Teaching teaching

Princeton is renowned as a research university that is also committed to educating undergraduates. The University demonstrates this commitment by requiring all professors to teach and partially basing tenure decisions on teaching ability. Graduate students also play a vital and underappreciated teaching role by leading precepts - one of the most important aspects of undergraduate education at Princeton. The current preceptor training system, however, sometimes leaves graduate students without the requisite skills to be effective preceptors.

Most graduate students have no prior teaching experience and, under the current system, preceptors are only required to attend a day-and-a-half long session at the McGraw Center. After completion of the course, graduate students are given only cursory tests to determine whether they are qualified to teach. As a result, some preceptors lack general education preparation, making for unfocused and unhelpful precepts.

Language barriers can be a problem in precepts as well. Some international graduate students, especially those in technical or quantitative fields, either lack the necessary English-language skills to teach course material or speak with heavy accents. These impediments not only harm graduate students' future teaching prospects but can also make the course material far more difficult for undergraduates to learn. At the same time, the preceptors have no real gauge of how they're doing; there is sometimes little ongoing feedback for preceptors, and the current course evaluations do not offer extensive criteria for evaluating preceptors.

The University should establish a more comprehensive mandatory training program for preceptors and make a more stringent requirement for them to demonstrate a proficiency in discussing their subject area using colloquial English. The role of head preceptor should also be redefined. The role of head preceptor is currently administrative in most departments. The University should create a formal peer-mentoring program under which preceptors frequently meet with more experienced head preceptors outside their regular meetings with professors. Head preceptors could help to further clarify the objective of precepts as well as provide tips for encouraging participation, managing discussions and explaining tricky concepts. As part of their ongoing training, new preceptors should be required to observe experienced preceptors' sections periodically. To help improve precepts, course evaluations should allow students to give preceptors more detailed feedback, and the anonymous feedback system for professors should be extended to preceptors. The University and departments could also create more positive incentives - more pay and preference for housing, for instance - to reward excellent preceptors.

The University, graduate students and undergraduate students can all benefit from an improved precept system. The preceptors will leave Princeton with solid teaching experience that will aid them in their careers. Their students will better understand course material. The University will garner a reputation for not only training first-class researchers but also preparing those researchers to effectively impart their wealth of knowledge.

 

Related Coverage:

See also this week's special report on the graduate school, which includes an article about precepting.