The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning In and Across the Disciplines

Description

Critical issues for interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) began primarily as a discipline-based movement, committed to exploring the signature pedagogical and learning styles of each discipline within higher education, with little exchange across disciplines. As the field has developed, new questions have arisen concerning cross-disciplinary comparison and learning in multidisciplinary settings This volume by a stellar group of experts provides a state-of-the-field review of recent SoTL scholarship within a range of disciplines and offers a stimulating discussion of critical issues related to interdisciplinarity in teaching, learning, and SoTL research.

Foreword Mary Huber

Introduction to SoTL in and across the Disciplines Kathleen McKinney

Part I. SoTL In the Disciplines
1. Difference, Privilege, and Power in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The Value of Humanities SoTL Nancy L. Chick
2. Contributions from Psychology: Heuristics for Interdisciplinary Advancement of SoTL Regan A. R. Gurung and Beth M. Schwartz
3. SoTL and Interdisciplinary Encounters in the Study of Students' Understanding of Mathematical Proof Curtis Bennett and Jacqueline Dewar
4. Plowing through Bottlenecks in Political Science: Experts and Novices at Work Jeffrey L. Bernstein
5. The History Learning Project "Decodes" a Discipline: The Union of Teaching and Epistemology Leah Shopkow, Arlene Diaz, Joan Middenorf, and David Pace
6. Assessing Strategies for Teaching Key Sociological Understandings Caroline Hodges Persell and Antonio E. Mateiro

Part II. SoTL Across the Disciplines
7. Square One: What is Research? Gary Poole
8. Fallacies of SoTL: Rethinking How We Conduct Our Research Liz Grauerholz and Eric Main
9. Exploring Student Learning in Unfamiliar Territory: A Humanist and a Scientist Compare Notes David A. Reichard and Kathy Takayama
10. Talking Across the Disciplines: Building Communicative Competence in a Multidisciplinary Graduate-Student Seminar on Inquiry in Teaching and Learning Jennifer Meta Robinson, Melissa Gresalfi, Tyler Booth Christensen, April K. Sievert, Katherine Dowell Kearns, and Miriam E. Zolan
11. Getting at the Big Picture through SoTL Lauren Scharff
12. Growing Our Own Understanding of Teaching and Learning: Planting the Seeds and Reaping the Harvest Cheryl Albers
13. Navigating Interdisciplinary Rip Tides on the Way to the Scholarship of Integrative Learning Carmen Werder

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• EDUCATION
• College Teaching
• Higher
• SOTL
• Level
• School
• Higher education
• Research

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 21 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253007063
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING IN AND ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
Jennifer Meta Robinson
Whitney M. Schlegel
Mary Taylor Huber
Pat Hutchings
editors
THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
IN AND ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
EDITED BY Kathleen McKinney
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
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2013 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The scholarship of teaching and learning in and across disciplines / Kathleen McKinney, editor.
p. cm. - (Scholarship of teaching and learning)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00675-2 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00676-9 (pb : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00706-3 (eb) 1. Education, Higher-United States. 2. Interdisciplinary approach in education-United States. I. McKinney, Kathleen, editor of compilation. II. Chick, Nancy L., 1968-Difference, privilege, and power in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
LA227.4.S36 2013 378.00973-dc23
2012030703
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
To Bob, Ben, and Claire for their love, laughter, and support, and to my mom, the memory of my dad, and my siblings, Davis and Maureen, for their unwavering belief in me.
-KMc
CONTENTS
Foreword
Mary Taylor Huber
Acknowledgments
Introduction to SOTL In and Across the Disciplines
Kathleen McKinney
PART 1 SOTL IN THE DISCIPLINES
1 Difference, Privilege, and Power in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The Value of Humanities SOTL
Nancy L. Chick
2 Contributions from Psychology: Heuristics for Interdisciplinary Advancement of SOTL
Regan A. R. Gurung and Beth M. Schwartz
3 SOTL and Interdisciplinary Encounters in the Study of Students Understanding of Mathematical Proof
Curtis Bennett and Jacqueline Dewar
4 Plowing through Bottlenecks in Political Science: Experts and Novices at Work
Jeffrey L. Bernstein
5 The History Learning Project Decodes a Discipline: The Union of Teaching and Epistemology
Leah Shopkow, Arlene D az, Joan Middendorf, and David Pace
6 Assessing Strategies for Teaching Key Sociological Understandings
Caroline Hodges Persell and Antonio E. Mateiro
PART 2 SOTL ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
7 Square One: What Is Research?
Gary Poole
8 Fallacies of SOTL: Rethinking How We Conduct Our Research
Liz Grauerholz and Eric Main
9 Exploring Student Learning in Unfamiliar Territory: A Humanist and a Scientist Compare Notes
David A. Reichard and Kathy Takayama
10 Talking Across the Disciplines: Building Communicative Competence in a Multidisciplinary Graduate-Student Seminar on Inquiry in Teaching and Learning
Jennifer Meta Robinson, Melissa Gresalfi, April K. Sievert, Katherine Dowell Kearns, Tyler Booth Christensen, and Miriam E. Zolan
11 Getting at the Big Picture through SOTL
Lauren Scharff
12 Growing Our Own Understanding of Teaching and Learning: Planting the Seeds and Reaping the Harvest
Cheryl Albers
13 Navigating Interdisciplinary Riptides on the Way to the Scholarship of Integrative Learning
Carmen Werder
Contributors
Index
FOREWORD
MARY TAYLOR HUBER
Travel between the disciplinary and interdisciplinary poles of the scholarship of teaching and learning has always been exciting-sometimes easy, sometimes arduous; sometimes welcomed, sometimes feared. The tensions were evident early on, when Sherwyn Morreale and I edited an exploratory collection of essays titled Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching: Seeking Common Ground (2002). We noted then how the work draws strength from being situated in a discipline and its particular style. But growth in knowledge also comes at the borders of disciplinary imagination, and we called attention to the trading zones where scholars from different fields were exchanging insights, ideas, and findings even though the meanings and methods behind them may vary considerably among producer groups (2-3).
As this new collection demonstrates, travel between disciplinary and interdisciplinary destinations remains a defining feature of the scholarship of teaching and learning, and gives a special flavor to the experience of engaging in the work. Yet the essays gathered here also testify to two important developments. First, there has been the emergence of a more robust teaching commons in higher education, where communities of educators committed to pedagogical inquiry and innovation come together to share ideas about teaching and learning (Huber and Hutchings 2005, x). Second, through the enriched opportunities for trade that the commons provides, we now have a core set of resources-concepts, methods, analytical strategies-that all can draw on for inquiry into learning. What does this change in the landscape mean for the role of the disciplines in this work?
There s long been agreement that disciplines are key to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This comes in part from the work s character as practitioner inquiry in the classrooms (and associated labs, field sites, and community settings) where particular courses in particular fields are taught and learned. The questions scholars ask typically focus on what and how their students are (or are not) learning about course- and field-specific subject matter, values, dispositions, and skills. And while the main goal is improvement-designing learning environments that foster better learning outcomes-there has also been a strong conviction that inquiry emerging from one setting will be of interest to faculty teaching in the same discipline in other settings, both closer to home and further away. So another defining feature of the scholarship of teaching and learning has been a commitment to making the work public- community property as Lee Shulman (1993) memorably put it-in ways that one s colleagues can use and build on, with the goal of bringing teaching and learning more fully into the intellectual life (and strife) of the field.
Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning asked first about the kinds of homes the various disciplines provided for practitioner inquiry and pedagogical debate. Essay authors from ten fields-including humanities, sciences, social sciences, and professional schools-surveyed the scene. Had conversation about educational issues been central or marginalized in the discipline s recent history? Did the discipline s forums welcome or reject pedagogical contributions? Did the field s literature have much or little to offer scholars of teaching and learning? Were there strong communities of specialists engaged in research on teaching and learning in the discipline, and if so, how did they respond to regular faculty who took up the scholarship of teaching and learning? Answers to questions like these, we felt, could help us understand the opportunities and challenges that scholars of teaching and learning from these different disciplines would be facing as they attempted to draw from, influence, and strengthen the culture of teaching in their fields.
In addition to these questions about the place of pedagogy in the social and intellectual life of academic fields, Disciplinary Styles also explored cultural and epistemological influences. It explored how the disciplines have influenced key features of the scholarship of teaching and learning-the kinds of questions physicists, historians, or engineers ask about learning, the methods they use to investigate these questions, the approaches they take towards analyzing and interpreting results, and the presentation strategies they find most persuasive. As we said, For good or for ill, scholars of teaching and learning must address field-specific issues if they are going to be heard in their own disciplines, and they must speak in a language that their colleagues understand (2). Chemists, physicists, and engineers are most likely to pay attention to work that s designed to produce quantitative results; literary scholars and historians may look for other things-for example, theoretical sophistication, different kinds of evidence, and the quality of narrative explanation (Calder, Cutler, and Kelly 2002, 57).
These field-specific engagements remain powerful, but it was evident, even in 2002, that the scholarship of teaching and learning could not be contained within the social and cultural or epistemological boundaries of the disciplines. Practitioners engaged in the work often found that their close disciplinary colleagues were not yet tuned in, and they sought support from colleagues in other fields engaged in similar work. Further, many found it useful, and sometimes necessary, to go outside their discipline for ideas, methods, and analytic strategies (and on occasion, collaborators) to help understand what was happening in their classrooms, or, as Sherry Linkon puts it, to read their stude