In recognition of the vital importance of reading and writing skills for every academic discipline and most professions, the Association of Departments of English (ADE) promotes guidelines for class sizes and workload that ensure such skills can be taught effectively. In so doing, the ADE recognizes that student learning conditions and instructor working conditions are closely linked. However, while large class sizes and an excessive workload can influence any instructor’s effectiveness, the burden of this problem falls most frequently and heavily on lecturers, adjuncts, and other contingent faculty members. Non-tenure-track instructors often teach schedules composed of too many courses that are also too large, and they are seldom in a position to insist on the working conditions that will promote effective instruction, particularly effective instruction in writing and writing-intensive courses.
Institutions, however, benefit when they address such issues by following ADE guidelines. Appropriate class sizes and workloads allow for attention to individual students, which improves student outcomes. Student success, in turn, increases both retention rates and degree completions, statistics that impact national rankings as well as recruitment efforts. Class sizes and staffing practices cannot be divorced from such metrics.
Scholarship in rhetoric and composition has determined best practices for how to reach the diverse range of learners in our classrooms, whether face-to-face or online. The ADE endorses the “Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing” (2015) and the “Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction” (2013), each approved by the executive committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). They recommend the following:
For the purposes of this policy, the ADE defines a writing course as one in which writing is the subject of the course, where the development of writing skills is the primary goal of the course, not the means of evaluating other knowledge acquired in the course. Such courses have learning outcomes related to the development of various forms of writing.
Literature courses, broadly construed, are designed to foster a sense of discovery through shared exploration of textual artifacts. These courses do so by focusing on reading as a foundational activity, one that supports the acquisition of corollary skills in analysis and expression. Whether in person or online, such courses rely on discussions and substantial written assignments, both of which require smaller class sizes to be effective.
In addition, postsecondary literature courses are frequently, though not exclusively, writing-intensive. Writing-intensive courses offer direct writing instruction, in the form of lessons and exercises on writing; they treat writing as a process and require more than one draft of a writing assignment. Such courses may use formal and informal writing assignments to evaluate knowledge acquired in the course, but they make writing an ongoing activity in the course rather than a summative evaluation of a student’s mastery of content. More significantly, writing-intensive courses use writing itself to generate student knowledge. Through writing assignments that foster active learning and creative problem solving, instructors deepen students’ understanding, both of the material and their own critical perspectives and processes.
The ADE recommends the following:
Certain general and advanced literature courses that include historical and biographical background and critical surveys may be conducted by lecture for larger classes. For example, departments may schedule these courses in order to give students access to distinguished scholars and lecturers. The ADE recommends, however, that such courses follow the above guidelines regarding qualified assistants (one per 30–35 students) in order to encourage active, student-centered learning and make possible meaningful assessment of written work.
Institutions should establish teaching loads that reflect the values embedded in their student-centered missions and their standards for tenure and promotion. Institutions that require faculty members to publish for tenure and promotion should lower teaching loads. Organizations must also institute manageable teaching loads for non-tenure-track faculty members to guarantee quality instruction and to ensure that all instructors—not just those on the tenure track—can develop professional identities that lead to career advancement.
College English instructors should teach no more than twelve credits per term if they are involved in undergraduate instruction exclusively and no more than nine credits per term if they are involved in graduate instruction, as the hours spent with students in the classroom constitute only a fraction of an instructor's responsibilities. These include
Although this document stipulates the maximum teaching loads commensurate with quality teaching, it should not preclude a department’s varying workloads among instructors. To make the best use of instructors’ interests and abilities in relation to departmental needs, the responsibility for making such adjustments should rest with the department. Any such processes, however, at the department level or beyond, should be conducted transparently and equitably.
College English instructors should be neither restricted to teaching several sections of the same course nor assigned to prepare more than three different courses in a given semester.
The number of different courses assigned per term should ensure, rather than prohibit, excellent teaching. Two or three different courses per term provide enough variety to promote freshness but not so much as to prevent thorough preparation. Instructors beginning a new course preparation, however, will benefit from teaching one or two different courses rather than two or three.
College English instructors should have a reduced teaching load if they have been assigned major administrative duties.
With the increased need to comply with internal and external regulations (e.g., those of academic governance, collective bargaining, equal opportunity employment, affirmative action, assessment, and accountability), additional duties have accrued to department members, especially to chairs. To ignore the burden of such responsibilities by requiring chairs to teach a full load is inequitable. The same principle applies to directors of composition, writing laboratories, or graduate study programs and to other faculty members who are required to contribute substantially to departmental and college governance.
However, such reassignments should not be made possible through the exploitation of low-paid, part-time, or adjunct faculty members (see section VI of this document). Ongoing reassignment needs should be filled by full-time faculty members with access to living wages and benefits.
The ADE supports the guidelines included in the MLA’s “Statement on the Use of Part-Time and Full-Time Adjunct Faculty Members.” We therefore advocate that part-time and temporary teaching appointments should be avoided as a rule. Given that many institutions have come to rely heavily on adjunct and part-time appointments, the ADE supports the efforts of organizations such as New Faculty Majority, which advocates that, where they exist, “[a]djunct faculty need equal pay for equal work, and part-time needs to mean pro-rated to full-time, not full-time work for part-time pay.”
Revised September 2020
Association of Departments of English