Dear Teena,
Thank you for sharing your experience. I understand your deliberation, which appears to me to do with the 'forms' of quality and the 'ways' they are being acknowledged and/or measured (some never had the opportunity to be acknowledged, I agree). Similarly to your belief, it is also mine too that intelligence, wisdom and creativity (and talent) present themselves in many (unexpected) occassions, and they often take various forms of presence and representation, regardless of the status, rank, appearance, wealth of the subjects carrying them.
For your information, in our university, all faculties need to perform teaching, research, administration (and if one still has a little bit time left, consultancy). But I believe the point I (and Ken) made is that for a person to be 'very good' at BOTH research and teaching is relatively rare (not to mention in all the said four aspects). Here, we might be pitching at different levels of the quality pyramid when we labelled them 'very good'. The 'very good' I was referring to is the level of quality with which someone (can) leads, aspires and shapes the future of research and professional practice, someone who saw things when the majority fail to see, someone who created innovation when the majority wondering how (or even why). That, statistically speaking, cannot be many, or at least for the time being.
I do not travel that much lately, but sadly, I came across more design PhDs who have difficulty to produce quality (I avoid the word 'very good' here) designs or design practitioners who have difficulty to bring their designs to new level (i.e., many merely repeating what they have been doing for decades (horizontal repetitions vs. vertical advancement) without the ability (or time) to break new grounds and/or produce original designs) than those talents you have the privilege to come across and interact at your university. Thus, regardless of the forms of quality and/or the ways these qualities are (can be) acknowledged, both Ken and I reckon that 'genuinely very good' (meausred, difficult to measure or unmeasured) in BOTH research and teaching remains rare - e.g., one who is able to teach and inspire many students to do their best and find their direction and at the same time, publish papers in A grade journals, wins international design awards and re-define the language of design by his/her own professional practice.
There are a few out there, I agree, one just needs to look for them and use the instinct you have to identify them. As Ken said: "...many of the best people work in universities where the curriculum and systematic structure condemn them to institutional mediocrity despite their personal excellence. That's why excellent people move to better universities when they can". I cannot agree more!
Regards,
Frankie
___________________
Frankie Ng, PhD(RCA), FCSD, FRSA
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Tel: +852 27666462
Email: [log in to unmask]
>>> Teena Clerke <[log in to unmask]> 10/10/11 9:04 AM >>>
Hi Ken,
I agree there is slippage in the terms used.
I too describe what you call a qualitative dimension, but suggest however, that how we evaluate the
'performance' of 'great' scholars might be a matter of scale. That is, there are many design scholars
who influence how people think and do on a daily basis through their varied practices, but whose
influence escapes acknowledgement through quantitative audit systems that measure research
output alone, or some other quantitative measure of graduate outcomes – people who teach in first
year subjects for example, and casual or visiting academics who are not required to publish written
articles.
Drawing on my own experience, I have had many teachers, some of whom are students, who have,
sometimes unwittingly, introduced me to new thinking and new ways of doing through classroom
dialogue. I am suggesting that these intimate exchanges, while much more difficult to account for,
might be AS valuable as, rather than MORE valuable than, articles published in scholarly journals.
The idea of dialogue extends to informal corridor chat at scholarly conferences and elsewhere, and
while obviously there are many instances where classrooms and conferences generate very little
that is new or interesting, again, I argue that it is a matter of scale.
Doctoral education is very much a part of disciplinary development. In my experience, undertaking
a doctorate involves critical engagement in a dialogical process over time, conducted through lively
and intimate exchanges on a small scale, such as supervision discussions, conversations with
strangers who dare to ask how the PhD is going, as well as the exchanges on this list that despite
being broadcast to many, occur between a small few. I find this kind of dialogue immensely helpful
for progressing my thinking as a scholar, while also honing my writing skills. The impact of my
dialogical engagement carries through to my performance in the design classroom. Apart from the
generic student evaluation surveys that measure students' responses to certain indices deemed
important by the universities in which I work, the qualitative dimension is evident in my
observations of how students progressively learn to engage dialogical learning about design through
robust classroom discussion and critical self-reflection written in learning journals. Again, this is a
matter of scale. I am not sure my performance measures up to the standards of 'excellence' of
which you speak, but I am sure that there are students who benefit from our dialogical exchanges.
cheers, teena
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
WHERE INNOVATION MEETS APPLICATION
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