TEACHING AND/OR RESEARCH: GADAMERIAN REFLECTIONS ON A PSEUDO-DILEMMA

THE relevance of Gadamer's hermeneutics for pedagogy has not gone unnoticed. As Louise Phelps brought Ricoeur's hermeneutics to bear on composition studies, so Peter Sotioru, Timothy Crusius, and others have shown how Gadamerian philosophy of interpretation might be applied to create a "hermeneutic classroom." My teaching, too, has certainly been affected by the Gadamerian questions in which I have been immersed for some thirty years. Yet whenever I think of using Gadamer to devise newer and better teaching methods, I am reminded of his warning in the opening pages of Truth and Method: "[It was] not my aim to investigate the theoretical foundation of work in [the human sciences] in order to put my findings to practical ends. My real concern was . . . not what we do or what we ought to do" (xxviii). he did not intend to show us what methods we should employ in order to understand texts better or teach them better - however important such goals might be.

Gadamer's significance, I have come to believe, lies in changing not what we do but rather the way we think about what we do, even if that never alters our practice. Specifically, the way we think about the relation between teaching and research, the topic of sometimes acrimonious debate among academics in recent years, is a topic about which Gadamer's hermeneutics, I hope to show, has surprisingly direct relevance and surprisingly radical implications.

"Somehow many people have come to think that teaching and research are not compatible," write the authors of "Values Added," a CIC report defending its member schools against their detractors (1). It seems to quite a few observers that universities have lost sight of their educational mission even while their research output remains strong, and many people within and without academe have therefore inferred that teaching and research must constitute antithetical goods. The two require a choice because research universities have chosen, and they have chosen research. The CIC report makes no attempt to explain how such a "serious misconception" could have come about. Its authors concern themselves, rather, with defending research universities' teaching performance by shoring up the beleaguered claim that "teaching and research support one another." Yet the litany of reasons for widespread skepticism about this claim has long since become familiar.

Frequently taught by eager, dedicated, and inexperienced teaching assistants, undergraduate students at "research universities" have been known to complete their studies without ever being taught by an actual researcher at all. When undergraduates do come into contact with research faculty, their classes are often so large that the notion of "contact" remains metaphorical at best. The infrequency of genuine interaction can hardly be surprising. Large numbers of TAs and adjunct teachers have become necessary because research faculty at "research universities" teach relatively few classes. The most successful researchers, moreover, are rewarded not just by salary increases but also by teaching reductions. Faculty commonly refer to their teaching obligations as a course "load," and their tacit or even explicit career ambition is to be disburdened of it. Minimal teaching is therefore condition and consequence of a successful research career.

However dismayed by allegations about the incompatibility of teaching and research, the authors of "Values Added" propose no change in the circumstances that have given rise to such charges. This is not to say that the CIC report actually depreciates teaching; quite the contrary, the authors rightly insist that research universities value teaching "also," even though they concede that "research is stressed in the tenure and promotion process at our institutions" (1). Because they never doubt the wisdom or propriety of this imbalance, the report's authors never question their own unspoken premise that teaching and research are separate and unequal. Thus they unwittingly affirm the very incompatibility they intend to combat.

Assuming that this imbalance is an unalterable fact of life at research universities does not mean that nothing can be done for teachers and students, however. The Carnegie Foundation has outlined a program designed to improve the prestige of undergraduate teaching under precisely these conditions. Following the lead of Ernest Boyer's groundbreaking proposals outlined in Scholarship Reconsidered, the Foundation's new strategy, rhetorical and practical, is to suggest that good teaching does, or at least can, involve a kind of research. Boyer and his successors call the very distinction itself into question. They suggest that, far from monolithic, scholarship takes many forms, and among them is the "scholarship of teaching." Insofar as conscientious teachers try out various approaches, formats, and technologies in their classes, insofar as they determine which methods contribute most to student learning and then tell others what they've found, they employ the basic paradigm of experimental research. Given that "research universities" do and should value research, the Carnegie Foundation concludes, they ought to value this particular kind of research - namely, the scholarship of teaching.