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Full-Text Articles in Education
Transforming Departmental Culture: Empowering A Department Through Appreciative Inquiry, Symphony D. Oxendine, Kerry K. Robinson, Michele A. Parker
Transforming Departmental Culture: Empowering A Department Through Appreciative Inquiry, Symphony D. Oxendine, Kerry K. Robinson, Michele A. Parker
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This article outlines an appreciative inquiry (AI) into a departmental professional development process and describes the resulting implementation of an appreciative peer evaluation meeting as one part of the new professional development process. Using AI, a departmental faculty development committee sought to re-envision the professional development process. Also, the authors discuss how using AI can result in positive impacts for culture change and how the model for peer evaluation can promote both individual and collective development of faculty.
Caring For Our Communities Of Practice In Educational Development, Christopher V. H.-H. Chen, Katherine Kearns, Lynn Eaton, Darren S. Hoffmann, Denise Leonard, Martin Samuels
Caring For Our Communities Of Practice In Educational Development, Christopher V. H.-H. Chen, Katherine Kearns, Lynn Eaton, Darren S. Hoffmann, Denise Leonard, Martin Samuels
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Given the backdrop of multiple concurring crises—a global pandemic, political instability and violence, and multiple structural inequalities—we see the problem of now as this: How do educational developers continue to address the wicked problems in teaching and learning when we are simply so exhausted? Our article presents the importance of communities of practice for educational developers, inviting us to witness and name the communities in which we belong; the important functions they engage; who they nurture and how; and what care is undertaken to sustain these groups and ourselves. To help educational developers understand and appreciate the ways that communities …
In Search Of Silver Linings: Strategies For Preparing Future Faculty During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Tazin Daniels, Elizabeth Bailey, Anoff Nicholas Cobblah
In Search Of Silver Linings: Strategies For Preparing Future Faculty During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Tazin Daniels, Elizabeth Bailey, Anoff Nicholas Cobblah
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
In this article, we describe our experience as a racially and disciplinarily diverse, relatively junior program team who embraced the opportunity to transform a 20-year-old professional development seminar for graduate students into a remote offering in response to COVID-19. Our efforts to support our participants and champion an institutional move toward equitable and effective virtual programming are situated alongside the psychological tolls of remote work, a global health crisis, and ongoing racial violence across the United States. We recount our experience using, as a helpful metaphor, Lewin’s change model, which describes the process of “unfreezing,” “changing,” and “refreezing” long-standing assumptions …
Good To Great In Educational Development, Bruce Kelley
Good To Great In Educational Development, Bruce Kelley
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
We have been asked to describe One Thing that guides us as educational developers. For me, this is the strategic planning process described in Jim Collins’ Good to Great (2001). Collins provides a model that helps leaders navigate through change to build effective and influential centers. This framework has allowed me to develop a successful center despite periods of transition and uncertainty. Much of what I experience in my professional life is good. The challenge is to take it to the next level—to turn good into great. Collins’ strategic model provides a roadmap for how this might be accomplished.
A Minimalist Model Of New Faculty Mentoring: Why Asking For Less Gives More, Heather Lobban Viravong, Mark Schneider
A Minimalist Model Of New Faculty Mentoring: Why Asking For Less Gives More, Heather Lobban Viravong, Mark Schneider
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
We describe a research-based mentoring program for new full-time faculty at a small residential college, which emphasizes the empowerment of the new faculty themselves to identify and obtain the resources they need for success. In our model, the mentor takes on a role of primarily providing accountability, easing the burden on mentors, thereby making for a more sustainable program. Our mixed methods assessment of the program suggests that, paradoxically, these lessened expectations foster closer personal relationships between mentor and protégé than might have occurred if that were a programmatic expectation.
Mentoring Graduate Student Staff In A Center For Teaching And Learning: Goals And Aligned Practices, Kristin Rudenga, Joseph Lambert
Mentoring Graduate Student Staff In A Center For Teaching And Learning: Goals And Aligned Practices, Kristin Rudenga, Joseph Lambert
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Graduate student staff (GSS) positions, commonly used in centers for teaching and learning (CTL) to expand capacity and extend disciplinary connections on campus, also offer the potential for a meaningful developmental experience for the students who fill them. Drawing on the literature on graduate student mentorship, we lay out goals and aligned practices to inform the mentoring of GSS in CTL aimed at advancing their pedagogical, professional, and personal development. Such deliberate attention to mentoring in a CTL context can enhance the experience and development of the GSS themselves, as well as improve the work of the CTL.
Evaluating Centers For Teaching And Learning: A Field-Tested Model, Susan R. Hines
Evaluating Centers For Teaching And Learning: A Field-Tested Model, Susan R. Hines
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This paper provides a program evaluation model, along with field-testing results, that was developed in response to the need for an evaluation model able to support systematic evaluation of teaching and learning centers (CTLs). The model builds upon the author’s previous studies investigating the evaluation practices and struggles experienced at 53 CTLs. Findings from these studies attribute evaluation struggles to contextual issues involving evaluation capacity, ill- structured curricula, and ill-conceived evaluation frameworks. This field-tested Four-Phase Program Evaluation Model addresses these issues by approaching evaluation in a comprehensive manner that includes an evaluation capacity analysis, curricular conceptualization, evaluation planning, and plan …
Developmental Stages Of New Graduate Student Instructional Consultants: Implications For Professional Growth, Mary C. Wright, Laura N. Schram, Kristen S. Gorman
Developmental Stages Of New Graduate Student Instructional Consultants: Implications For Professional Growth, Mary C. Wright, Laura N. Schram, Kristen S. Gorman
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Effective consulting is a key skill for educational developers. Although most educational developers are new to the field, there is limited research about how new practitioners develop consulting skills. The key research question this study explores is: How do new graduate teaching consultants develop as practitioners? This study empirically applies several “classic” models of consulting to better understand new consultants’ perceived development of expertise, preferred consulting approaches, and reflection about them. The findings are generally confirmatory of the ways that classic frameworks map onto the development of consultants. They also suggest greater attention to supporting new consultants beyond “getting started,” …