedback  

       What sacrifices and limitations have been made or compelled by institutions which select the number of "faculty hours", the class size, and the degree of instructor expertise to assign to the classes? Can these goals be achieved in classes of 600 as well as in classes of 20? Is there a class size or a resource limited situation for which these goals are unrealistic? How can one take each student's experience and build from that toward increasingly correct or sophisticated reasoning if the students begin at quite different levels of understanding and ability? If the diversity is too great for a single approach to be effective, is the faculty member "doing the job" by conceding that this will not work? Or are these expectations reasonable regardless of class size?  

Partnerships with K-12 are important initiatives, but we must be careful not to suggest that faculty members in higher education necessarily are the "givers" to instructors at the K-12 levels who are "receivers". Partnerships must be just that, at both intellectual and professional levels. It is not clear that most faculty members in higher education have the patience, expertise or context to efficiently help in the K-12 enterprise. Enrichment programs for school teachers on new topical information are important, though there is far to much emphasis on teachers needing "to know" topics thoroughly before they guide student learning. The more obvious links are among teachers of college-level courses in both sectors and among college professors and prospective teachers in their introductory and intermediate classes. Establishing effective links with K-12 educators will be a time consuming task Which of the present expectations of faculty members in higher education should be discarded in favor of this responsibility?  

       What will it mean to model good educational practice in the teaching of SME&T courses? One controversy that plagues primary and secondary teaching of math and science is a concern for the lack of content knowledge and/or fear of content ignorance which is shared by many teachers. Among the good practices we must consider are those which come to us from the humbling nature of research -- that there is accumulated wisdom but no encyclopedia to consult for most experiments. Hence it is unwise to teach that all knowledge is previously mastered and dispensed by the authoritative faculty member. Faculty members should be willing to engage in informed conversation about topics outside of their expertise, they should invite students to assemble and assess evidence, test hypotheses and marshal arguments. They should propose, assess and critique opinions and should invite criticism of their assertions. Students should be empowered to assemble and evaluate information from many sources on new topics, particularly those for which textbooks offer only partial answers at best.  

       These challenges are similar to those embodied in the National Education Standards, which are not only about content, as they emphasize processes and stages of learning and mastery. For instructors, they set measures of instruction environments and instructional mastery deemed essential for achieving student mastery. Dare we risk to envision that SME&T faculty will be held to similar expectations? If so, current faculty members and their departments and administrators must create a variety of experiences, activities, resources, and assessments that guide and direct willing faculty members through the steps that are necessary to professionalize their teaching.  

       While leadership for (and role models of) the learning professionals summoned by "Shaping the Future" are to be found among faculty members at colleges and universities alike, we must take caution from the fact that they are relatively rare, narrowly honored, and infrequently emulated. Most professional societies offer a dozen or more awards and prizes for research and technical accomplishments, but few offer more than one teaching award. Where then and from whom will new and current faculty members gain the requisite perspective, skills, and insights? Can one reasonably expect the senior faculty, tenure and promotion committee members, deans, provosts and current department chairs who mentor junior faculty members and/or graduate students to provide something they have not heretofore experienced, endorsed or provided? A call for action needs an implementation plan, and this call for reform needs specific activities that will deliver services to and enlist support from all those current senior faculty members and administrators "in the system". Previous reforms calling for greater scholarly activity by faculty members as well as institutions in normal stasis engendered cries of anguish, frustration, despair and annoyance from junior faculty members held to a standard different from that applied earlier to their senior colleagues. It behooves us to be fair and balanced in our expectations and services for this latest challenge for improvement.  

       Any call of action to improve student learning properly ought to include a call to better assess students and to document student progress. Where will faculty members gain the skills required to effectively assess student learning? What are the alternatives to and validity of multiple choice testing? How does one assess group activities and cooperative learning? What are the merits of homework, oral presentations, team projects, writing assignments, portfolios, examinations with choice, and many other traditional and nontraditional forms of assessment? It is unreasonable for faculty members to be called to do better without some guide to what can be effective. It may be equally unreasonable to proscribe what should be done, but it is important that resources on effective options and the results of systematic studies be available to faculty members, young and older.  

       Faculty members are enjoined to be aware of professional scholarship on learning and teaching. The research which forms the basis for systematic understanding of how students learn and the effectiveness of certain teaching practices is proceeding in two different camps: in programs devoted to the study of education and the preparation of teachers and in disciplinary programs. While there are some notable successful cooperative ventures among some representatives from these two camps, there remains deep suspicion and disdain in each camp for the other. SME&T faculty members often doubt the validity or rigor of the research on learning or the instruction in pedagogy practiced in education programs or schools. Questions are posed about the measures of student learning, an emphasis on practice or style without adequate content, jargon and fads that sweep by faster than they can be assessed or appreciated, and difficulties in the isolation of instructional practices for assessment of their effectiveness. Education faculty members and science education professionals doubt the usefulness of large lecture-based courses for the preparation of science-educated teachers or citizens and challenge the commitment of disciplinary faculty members to education and learning rather than content delivery. The lists of suspicions and criticisms on both sides could easily be lengthened. One wonders if the effort spent at criticism or undercutting might better be spent in conversations.  

       NSF, colleges and universities, professional societies, and private foundations are advised to seek ways to expand and sustain this long overdue dialog on a sustained and nationwide basis. Local initiatives will not have appreciable effect on a truly national dilemma. Discussions and understanding are needed at all levels, for current faculty members and for current graduate students and undergraduates. Not the least of the difficulties is that the professional education in the two camps diverges so early in higher education that few in either camp understand the language and principles of the other. How many teachers of introductory SME&T courses know even the basics of educational theory and practice, let alone matters of current research in teaching and learning? Added to this unfortunate circumstance is that many results are fragmentary, limited in disciplinary or institutional relevance, and applicable to a specialized group of students. How then will faculty members at specific institutions find research in teaching and learning that is valid for them and their students? Perhaps by contact with those in education programs at their own schools; but if they address different students at different levels, even this may not provide a bridge.  

       Most faculty members in math, science and engineering disciplines are not personally or professionally familiar with the work of their colleagues in education. How then will teachers, students, or faculty members converge to an understanding of what are systematic and valid results on teaching and learning? If this gap is not bridged in all institutions, how else will those blindered by research training learn to see their pedagogical responsibilities? How else will those hearing impaired by their own personal learning experiences and successes learn to listen to the students in their classrooms? What can and must be done to validate the professional scholarship on learning and teaching so that it is acknowledged, studied and emulated across the country?

      Perhaps more visiting lectureships should be established by professional societies to recognize and "circulate" experts of proven educational scholarship within their disciplinary community.   
     Perhaps there should be an NSF mandate of no funds to anyone in a department which does not routinely involve all of its faculty members in discussions of the latest results in educational scholarship.   
      Perhaps there should be an NSF mandate for local studies of teaching and learning as a precondition of institutional eligibility for grants.   
      Or perhaps NSF should fund such discussions at every institution to which it awards any other grants.   

Shaping the Future, Section VII. SME&T faculty  

A. Believe and affirm that every student can learn; recognize that different students may learn in different ways and with differing levels of ability; and create an environment in each class that both challenges and supports.  

B. Be familiar with and use the results of professional scholarship on learning and teaching.  

C. Build into every course inquiry, the processes of science (or mathematics or engineering), a knowledge of what SME&T practitioners do, and the excitement of cutting-edge research.  

D. Devise and use pedagogy that develops skills for communication, teamwork, critical thinking , and lifelong learning in each student.  

E. Make methods of assessing student performance consistent with the goals and content of the course.  

F. Start with the student's experience; understand that the student may come with significantly incorrect notions; and relate the subject matter to things the student already knows.  

G. Build bridges to other departments, seeking ways to reinforce and integrate learning, rather than maintaining artificial barriers.  

H. Develop partnerships and collaborations with colleagues in education, in the K-12 sector, and in the business world, to improve the preparation of teachers and principals.  

I.  Model good practices that increase student learning.  

J.  Take seriously academic advising that helps students have as much flexibility as possible and is linked to career development services of the institution.