Introduction to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Biology Scholars InstituteJuly 16-19, 2008

Tony CicconeSenior 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

1998

First cohort ofCarnegie Scholars….

Campus Program begins/AAHE Institutional LeadershipProgram begins

Carnegie ScholarsProgram ends (6 cohorts total)

“Final” meeting at ISSOTL

Work with scholarlysocieties ……………………………………………………………………………

ISSOTLestablished

2002 20092004 20062002

Campus Cluster Program

You are here

2008

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 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

Teaching is work that poses interesting, consequential questions

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 assignmentsthree 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