Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Measuring Student Learning To Document Faculty Teaching Effectiveness, Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Recent research has questioned the validity of student ratings as proxy measures for how much students learn, and this learning is a commonly accepted meaning of faculty teaching effectiveness. Student ratings capture student satisfaction more than anything else. Moreover, the overriding assessment criterion in accreditation and accountability-that applied to programs, schools, and institutions-is student learning, so it only makes sense to evaluate faculty by the same standard. This chapter explains and evaluates course-level measures of student learning based on data that are easy for facuity to collect and administrators to use.

Mobile App Learning Lounge: A Scalable And Sustainable Model For Twenty-First-Century Learning, Michael H. Truong

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Twenty-first-century learning is increasingly defined by the use of mobile devices and applications. Centers for teaching and learning can help facuity and students acquire greater familiarity and fluency with just-in-time learning using mobile apps by creating informal, inviting, and informative learning spaces on their campuses. This chapter features the Mobile App Learning Lounge (MALL), a low-cost, high impact initiative of a center for teaching and learning at a California research university. Beyond sharing how MALL works, this chapter offers practical suggestions and strategies for replicating a similar ini tiative at other institutions.

Determining Our Own Tempos: Exploring Slow Pedagogy, Curriculum, Assessment, And Professional Development, Peter A. Shaw, Jennifer L. Russell

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Key concepts and values in the Slow Living movement speak to many questions and tensions arising around calls for change in higher educa tion, porous work/life boundaries, rapid developments in technology, concerns about sustainability, and a desire to question assumptions and move beyond tips and tricks to more fundamental issues in curriculum and pedagogy. We propose a framework for Slow learning and teaching that incorporates various trends in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment with implications for the role of technology and for professional development.

Pedagogical Gamification: Principles Of Video Games That Can Enhance Teaching, Kevin Yee

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Edutainment products have long tried to harness the "fun" quotient of games and video games for education, but the principles of gamification have only recently begun to be better understood and operationalized for business and education. The concepts that underpin successful games can be put to use in online as well as face-to-face classes, resulting in edu cational experiences that have the best of both worlds: a game-based overlay without becoming too technical. This chapter explains the con cepts involved in successful games and provides ideas for translating those principles into practice in the classroom (or online) environment.

The Reacting To The Past Pedagogy And Engaging The First–Year Student, Paula Kay Lazrus, Gretchen Kreahling Mckay

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter investigates the value of the Reacting to the Past pedagogy with regard to engaging first-year students. In recent years, calls to improve student engagement and active learning techniques have grown, and few have been as successful in producing the desired results as Reacting to the Past. This chapter investigates why Reacting is so suc cessful in meeting the goals of high-impact practices that increase student engagement and learning. We also examine how the Reacting pedagogy and first-year seminars encourage problem solving, critical thinking, and writing among students.

Formal And Informal Support For Pretenure Faculty: Recommendations For Administrators And Institutions, Gwendolyn Mettetal, Gail M. Mcguire

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

We analyze interviews from sixty-five faculty and administrators to understand the formal and informal types of support that pretenure faculty use to navigate their way to tenure. By understanding the different types of support that pretenure faculty need, institutions can better address the diverse issues that junior facuity confront when preparing for tenure and can ensure that all candidates receive some type of support. We conclude that institutions need to be intentional about offering both formal and informal support to pretenure faculty at various points in their careers.

Assessing The Long–Term Impact Of A Professional Development Program, Marcia M. Tennill, Margaret W. Cohen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This study was designed to explore the long-term impact of a year-long facuity development program on participants. Three guiding questions focused the study: In what ways did the program influence the profes sional lives of participants five years after completion? How did the participants integrate those experiences into their professional lives? and What recommendations for best practices in the field of facuity devel opment can be drawn? Donald Kirkpatrick’s four-level evaluation model was the template for this qualitative research. Results indicated that participants retained program learning over time.

Enhancing Vitality In Academic Medicine: Faculty Development And Productivity, Megan M. Palmer, Krista Longtin-Hoffmann, Tony Ribera, Mary E. Dankoski, Amy K. Ribera, Tom F. Nelson Laird

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The prevalence of low satisfaction and increased stress among faculty in academic medicine makes understanding facuity vitality in this field more important than ever before. To explore the contributors to and outcomes of faculty vitality, we conducted a multi-institutional study of faculty in academic medicine (N = 1,980, 42 percent response rate). Faculty were surveyed about climate and leadership, career and life management, satisfaction, engagement, productivity, and involvement in faculty development. Analysis reveals that controlling for other factors, academic medicine faculty who participate regularly in facuity development activ ities are significantly more satisfied, engaged, and productive.

An Examination Of The Learning Activities, Cognitive Level Of Instruction, And Teacher Immediacy Behaviors Of Successful Instructors In A College Of Agriculture, Christopher M. Estepp, Christopher T. Stripling, Nathan W. Conner, Aaron Giorgi, T Grady Roberts

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

The National Research Council (NRC) has indicated that effective instruction in colleges of agriculture should prepare students to enter a dynamically changing workplace by helping students learn to be proficient in 21st century skills. The NRC suggested that effective instruction in colleges of agriculture should encompass a hospitable learning environment that includes a variety of learning activities that reach higher levels of cognition. The purpose of this study was to observe instructors in a college of agriculture who have been deemed successful and examine their teaching behaviors. This study investigated the learning activities used by these instructors, the cognitive level …

Becoming-Belieber: Girls' Passionate Encounters With Bieber Culture, Kortney Sherbine

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

In this article, I draw on French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s (1987) notion of becoming to consider the ways in which these encounters with people, materials, and technologies are productive, creating space for Beliebers to come into relationship with one another and with popular culture in ways that are new and that I never could have anticipated during my more carefully organized and school-curriculum-driven interactions with girls during my six years as an elementary school teacher. Through my current research into young girls’ after-school fanaticism, I have been able to come to know girls differently than I knew …

Using Text Structures Of Information Books To Teach Writing In The Primary Grades, Sarah K. Clark, Cindy D'On Jones, D. Ray Reutzel

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

Teaching children in the primary grades the text structures and features used by authors of information text has been shown to improve comprehension of information texts and provide the scaffolding and support these children need in order to write their own information texts. As teachers implement the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS), they will need support and training on how to meet these increased curricular demands. In this article, we describe how children’s information books can be used as exemplars of well-structured text models to teach young students how to write selected discourse patterns required in the …

A Journey Toward Mastery Teaching: Stem Faculty Engagement In A Year-Long Faculty Learning Community, Louis S. Nadelson, Susan E. Shadle, Jill K. Hettinger

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

As part of an institutional focus on STEM student success, a group of STEM faculty participated in a year-long faculty learning community (FLC) to explore and adopt research-based best practice in their teaching. The authors assessed the effectiveness of the FLC in influencing faculty perceptions about teaching and increasing their use of best teaching practices. Their research design used pre- and post-analysis of participants' teaching logs, classroom observations, and a survey instrument that probed attitudes toward teaching and learning. Data analysis shows that the sustained support provided by the FLC increased faculty knowledge of best teaching practices and catalyzed faculty …

Metamemory, John Dunlosky, Keith W. Thiede

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Metamemory refers to people’s beliefs about their memory and to how people monitor and control their learning and retrieval. In this chapter, we describe monitoring and control processes involved in learning and retrieval, how these processes have been measured, and key outcomes relevant to human metamemory. Based on these outcomes, general conclusions include the following: (a) people’s judgments of their memory are based on a variety of cues; hence (b) judgment accuracy arises from the diagnosticity of the cues, so that above-chance accuracy of any metamemory judgment only arises when the available cues are predictive (or diagnostic) of criterion performance; …

Chem 109: General Chemistry I—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Eric D. Dodds

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio has been developed for CHEM 109: General Chemistry I. The course is the first of a freshman level two semester sequence in General Chemistry taken by students with majors in a wide variety of technical and scientific disciplines. CHEM 109 is a high enrollment class, with class sizes for individual sections nearing 200 students. The development of this portfolio was conducted with the following objectives: 1. Clearly identify, justify, and codify the major learning objectives for this course, 2. Describe and rationalize the course structure and learning assessment methods, 3. Analyze and reflect on student achievement in the …

Larc 331: Site Systems Iii (Landscape Implementation)—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Bret Betnar

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio investigates LARC 331 Site Systems III: Landscape Implementation, a 3rd year undergraduate course that focuses on the implementation of landscape architectural designs, in which students take a previous Site Design studio project and develop this project into a landscape architectural construction package.

Exhibit Curriculum For Condition: My Place Our Longing (Lesson 2 Of 2), Sarah Aponte, Dania Diag

Open Educational Resources

Exhibit curriculum for the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute exhibit, Condition: My Place Our Longing.

The exhibit highlights the work of two young Dominican immigrant artists living in New York: Julianny Ariza and Leslie Jiménez and showcases original pieces produced between 2011 and 2012 that explore the subject of living in between two worlds, and other conditions of living.

Transferability And Alignment Of Program Exemplars In Teacher Preparation, Juliann Sergi Mcbrayer

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Teacher preparation needs to be revamped to adequately prepare teachers for P-12 classrooms. Public charter schools are experiencing challenges that include high teacher attrition rates and staffing difficulties in a rapidly growing sector, as well as obstacles for teachers to obtain certification. Thus, charter school teachers are seeking a “choice” in teacher preparation to meet the innovative needs of the sector. To address critical shortages of highly effective teachers, states are offering both traditional and nontraditional teacher preparation to earn licensure. The goal of this study was to determine if program exemplars from traditional teacher preparation were transferable to, and …

The Effect Of Creative Drama Method On Pre-Service Classroom Teachers’ Writing Skills And Attitudes Towards Writing, Tolga Erdogan

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The aim of the study is to explore the effect of the creative drama method on pre-service classroom teachers’ writing skills and attitudes towards writing. Additionally, the views of the pre-service teachers concerning the creative drama method were also investigated in the study. The participants of the study were 24 pre-service teachers studying at Karadeniz Technical University Fatih Faculty of Education. The participants were asked to write activities with using creative drama method. The design of the study is mixed in that it included both qualitative and quantitative methods of research. The writings of the participants at the beginning and …

Using Narrative As A Tool To Locate And Challenge Pre Service Teacher Bodies In Health And Physical Education, Jennifer A. Mcmahon, Dawn Penney

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper reports on research that has explored the use of narrative as a pedagogical tool in pre service teacher education. Specifically, we pursue the use of narrative to engage with pre service teachers’ embodied experiences [their lived body] and the ways in which these experiences are in turn currently influencing their ‘living bodies’ in regard to what Health and Physical Education (HPE) is and how it should be taught. Data in the form of an assemblage of pre service teachers’ narratives are presented to show how both the lived and living body contributes to thoughts and ideas about HPE. …

Framing Teacher Educator Engagement In An Online Environment, Janet Dyment, Jill Downing, Yoshi Budd

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In this conceptual paper, we draw upon Pittaway’s (2012) Engagement Framework, using it as a lens through which to examine the personal, professional, academic, intellectual and social dimensions of teacher educators’ engagement within an online teaching environment. We reflect on findings from our pilot study (Downing & Dyment, 2013) and draw on key literatures in the fields of higher education, teacher education and online teaching to explore the various dimensions of the Engagement Framework, particularly as they relate to teacher educators’ engagement. We offer recommendations for teacher educators to consider as they contemplate the move to online preparation of pre-service …