This article explores lessons learning from a decade of teaching an online course on the politics and psychology of hatred using a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) model. The authors illuminate course etiquette and a critical thinking model that incorporates SoTL into the ongoing fabric of the classroom. In addition, discussion centers on utilizing SoTL to satisfy colleagues concerned about “loss of content” in process oriented courses, and how to engage students in an ongoing, ever-changing, dialogue that can lead them to accept a more inclusive world view.
Tag: reflections
Integrating Service-Learning Pedagogy: A Faculty Reflective Process
Research on service-learning has focused mainly on student outcomes. However, this study addresses the transformative change that three faculty members from different disciplines experienced during a semester-long fellowship on service-learning as a pedagogical method. Through their personal reflections, the authors show how service-learning and the scholarship of teaching were intertwined as they engaged in course redesign. This experience went beyond creating an academic service-learning course to transforming the teachers into reflective practitioners actively engaged in systematically improving their teaching practice.
Reflections from an Adjunct: How the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Empowers the Part-Time Instructor
In this reflective piece, an adjunct instructor narrates her experience with institutional efforts to encourage faculty to become better instructors through exposure to and engagement in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Institutions of higher education can find it difficult to draw faculty out of their instructional status quo. Of particular concern are part-time instructors who, typically less connected to the institution than full-time professors, may struggle to find the resources to improve instruction, even if such resources are desired. As a case in point, this piece demonstrates that early, consistent, persistent, quality exposure to SoTL, combined with individual commitment, does yield concrete improvement in teaching and learning.
A Dual Approach to Fostering Under-Prepared Student Success: Focusing on Doing and Becoming
A paired course model for under-prepared college students incorporates a dual instructional approach, academic skill building and lifelong learning development, to help students do more academically and become stronger lifelong learners. In a reading support course, students improved their reading skills and applied them directly to the paired content course. They also developed lifelong learning attributes through increased self-knowledge (using the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory), reflection, and coaching. Students showed significant gains in lifelong learning, an 85% success rate in the paired content course, and a higher retention rate than students outside the project with similar SAT critical reading scores.
Cross-Disciplinary Exploration and Application of Reflection as a High Impact Pedagogy
Reflection is a high-impact practice in education. This paper explores the premise, approach, and outcomes of a learning community centered on scholarly engagement with the literature of reflection. Using the reflection model operationalized by a national consortium, we developed, implemented, and assessed reflection activities designed to create opportunities for transfer of skills and conceptual change. Two case studies reveal commonalities in using reflection in a college setting. We explore the questions that emerged as a result of our experiences, and connect this work to the importance of engaging with colleagues in a community of learners.
Scholarly Teaching Through Action Research: A Narrative of One Professor’s Process
This article shares a first-hand account of an action research project conducted in a college-level early adolescent development course to better understand written and verbal reflection as learning tools, improve the author’s teaching effectiveness, and foster reflective habits in pre-service teachers. The article includes a brief overview of related literature and a description of several reflective activities and assignments used in the course before presenting and discussing the project’s results based on Ferrance’s (2000) 6-step action research process.
Mentoring International Teaching Assistants: A Case Study of Improving Teaching Practices
While there exists a considerable body of research focusing on international teaching assistants’ (ITAs’) linguistic, sociocultural, and instructional challenges, less is known about the successful developmental trajectories of this group of international educators of American students. This research aims to fulfill this research gap using a case study approach (Yin, 2003). The study involved ITAs from STEM majors in six collaborative mentoring sessions prior and upon video recording of three lessons taught by the ITAs to undergraduate students. The mentoring sessions were designed to facilitate ITAs’ reflections on their teaching with the use of structured protocols to help guide the discussions. All the collected data were analyzed using content analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The results highlight the incidents of professional growth exhibited by the participating ITAs during their actual teaching. This study also tracks the ITAs’ reflections on teaching through the mediational dialogues (Vygotsky, 1978) with the mentor. Finally, the paper discusses lessons learned through launching a mentoring project with a group of ITAs.