"Some hiring departments, however, are going in the direction of less standardization, not more. I saw a job ad today that asked for two sample syllabi -- not merely syllabi for courses previously taught -- but rather syllabi for specific courses in the hiring department, and I was outraged. Asking applicants to write full syllabi for courses not only requires an incredible amount of time for applicants who don't make the cut.
It also perpetuates a cycle of privilege in which only candidates with enough time to carefully put together syllabi (again, above and beyond the norms of regular job applications) are considered for the position. (And this is not even considering cases where there have been accusations on the part of job applicants that their sample syllabi have been used, without permission or pay, to develop actual course content.)"
FB: "If 50 applicants each put together one syllabus (and the train from Chicago was going 65 miles per hour), then for one specific syllabus request, the hiring committee will have wasted nearly a year of unpaid academic labour. And beyond the work involved, I think about who it is that has the capacity to fulfil these kinds of requests. If contingent faculty members are applying for this job (a group that includes a disproportionate number of women and people of colour), they will write these syllabi after long days of driving between campuses. They will do so while sacrificing time that they could spend publishing their research, painstakingly crafting a syllabus they may not ever get the chance to teach."
No comments:
Post a Comment