Transcript Slide 1

Introduction to the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning
Biology Scholars Institute
July 16-19, 2008
Tony Ciccone
Senior Scholar and Director
Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Goals
• Introduce the scholarship of teaching and
learning as a perspective, a set of practices,
and a body of work
• Help you situate your own work in the
ongoing evolution of the concept
• Examine some good reasons for doing the
work
• Give you an example from the Humanities to
illustrate some key characteristics
CASTL HISTORY
Campus Cluster Program
Institutional Leadership
Program begins
Work with scholarly
societies ……………………………………………………………………………You are here
“Final” meeting
at ISSOTL
ISSOTL
established
1998
2002
2002
2004
2006
200
8
2009
What is the Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning?
Systematic practitioner inquiry into interesting,
consequential questions about student learning and the
conditions that affect it, the results of which are made
public in ways that others can critique and build upon.
Thus, it is …
A perspective on teaching and learning in higher
education: their relationship, how our understanding of
them is deepened and shared
A range of practices, techniques, etc., for inquiry into
teaching and learning
More and more, a body of work
Given this definition, why do this work?
Reflect briefly on why you want to engage in
this type of work. What attracts you to it?
What strengths do you have that will help?
What impact do you hope to have on
teaching and learning in your field?
Share your thoughts with a colleague.
Why do this work?
• Most of us start with the desire to improve as
teachers
• We have a fervent belief that what we do and how
we do it has an effect on student learning
• SoTL inquiry helps us understand the connection
between teaching and learning
• Through peer review and dissemination, our SoTL
inquiry creates knowledge of use to others in our
discipline and in similar teaching contexts
A perspective on the nature of teaching and
learning in higher education (1)
There are many ways to improve the quality of
higher education but…we have been struck by
the power that comes with seeing teaching as
challenging, intellectual work, work that poses
interesting, consequential questions.
Teaching is challenging,
intellectual work
•
The scholarship of teaching (Scholarship
Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate,
Boyer (1990))
•
Raised the profile of teaching in the spectrum of
faculty work and validated the work of those
who studied their own teaching practice
•
vs. the idea that teaching is just techniques or
style and that improvement is just the result of
tips, tinkering, or personality
Teaching is work that poses interesting,
consequential questions
•
Teaching is worthy of the same attention we
bring to our disciplinary scholarship
•
Deciding what and how to teach leads us to
think about the content and processes of our
discipline and how we can best engage
students in learning them
A perspective on the nature of teaching and
learning in higher education (2)
•
The scholarship of teaching and learning invites
faculty from all fields to identify and explore
those questions in their own teaching—and
especially in their students’ learning—and to do
so in ways that are shared with colleagues who
can build on new insights.
Inquiry into teaching and learning is the
work of faculty from all fields
•
Not only for education researchers
•
Importance of the discipline specialist
•
Variety of perspectives, methods, results leads to
new insights about teaching and learning
•
Validates the role of the teacher in advancing our
knowledge of how students learn
•
Validates the role of the teacher in advancing our
knowledge of how to investigate how students
learn
Results can be shared with colleagues
•
Wisdom of practice doesn’t disappear
•
“going meta”
•
Value of being critiqued
•
Teaching and learning as the topics of ongoing
conversations among colleagues
•
Teaching commons
Colleagues build on the results
•
By exploring them further
•
By applying them to their own teaching
•
By coming to understand and value the work
and its results
A perspective on the nature of teaching and
learning in higher education (3)
In this way, such work has the potential to
transform higher education by making the
private work of the classroom visible, talked
about, studied, built upon, and valued—
conditions for ongoing improvements in any
enterprise.
- Hutchings and Huber, The Advancement of Learning, 2005, p. ix
Transformative power of making the work of
the classroom visible
What is transformed?
•
How we think about our teaching and students
•
How we work with our colleagues
•
How we pursue our professional development
•
How we understand teaching and learning in our
discipline
•
How we understand and contribute to larger
initiatives
A set of practices, techniques, etc., for
studying teaching and learning
•
Framing questions about teaching and learning
•
Gathering and exploring evidence
•
Making sense of evidence, finding broader significance,
implications, connections
•
Going public in ways that others can build on
What’s so funny? Moving Students Toward
Complex Thinking in a Course on Comedy
and Laughter
Overall course goal
understand and appreciate the complexity of ideas
and their forms of expression
“Operational” course goal
develop and articulate a personal theory of what is
essential for understanding comedy and laughter
What’s so Funny?
Course Design
inductive: studying one example after another,
asking the same question
applying and critiquing the theories of others
Evidence of learning
daily writing assignments
three different papers, revised
final project – working theory of comedy and
laughter
What’s so funny?
Additional technique to encourage complex
thinking
three written reflections on learning
What’s so funny?
Framing the Question
First-level question
Did the written reflections encourage
complex thinking?
Apparently, as evidenced by a quick
reading of the final reflections
What’s so funny?
Second-level questions
What did this complexity look like?
Was there a trajectory?
Where would I look for evidence of it?
What’s so Funny?
Gathering and Exploring Evidence
Some choices
where to look first: student reflections or
written work?
how to describe the reflection: existing
taxonomies or close reading/interpretation
What’s so Funny?
Methodology
Two researchers read 54 reflections (18 x 3)
Each researcher categorized the information
Researchers discussed and refined categories
Results: Five categories and two themes
What’s so funny?
Making sense of the results: Dewey’s theory of
reflection
Reflection begins with doubt – problematizing
comedy leads to recognition of deeper meaning
Doubt leads to experimentation – formulating or
confronting hypotheses leads to deeper
understanding and an awareness of process
The reflective process becomes itself an experience
to be reflected upon and thus leads to an
awareness of a new “habit of mind” valuable in
itself
What’s so funny?
Third-level question
(“going meta”)
What can a study of the development of complex
thinking add to the body of knowledge on this topic
and to our understanding of how it comes about?
What’s so Funny?
Questions for further study
How do individual students progress?
How do reflections (what students say they can do)
compare with performance on written work (what
students actually do)?
What does it mean if reflection and actual
performance don’t match? Can reflective writing
report or give evidence of thinking that is more or
less complex than what is shown in other work?
Conclusion
Bennett’s Top Ten List
* Investigate what you’re interested in
* Define what you mean by “works”
* Apply your academic training
* Prepare for messiness
* Read, but think, and with others
* Confront your research prejudices
* Your questions will change
* New questions will arise
* You have several audiences: self, peers, larger
academic community
* Tell a good story