In a recent article for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, Paul Schofield (Bates College) argues against outsourcing pedagogical development to teaching and learning experts who are not instructors. Schofield argues that instructors are experts on the standards for their fields but that it can become an institution’s culture to outsource pedagogical expertise to teaching and learning experts. These experts, argues Schofield, offer generic “evidence-based practices” that may be irrelevant or may not stand the test of time. The author discusses his own experiences with teaching and writing, concluding that faculty members can reclaim the roles they have outsourced to “recover the practical wisdom that comes with treating our individual departments as communities of expert educators.”
