What is good teaching? Ask the 'customers'

What is good teaching? Ask the 'customers'

By Hendra Gunawan

BANDUNG (JP): In our country, schools and universities are
often viewed as factories or industries that produce graduates.
With this concept, however, many problems arise, especially
regarding the quality of the "products". To produce good products
that meet certain criteria, we need good "raw materials" and
"machinery".

Thus, for schools and universities, it would be considerably
difficult to produce graduates that meet certain criteria with a
rate of success as high as say, 90 percent, where 10 percent are
considered "defects", unless all the students and the teachers
meet certain criteria too. The reason is that we are dealing here
with human beings.

According to Lynton Gray, in his foreword to a 1992 book on
Total Quality Management, "Human beings are notoriously
nonstandard, and they bring into educational situations a range
of experiences, emotions and opinions which cannot be kept in the
background of the operation. Judging quality is very different
from inspecting the output of a factory, or judging the service
provided by a retail outlet." In short, human beings cannot be
treated as "things".

Using business terminology, educational institutions are
better viewed as industries that offer services rather than those
producing graduates. Teaching is certainly the main service.
Other services include supervision, counseling and facilities
such as libraries, laboratories and sports centers.

The quality of a school or university is then judged by the
quality of these services. Students, and their parents, viewed as
customers, have the right to choose which school they want to go
to. Enrolling in a school or university means they "buy" the
services offered by the institution.

But what is meant by "good quality"? Particularly, what is
good teaching? These are not easy questions. Before we can
answer, we need to ask: who determines the criteria? Is it the
institution, the teachers, the students (and their parents) or
others (such as employers)?

To answer the latter question, we need to fully understand
what is meant by "quality". In its absolute sense, it is
perceived as something ideal, as we often hear in a daily
conversation. A car like a Rolls Royce, for instance, is a
quality car, as most people would agree.

But something ideal is usually costly, hard to achieve and can
only be approached. Thus, people define quality in relative
terms. Something simple and inexpensive may be of good quality as
long as it satisfies certain criteria. The problem is: who
determines the criteria? The producers or the customers?

With total quality management, the criteria are determined by
the customers, for without customers no single industry can
survive. Besides, producers must realize that it is the customers
who finally decide which products are of good quality and which
are not.

By viewing schools and universities as service industries
whose main service is teaching, students, parents and employers
are the main, secondary and tertiary external customers,
respectively. Meanwhile, all staff -- the principal, teachers,
and administrators -- are the producers and, at the same time,
internal customers, since the service may also be enjoyed by each
other.

Thus, to define what good teaching is, it is very important to
ask the students -- the main customers. Of course, parents,
employers and all the staff should also be heard. This can be
done, for instance, through questionnaires or interviews.

By doing so, a list of criteria for good teaching may be
obtained. Moses (1985), for example, found from student
questionnaires that good teaching can result from teachers'
competence in the subject matter, communication skills,
commitment to facilitating student learning and concern for
individual students.

Of course, this list can be extended to give a better
description of good teaching. But the main point here is that we
should ask the students, as well as the other "stake holders", to
define what good teaching is.

Hearing their complaints about current practices of teaching
would also be useful. In other words, schools or universities,
and the Ministry of Education should find out what is lacking now
and then try to overcome the problem. Otherwise, don't ask why
many parents send their children to study abroad and why
employers seek graduates from overseas universities.

The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Mathematics at the
Bandung Institute of Technology.