Adopted by the Graduate Policy Committee, January 2007
Since the mid-1990s, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has called upon departments and instructional programs to ensure that first-time graduate teaching fellows at Harvard are screened for English-language competency, oriented on issues of proper professional conduct, and trained in basic teaching skills before or concurrent with the start of employment. Guidelines adopted by the Faculty Council and disseminated by Dean Knowles in May 1994 set these standards, and also called for observation and appraisal of teaching fellows during their first semester of work.
Over the years, instructional departments working in conjunction with the Bok Center, the College, and the Graduate School have made considerable progress in meeting these standards – but full implementation has not occurred. Each year, the Office of Academic Programs collects reports from departments on the types of training they require or recommend for teaching fellows. As of 2006, departmental requirements vary considerably, and the extent to which paper requirements are actually met by teaching fellows and course heads is unknown. Although a high proportion of all Harvard teaching fellows perform very strongly (as measured by their student evaluation scores), undergraduates continue to complain about the uneven qualifications and English facility of some teaching fellows.
In order to ensure quality instruction of Harvard undergraduates and more consistency in the preparation of graduate students before they become eligible to serve as teaching fellows in the second or third year of graduate study, the Graduate Policy Committee mandates the following steps:
- All students entering GSAS whose native language is not English should be screened for spoken and written English competency as they enter Harvard; and GSAS, the Bok Center, and all graduate programs should cooperate to ensure these screenings. Whether or not they think they are likely to teach undergraduates in the future, every GSAS student who needs further work to enhance spoken or written English should take appropriate courses during the first year of graduate study and/or the surrounding summers. English competency is important for all graduate students in their own studies. What is more, graduate students cannot always anticipate whether or when they will be recruited to teach undergraduates. Starting in their second year, graduate students are sometimes asked at the last minute to help mount undergraduate courses, and they must be prepared well before this happens.
- GSAS and the College should update information on training requirements for teaching fellows as they now stand in various departments and instructional programs, and take steps to ensure that all first-time graduate teachers complete the Bok Center fall or winter orientation sessions or their equivalent in the form of a departmental pedagogical seminar. In turn, the Bok Center and the departments should ensure that the training as graduate students begin to teach includes information on:
-- effective ways to conduct discussion sessions (or, if appropriate, laboratory groups or language sessions);
-- effective ways to grade and evaluate students;
norms of professional conduct;
-- effective ways to handle diversity;
-- tips for dealing with typical classroom problems;
--key points from the latest research about how students learn and how effective pedagogy can maximize student engagement and mastery. The basic training completed by all first-time teaching fellows should also include “micro-teaching” exercises to allow practice and immediate feedback. All of these elements of basic training should be included in the regular fall and winter Bok Center conferences. In addition, such elements may be offered in departmental seminars for teaching fellows and in term-time workshops (open to students who cannot attend the Bok Center conference).
- All graduate teaching fellows should be encouraged to do videotape consultations during their first year of teaching. The completion of such a consultation should be recorded in the student’s record.
- All teaching fellows should be regularly informed of opportunities to continue to upgrade their pedagogical skills and knowledge -- by attending workshops recurrently offered through the Bok Center and/or in their departments, or by participating in pedagogical sessions at disciplinary professional associations. Bok Center workshops will focus on such topics as course design and syllabus construction; effective lecturing; uses of new technologies; and uses of case study methods and other approaches to active learning.
- Working with the Office of Career Services, GSAS should establish a universal, automated system of “Teaching and Professional Development Dossiers” to track the teaching positions held, and the basic and advanced training workshops or courses completed by each PhD student at Harvard.
- Each semester, all teaching fellows and faculty course heads should receive a copy of “Teaching Together: Guidelines for Professors and Teaching Fellows.” This outlines the norms that course heads should follow in their relationships with teaching fellows, and recommends practices that will enhance the professional development of graduate student teachers, as they learn on the job under the guidance of faculty mentors.
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