It's our third day in Charleston and we're stuck in our hotel. Stormy rains and strong winds and a coastal flood alert telling everyone to stay home. Our car is in the parking lot with water halfway up the wheels.

We had tickets to go to the International African American Museum this morning but got an email saying they won't be open until the afternoon and that our tickets would automatically be refunded.

So while waiting and hoping that the rain subsides and the parking lot drains I decided to listen to the latest episode of the CS-Ed podcast hosted by Kristin Stephens-Martinez with guest Adam Blank. The title was "What is in a Teaching Faculty Job Title?" but it was really about teaching at the college level without a PhD. Adam, the guest, has been teaching full time at the college level with "only" a Masters. I say "only" because faculty without a PhD isn't the norm. I in no way mean to belittle his degree or situation. I too "only" have a Masters in CS but, to be honest, as soon as I joined Hunter College's faculty, I was the strongest teacher in the department and likely one of the strongest in the whole faculty. Maybe not the nicest, most popular, or charismatic but the strongest. Yeah, that maybe sounds a bit arrogant and egotistical but after my 26 years of self reflection and work to improve at my craft at the high school leve, I can say I'm one of the better teachers overall out there and K12 teachers, by and large are much better teachers than college faculty.

Anyway, you should give the podcast a listen, here's a direct link to the episode (link) and here are some of my thoughts.

Disclaimer: Some of the things said on the podcast were given as the opinions of the host or the guest and at other times they were stating things that others have said. I'm doing my best not to mix those things up but apologize in advance if I do.

Both Kristin and Adam seem to believe that having a PhD doesn't make you a better prepared teacher than just having a Masters. I wholeheartedly agree.

I agree with the sentiment but Kristin pushed back saying that one could get a PhD in CS Education.

I disagree with that push back on a number of fronts. First off, there's still limited opportunities to do a PhD in CS Education, second, education degrees, at least in the circles I've been exposed to are sometimes not treated with the same respect as straight old hardcore CS degrees and that brings us back to the whole point of the podcast that a college instructor without a PhD shouldn't be a second class citizen. Finally, there's the whole problem with education education and education research.

Both Adam and Kristin felt that you can't understand the research on education if you haven't done any research and this understanding leads to one being a better teacher.

I guess it can, but much better is actually teaching and reflecting and acting on those reflections.

In general, education research is held in very low regard. It's rarely reproduced and hardly ever accounts for the myriad variables that influence a class. An education researcher looks in from the outside and says "oh, this seems to work." A teacher lives it and either adapts or dies (1/3 of teachers leave the profession within 3 years).

To put it another way. I like classic movies. I watch many of them. I've read analyses and taken classes. I've criticized performances and directorial choices. None of this will make me a good or even bettor actor, director, or cinematographer.

Even closer to home for me is that I was a competitive fencer. I watched other people train and bout and even studied film. None of that improved me. At best, it would inform me as to what to work on when I took lessons, practiced and competed but only with that practice and competition did I really improve.

Want to become a better teacher? Teach, get feedback, reflect, improve.

Something else that got me thinking along these lines was a comment Kristin made asking if teachers really needed to be up on the latest research or if it were enough for them to wait until that research were distilled into a teaching handbook.

It got me thinking on how many times I was given a different "true way" to teach based on the research.'

It also got me thinking about the typical teacher career path. Teachers are most "up" on the research when the graduate from their teacher education programs. When they're new. It's also when they're at their worst as teachers. They quickly learn that their best instructors were the ones that said "this is what the research says, this is what your supervisor wants to see, and now we'll talk about the reality of what you need in the classroom."

The teachers that get better might read the current research but more likely they work on their craft, self reflect, and work with other, frequently more experienced teachers. Teaching is very much a craft and most of the master teachers you'll find won't be quoting the research but developed in this way.

This brings me back to the subject of the podcast. Our entire higher ed system has evolved into a hierarchical system focused on research. Even if you're "teaching faculty" and don't have many or any research obligations, there exists this caste system and there's rarely anything in an institutions organizational structure to support faculty members becoming better teachers. Sure, some faculty members are great teachers and many work on their craft but it seems that teacher development is normally something that an instructor is left to do or not to do on their own.

With this system, there's absolutely no reason not to have a teaching career path with the entry point being sufficient CS knowledge. I'd prefer that plus some background in how to teach it but that's likely a bridge too far for now.

Even had I not been an experienced teacher, the biggest difference between me with my Masters in CS and the PhD's I worked with is that they had super deep knowledge in some very narrow area of CS. This meant that maybe I couldn't teach a small handful of super specialized 400 level electives but in practice I could teach many of them and as my education and experience was more of a generalist, I could generally teach a wider swath of classes at the entry to mid level than many super specialized researchers.

The PhD is nothing special, or maybe it is special but no more so than someone who dedicated an equivalent number of years towards being a great teacher, a great software engineer, or a great a lot of other things.

Hopefully one day higher education will realize this.