Ten sets of disciplinary scholars respond to an orienting essay that raises questions about the history of discourse about teaching and learning in the disciplines, the ways in which disciplinary "styles" influence inquiry into teaching and learning, and the nature and roles of interdisciplinary exchange. The authors hope to "contribute to a common language for trading ideas, enlarging our pedagogical imaginations, and strengthening our scholarly work." Disciplines represented: chemistry; communication studies, engineering, English studies, history, management sciences, mathematics, psychology, and sociology. A collaboration of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and AAHE
Ten sets of disciplinary scholars respond to an orienting essay that raises questions about the history of discourse about teaching and learning in the disciplines, the ways in which disciplinary "styles" influence inquiry into teaching and learning, and the nature and roles of interdisciplinary exchange. The authors hope to "contribute to a common language for trading ideas, enlarging our pedagogical imaginations, and strengthening our scholarly work." Disciplines represented: chemistry; communication studies, engineering, English studies, history, management sciences, mathematics, psychology, and sociology. A collaboration of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and AAHE
The Challenges and Joys of Juggling There has been growing demand for workshops and materials to help those in higher education conduct and use the scholarship of teaching and learning. This book offers advice on how to do, share, and apply SoTL work to improve student learning and development. Written for college-level faculty members as well as faculty developers, administrators, academic staff, and graduate students, this book will also help undergraduate students collaborating with faculty on SoTL projects. Though targeted at those new to the field of SoTL, more seasoned SoTL researchers and those attempting to support SoTL efforts will find the book valuable. It can be used as an individual reading, a shared reading in SoTL writing circles, a resource in workshops on SoTL, and a text in seminars on teaching. Contents include: Defining SoTL The functions, value, rewards, and standards for SoTL work Working with colleagues, involving students, writing grants, integrating SoTL into your professional life, and finding useful resources Practical and ethical issues associated with SoTL work Making your SoTL public and documenting your work The status of SoTL in disciplinary and institutional contexts Applying the goals of SoTL to enhance student learning and development.
From the Foreword“These authors have clearly shown the value in looking for the signature pedagogies of their disciplines. Nothing uncovers hidden assumptions about desired knowledge, skills, and dispositions better than a careful examination of our most cherished practices. The authors inspire specialists in other disciplines to do the same. Furthermore, they invite other colleagues to explore whether relatively new, interdisciplinary fields such as Women’s Studies and Global Studies have, or should have, a signature pedagogy consistent with their understanding of what it means to ‘apprentice’ in these areas." -- Anthony A. Ciccone, Senior Scholar and Director, Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.How do individual disciplines foster deep learning, and get students to think like disciplinary experts? With contributions from the sciences, humanities, and the arts, this book critically explores how to best foster student learning within and across the disciplines. This book represents a major advance in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) by moving beyond individual case studies, best practices, and the work of individual scholars, to focus on the unique content and characteristic pedagogies of major disciplines. Each chapter begins by summarizing the SoTL literature on the pedagogies of a specific discipline, and by examining and analyzing its traditional practices, paying particular attention to how faculty evaluate success. Each concludes by the articulating for its discipline the elements of a “signature pedagogy” that will improve teaching and learning, and by offering an agenda for future research.Each chapter explores what the pedagogical literature of the discipline suggests are the optimal ways to teach material in that field, and to verify the resulting learning. Each author is concerned about how to engage students in the ways of knowing, the habits of mind, and the values used by experts in his or her field. Readers will not only benefit from the chapters most relevant to their disciplines. As faculty members consider how their courses fit into the broader curriculum and relate to the other disciplines, and design learning activities and goals not only within the discipline but also within the broader objectives of liberal education, they will appreciate the cross-disciplinary understandings this book affords.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Guide for Scientists, Engineers, and Mathematicians shows college and university faculty members how to draw on their disciplinary knowledge and teaching experience to investigate questions about student learning. It takes readers all the way through the inquiry process beginning with framing a research question and selecting a research design, moving on to gathering and analyzing evidence, and finally to making the results public. Numerous examples are provided at each stage, many from published studies of teaching and learning in science, engineering, or mathematics. At strategic points, short sets of questions prompt readers to pause and reflect, plan, or act. These questions are derived from the authors' experience leading many workshops in the United States and Canada on how to do the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The taxonomy of SoTL questions-What works? What is? What could be?-that emerged from the SoTL studies undertaken by scholars in the Carnegie Academic for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning serves as a framework at many stages of the inquiry process. The book addresses the issue of evaluating and valuing this work, including implications for junior faculty who wish to engage in SoTL. The authors explain why SoTL should be of interest to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) faculty at all types of higher education institutions, including faculty members active in traditional STEM research. They also give their perspective on the benefits of SoTL to faculty, to their institutions, to the academy, and to students.
This publication features reports by eight Carnegie Scholars who are working to develop a scholarship of teaching and learning that will advance the profession of teaching and improve student learning. Following the Introduction, "Approaching the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" (Pat Hutchings), the papers are: "Investigating Student Learning in a Problem-Based Psychology Course" (William Cerbin); "Resilient Students, Resilient Communities" (Donna Killian Duffy); "Looking through a Different Lens: Inquiry into a Team-Taught Course" (Cynthia V. Fukami); "A Chemical Mixture of Methods" (Dennis Jacobs); "For Better or Worse? The Marriage of Web and Classroom" (T. Mills Kelly); "Students' Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Learning" (Sherry Linkon); "A Case Study of Theory, Voice, Pedagogy, and Joy" (Mona Taylor Phillips); "Difficulty: The Great Educational Divide" (Mariolina Rizzi Salvatori); and a Conclusion: "Inventing the Future" (Lee S. Shulman). (Papers contain references.) (SM)
What does it mean to be authentic? Why should it matter whether or not we become more authentic? How might authenticity inform and enhance the social practice of the scholarship of university teaching and, by implication, the learning and development of students? Authenticity in and through Teaching introduces three distinct perspectives on authenticity, the existential, the critical and the communitarian, and shows what moving towards greater authenticity involves for teachers and students when viewed from each of these angles. In developing the notion of ‘the scholarship of teaching as an authentic practice', this book draws on several complementary ideas from social philosophy to explore the nature of this practice and the conditions under which it might qualify as 'authentic'. Other concepts guiding the analysis include ‘virtue’, 'being', ‘communicative action’, 'power', ‘critical reflection’ and ‘transformation’. Authenticity in and through Teaching also introduces a vision of the scholarship of teaching whose ultimate aim it is to serve the important interests of students. These important interests, it is argued, are the students’ own striving and development towards greater authenticity. Both teachers and students are thus implicated in a process of transformative learning, including objective and subjective reframing, redefinition and reconstruction, through critical reflection and critical self-reflection on assumptions. It is argued that, in important ways, this transformative process is intimately bound up with becoming more authentic. Rather than being concerned principally with rendering research evidence of ‘what works’, the scholarship of teaching emerges as a social practice that is equally concerned with the questions surrounding the value, desirability and emancipatory potential of what we do in teaching. The scholarship of teaching, therefore, also engages with the bigger questions of social justice and equality in and through higher education. The book combines Carolin Kreber's previous research on authenticity with earlier work on the scholarship of teaching, offering a provocative, fresh and timely perspective on the scholarship of university teaching and professional learning.
The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is one of the most dynamic areas of research in the field of higher education today in which faculty continuously evaluate the quality of their teaching and its affect on student learning. Faculty are being held accountable for the effectiveness of their teaching and in turn they are starting to engage in SoTL-related intellectual exchanges not only in their research agendas but also in the ways in which they teach their students in the classroom. At the heart of this new movement, there is a simple idea: take a close look at how you teach and how your students learn, use the same methodology that you would use for formal investigations (be it in the humanities or sciences), and hold your research to the same standards most notably peer review. Optimizing Teaching and Learning will serve as a guide for anyone who is interested in improving their teaching, the learning of their students, and at the same time contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning. It bridges the gap between the research and practice of SoTL, with explicit instructions on how to design, conduct, analyze, and write-up pedagogical research, including samples of actual questionnaires and other materials (e.g., focus group questions) that will jumpstart investigations into teaching and learning. It also explores the advantages and disadvantages of various pedagogical practices and present applications of SoTL using case studies from a variety of disciplines. This book will serve as an invaluable resource for both seasoned faculty and new faculty who are just beginning to assess their teaching methods and learn how to think beyond the content.
University teaching and learning take place within ever more specialized disciplinary settings, each characterized by its unique traditions, concepts, practices and procedures. It is now widely recognized that support for teaching and learning needs to take this discipline-specificity into account. However, in a world characterized by rapid change, complexity and uncertainty, problems do not present themselves as distinct subjects but increasingly within trans-disciplinary contexts calling for graduate outcomes that go beyond specialized knowledge and skills. This ground-breaking book highlights the important interplay between context-specific and context-transcendent aspects of teaching, learning and assessment. It explores critical questions, such as: What are the ‘ways of thinking and practicing’ characteristic of particular disciplines? How can students be supported in becoming participants of particular disciplinary discourse communities? Can the diversity in teaching, learning and assessment practices that we observe across departments be attributed exclusively to disciplinary structure? To what extent do the disciplines prepare students for the complexities and uncertainties that characterize their later professional, civic and personal lives? Written for university teachers, educational developers as well as new and experienced researchers of Higher Education, this highly-anticipated first edition offers innovative perspectives from leading Canadian, US and UK scholars on how academic learning within particular disciplines can help students acquire the skills, abilities and dispositions they need to succeed academically and also post graduation. Carolin Kreber is Professor of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment at the University of Edinburgh
