Teaching within Institutional Values and Structures

Teaching is a segment of the professor's role. Its image in academia ranges from romantic glorification to major devaluation. While research and other professorial activities are considered either cosmopolitan or local activities, teaching is almost exclusively local and, thus, has no national reference system. Institutional factors such as type of institution, size, sponsorship, and location provide important variations in the meaning given to teaching and to other professorial activities. The institution, functioning simultaneously as a scholarly community, a bureaucracy, a federation of disciplines, and a constellation of power blocks, provides different and conflicting messages about the value of teaching. As educational institutions move toward bureaucratic format, teaching and the control of teaching is slowly but persistently transferred from collegial to administrative structures. As teaching becomes increasingly judged by output and efficiency, the professor moves from an academic status to an employee status.