issue 50 [TSUBASA] by wildrose800331

wildrose800331UID：2602131

TOPIC: ISSUE50 - "In order to improve the quality of instruction at the college and university level, all faculty should be required to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach."
WORDS: 625
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2009-7-1 16:29:26

The quality of instruction in the field of advanced education has long caused a hot discussion and debate around it. The quality of teaching is both vital to those institutes and their students. Some people recommend that all faculty in the college and university should be required to spend time working in professions relevant to the courses they teach, which aims to improve the quality of instruction, however, from my personal point of view, I partly agree that this requirement should be in accordance with different nature and requirements of diverse specialties.
On the one hand, some majors require teachers to embrace both professional knowledge and personalized experience, in order to simplify and explicitly instruct their learners. To be specific, architecture is a forceful example in this point. The sub-specialties, including decoration, construction skills, budgets and rebudgets and so forth, are sometimes practical as a field study. Without on-the-spot studying and experiencing themselves, the lecturers can not give a up-to-date and feasible instructed process or procedure to their students. Furthermore, these practical working experience functions as an idealistic opportunity for them to apply theory to practice, which further update their knowledge schema and eliminate something impractical and out-dated. The lectures, then can guide students theoretically as a professional encyclopedia and practically as a handbook, so as to enhance the level of instruction greatly. Other many majors should have equivalent practical requirement of faculty members, covering engineering, mechanics, auto-production, communication facilities and so on.
On the other hand, some majors need teachers to improve their quality of instructions as well, but not from practical field but more methodological or theoretical absorptions. One case should be mentioned is basic subjects, which are native languages, foreign languages, advanced math, advanced physics and others. For one thing, there is no corresponding field like a company or factory to directly and obviously utilize the knowledge of these fields. For another thing, these subjects themselves are theoretical-oriented ones instead of practical ones, therefore, there is no need to strike a new direction to both their development. More importantly, this not guarantee that the existent theoretical and instruction system of these basic subjects are perfect without the possibility of upgrading, otherwise, it deserves more than equal attention from lecturers to advancing them by doing researches, experimentation, case studies and immense chances of further academic study and training.
As a matter of fact, many high institutes have already attempted and implemented such kind of promoting policies. During summer and winter break every year, some lecturers or professors are chosen to further study by respective means. Some of them in practical field go into field trips to reduce the distance between textbook theory and empirical reality. Some of them receive training or further education to deepen their understandings about their teaching subjects and the way to teach. Both of the two methods aim to enable faculty members more qualified for their teaching positions, as a result, their enrolled students must appreciate and enjoy more these new and modern instructions, and there is no doubt that the institutions get wide recognition and long-term reputation.
In a conclusion, although the author is well-intended, it is hasty and over generalized to propose that all faculty should spend time working outside the academic world. Because of the variety of natures of subjects and requirement of curriculum, faculty members should accordingly steer their instruction orientation diversely. In detail, the specialized or comparatively practical majors demand their instructional practitioners' field experience which can be infused into their professional career, while the basic and relatively theoretical specialties need their pedagogical instructors to further explore, intake and integrate new theoretical and empirical written knowledge into their old one. Both of these can generally raise the quality of instruction at the college and university.