Comments on: Graduate Students Who Teach Are More Skilled at Research

By: Richard N. Landers

Richard N. Landers — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:52:33 +0000

If I drop a few unnecessary words in the sentence that you have provided, it reads, “These data provide evidence of improvement associated with teaching.” This quite strongly implies “teaching improves,” which is a statement of causal effect, regardless of whether or not this implication was intentional by its author. But I find it hard to believe this was not intentional, especially considering the title of the article – “Graduate Students’ Teaching Experiences Improve Their Methodological Research Skills”.

Predictability from learning theory certainly lends support to these ideas, but they do not make up for limitations in experimental design. The implicit argument from those in the natural sciences against teaching is that teaching takes up too much time that could otherwise be spent engaged in research or personal development. Time on task has been linked to learning outcomes, so this is a valid argument, and there is nothing in this study that counters it.

I agree that this is an interesting and potentially important piece of the puzzle; but the tendency for the scientific community and journalists to assume maximal research quality in articles appearing in Science means that authors have an even greater responsibility to clearly communicate their findings.

By: David Feldon

David Feldon — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:52:00 +0000

Your assessment of the article raises some interesting issues. However, I believe you may overstate your case. Inferring causality is a problematic business–especially in the social sciences–and is justifiably treated with extreme caution. However, the exact quote of the comclusion from the article is “These data provide direct, performance-based evidence of improvement on specific research skills associated with teaching experiences that complement traditional graduate research training.” I do not believe this asserts a causal relationship. The abstract does use the word “can” but in this case is best interpreted as “may” or “could,” which are appropriate synonyms. The findings are important, because they belie the common assumption in the natural sciences that time spent teaching is detrimental to research skill development. In this case, the nonsignificant differences are supportive of an overall argument that there is no harm to students’ skill growth associated with teaching activities on the specific competencies measured. The significant findings indicate that there *could* be a benefit–especially as they are predictable from multiple well-validated theories regarding how people learn effectively.