In this article, we investigate what happened when, contrary to the typical isolation of faculty in higher education, a group of higher educators from various disciplines in a graduate school of education met regularly to discuss issues related to our teaching and social justice. More specifically, we explored the following research question: How does collaboration among higher educators from various disciplines shape their beliefs and practices of teaching for social justice? Over three years of collaboration and conversation, not only did we expand our own knowledge and understandings of notions of social justice, but we began to take important steps towards increasing our social justice actions in our teaching. This article explores our efforts to create a self-directed professional development group of higher educators and provides suggestions for similarly interested higher educators.
Tag: cross-disciplinary collaboration
Making it All Count: A Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Model Incorporating Scholarship, Creative Activity, and Student Engagement
This study takes a grounded theory approach as a basis for a case study examining a cross-disciplinary artistic and academic collaborative project involving faculty from the areas of English, music, dance, theatre, design, and visual journalism resulting in the creation of research, scholarly, and creative activity that fosters student engagement with feedback, reflection, and mentorship. An emergent conceptual model of artistic and academic collaboration was developed featuring a combination of collaborative partnership, creative process, and product dissemination with feedback and reflection leading to greater collaborative partnership as well as a new community of practice for cross-disciplinary collaboration.