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Full-Text Articles in Education
About The Authors, Volume 26 (2008)
About The Authors, Volume 26 (2008)
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
About the editors and authors of volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.
Preface, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson
Preface, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Preface to volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Douglas Reimondo Robertson of Northern Kentucky University.
A Research–Based Rubric For Developing Statements Of Teaching Philosophy, Matthew Kaplan, Deborah S. Meizlish, Christopher O'Neal, Mary C. Wright
A Research–Based Rubric For Developing Statements Of Teaching Philosophy, Matthew Kaplan, Deborah S. Meizlish, Christopher O'Neal, Mary C. Wright
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Despite its ubiquity as the way that instructors represent their views on teaching and learning, the statement of teaching philosophy can be a frustrating document to write and the results are often uneven. This chapter describes a rubric created at the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching to help faculty and graduate students craft teaching statements. We describe the research that informed the creation of the rubric, talk about how we use the rubric in our consultations and workshops, and present an assessment that validates the use of the rubric to improve instructors’ teaching statements.
Investigating Indicators Of The Scholarship Of Teaching: Teaching Awards In Research Universities, Stacie Badran
Investigating Indicators Of The Scholarship Of Teaching: Teaching Awards In Research Universities, Stacie Badran
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Results from a nationwide study of teaching awards programs in mathematics departments of U.S. research universities show that only a small percentage even offers such awards. Those that do either use ad hoc procedures and criteria for making awards or prioritize curricular contributions over instructional and pedagogical knowledge in selecting award winners. In addition, mathematics faculty reserve the term scholarship for research in the discipline rather than research on teaching of the discipline.
Thawing The Chilly Climate: Inclusive Teaching Resources For Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math, Katherine A. Friederich, Sherill L. Sellers, Judith N. Burstyn
Thawing The Chilly Climate: Inclusive Teaching Resources For Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math, Katherine A. Friederich, Sherill L. Sellers, Judith N. Burstyn
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Although universities are aware of the need to promote diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), this awareness has not translated into significant changes in classroom environments. Many STEM instructors would like to offer equal opportunities for success to all of their students, but they are not sure where to begin. We describe an effective group of teaching tools that can empower STEM faculty and graduate students to modify their courses to address diversity at their own pace. These resources extend from awareness exercises to recommendations for action and have been useful tools for course design, teaching assistant training, …
Meeting The Challenges Of Integrative Learning: The Nexia Concept, Jane Love
Meeting The Challenges Of Integrative Learning: The Nexia Concept, Jane Love
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Integrative learning challenges faculty developers to facilitate integrative and connective experiences not only for students, but for faculty as well. For many faculty, curricular requirements impede connective teaching, and the widespread assumption that connectivity must be taught on the course level also limits their ability to enrich students’ learning through diverse perspectives and interactions. Nexia is an approach to this problem based on the concept of ad hoc connectivity, or small-scale, focused, short-term connections that allow students from two or more courses to interact around points of interest to both classes. By releasing connective teaching from expensive curricular constraints, the …
Stereotype Threat And Ten Things We Can Do To Remove The Threat In The Air, Franklin A. Tuitt, Lois Reddick
Stereotype Threat And Ten Things We Can Do To Remove The Threat In The Air, Franklin A. Tuitt, Lois Reddick
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
The purpose of this chapter is to present an overview of the literature related to stereotype threat in an effort to provide faculty members and instructional developers with a better understanding of what the phenomenon is and what can be done about it in college classroom settings. To this end, we reviewed several of the major studies published on the subject between 1995 and 2005 and compiled a list of strategies that reflected both the major empirical findings on stereotype threat and our own research and experiences with faculty and students in college settings. Given the enormity of the subject, …
Credibility And Effectiveness In Context: An Exploration Of The Importance Of Faculty Status For Faculty Developers, Bonnie B. Mullinix
Credibility And Effectiveness In Context: An Exploration Of The Importance Of Faculty Status For Faculty Developers, Bonnie B. Mullinix
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This study documents an emerging profile of the faculty status of faculty developers as solicited, compiled, and interactively interpreted with faculty developer practitioners. It used integrated (mixed) methodology and participatory research strategies to gather data and it shares descriptive statistical information on the various positions held by faculty developer respondents; qualitatively analyzed impressions of the importance of faculty status to their credibility and effectiveness as faculty developers; and information regarding respondents’ institutional contexts. Findings are further disaggregated across institutional contexts and sex to explore trends, differential perceptions, and other emergent issues as identified by participant researchers.
The Teaching Resource Portfolio: A Tool Kit For Future Professoriate And A Resource Guide For Current Teachers, Dieter J. Schönwetter
The Teaching Resource Portfolio: A Tool Kit For Future Professoriate And A Resource Guide For Current Teachers, Dieter J. Schönwetter
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Extensive annotated bibliographies have guided academic researchers over several years and in various disciplines, providing key resources to assist in the development of new ideas. However, less common are published annotated bibliographies on effective teaching resources, both general to teaching across various disciplines as well as specific to each discipline, that guide the academic in the teaching enterprise. This chapter focuses on a tool, the teaching resource portfolio, that helps the graduate student preparing for an academic career including teaching, the new faculty member desiring additional teaching resources, the academic wishing to have resources that support discipline-specific scholarship of teaching …
Bibliography, Volume 26 (2008)
Bibliography, Volume 26 (2008)
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Bibliography for volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.
Supporting The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning At Liberal Arts Colleges, Dolores Peters, David Schodt, Mary Walczak
Supporting The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning At Liberal Arts Colleges, Dolores Peters, David Schodt, Mary Walczak
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Although the liberal arts college, with its traditional focus on teaching, may seem like a natural environment for the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), few such institutions participate in national SoTL initiatives. Our associates’ experience since 2001 suggests a model for supporting SoTL in teaching-intensive contexts based on faculty ownership, a focus on general education, and some emerging rules of engagement. Because faculty reward systems must validate SoTL if it is to become part of the institutional culture, we also describe one department’s efforts to reform its review criteria in order to define scholarly activity broadly.
Grounded Theory Research In Faculty Development: The Basics, A Live Example, And Practical Tips For Faculty Developers, Michael Sweet, Rochelle Roberts, Joshua Walker, Stephen Walls, John Kuscera, Shana Shaw, Janet Riekenberg, Marilla Svinicki
Grounded Theory Research In Faculty Development: The Basics, A Live Example, And Practical Tips For Faculty Developers, Michael Sweet, Rochelle Roberts, Joshua Walker, Stephen Walls, John Kuscera, Shana Shaw, Janet Riekenberg, Marilla Svinicki
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
While autobiographical narratives and case study reflections remain vital to faculty development research, we must also make substantive efforts to build theory in our field. Researchers making claims about collective meanings of observed behaviors and the mechanisms that underlie them (i.e., theoretical claims about social behavior) must be disciplined in how they identify and organize the evidence they use to support those claims. Such systematic, inductive theory-building in the social sciences is called “grounded theory” research. This chapter presents the basics of grounded theory research, describes a grounded theory research program currently being executed by faculty developers, and offers practical …
Introduction, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson
Introduction, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Introduction to volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Douglas Reimondo Robertson of Northern Kentucky University.
Promoting Learning–Focused Teaching Through A Project–Based Faculty Development Program, Susanna Calkins, Greg Light
Promoting Learning–Focused Teaching Through A Project–Based Faculty Development Program, Susanna Calkins, Greg Light
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This chapter describes how we incorporated project-based learning into a yearlong faculty development program at a research-intensive private university located in the Midwest. This inquiry-based approach fosters critical reflection on teaching and promotes learner-focused teaching in a manner that encourages deeper student approaches to learning. We use case studies, drawn from critical accounts of faculty projects, to illustrate a model that depicts how faculty understand improvement in their teaching and to identify key program elements that facilitated the adoption of learning-focused teaching practices by our participants.
Reflecting And Writing About Our Teaching, Mark Weisberg
Reflecting And Writing About Our Teaching, Mark Weisberg
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Reflecting on what we are doing can help us become better teachers and better people; yet in our increasingly busy and stressful lives, how can we find the space and time? This chapter describes and exemplifies two strategies that can help us and our colleagues become more reflective about our teaching and about our vocation: the Teachers’ Reading Circle, meeting for regular discussions of provocative texts about teaching and learning, and the Teachers’ Writing Circle, using prompts and examples of colleagues’ writing to set participants on an extended course of writing about their own teaching.
Breaking Down Barriers To The Use Of Technology For Teaching In Higher Education, Erping Zhu
Breaking Down Barriers To The Use Of Technology For Teaching In Higher Education, Erping Zhu
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This chapter examines the most common technologies used for teaching on college campuses and the most common barriers to advanced uses of technology tools. Survey results consistently show that the major barriers to incorporating technology into higher education are lack of faculty time, faculty doubts about the relevancy of technology to disciplinary learning, and inadequate technical support for faculty projects and technology uses. This chapter, then, proposes several approaches developed and assessed by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan for removing those barriers to technology uses in higher education. Although providing flexible technology …
Team Mentoring: An Alternative Way To Mentor New Faculty, Tara Gray, A. Jane Birch
Team Mentoring: An Alternative Way To Mentor New Faculty, Tara Gray, A. Jane Birch
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Traditional mentoring programs usually have no mechanism for Protégés to learn from each other, and they often match protégés with mentors sight unseen. Team mentoring is a less hierarchical program in which protégés mentor each other in a group while searching for more permanent and personal mentors. In this program, protégés and mentors are arguably better matched because mentors are chosen by the Protégé. In addition, Protégés benefit by tapping into the wisdom of their peers. As a result, team mentoring is a viable alternative to traditional mentoring programs.
Marketing Plans For Faculty Development: Student And Faculty Development Center Collaboration For Mutual Benefit, Victoria Mundy Bhavsar, Steven J. Skinner
Marketing Plans For Faculty Development: Student And Faculty Development Center Collaboration For Mutual Benefit, Victoria Mundy Bhavsar, Steven J. Skinner
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Our faculty development center engaged senior-level business students as consultants to help us inform instructors about our resources. The students argued that organizational and marketing tasks are critical to our pedagogical work as they create opportunities for the pedagogical work to occur. This chapter describes the collaboration, the students’ recommendations, and the center’s response. Engaging students, our ultimate clients, in setting priorities for our center was a powerful learning experience for both us and them. Other centers may wish to use our experiences as impetus to collaborate with students on their campuses.
Easing Entry Into The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Through Focused Assessments: The “Decoding The Disciplines” Approach, Joan K. Middendorf, David Pace
Easing Entry Into The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Through Focused Assessments: The “Decoding The Disciplines” Approach, Joan K. Middendorf, David Pace
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Students’ difficulty in mastering material can motivate faculty toward the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) if instructors’ frustration can be framed as a researchable question, and they have practical models for assessing learning outcomes. The “decoding the disciplines” approach supports this shift from reflective teaching to SoTL. By focusing on narrowly defined bottlenecks to learning, faculty define researchable questions convincing to their disciplines. The specificity of these inquiries makes the assessment of learning much easier through the application of existing tools, such as those provided in Angelo and Cross’s Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993). Example of specific assessments are provided.
Points Without Limits: Individual Inquiry, Collaborative Investigation, And Collective Scholarship, Richard A. Gale
Points Without Limits: Individual Inquiry, Collaborative Investigation, And Collective Scholarship, Richard A. Gale
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
This chapter proposes that a scholarship of teaching and learning focused on collaborative and collective inquiry can be more effective and have greater impact on student learning and the advancement of knowledge than investigations accomplished by individual faculty and students working in isolation. This conclusion is arrived at as a result of examining the work of Carnegie Scholars and the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Campus Program participants since 1998.
Ethical Guidelines For Educational Developers
Ethical Guidelines For Educational Developers
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Ethical guidelines for educational developers prepared by Mintz, Smith, & Warren, January 1999. Revised March 1999, September 1999, and March 2000.
Evaluating Teaching: A New Approach To An Old Problem, L. Dee Fink
Evaluating Teaching: A New Approach To An Old Problem, L. Dee Fink
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
The approach to evaluating the quality of teaching described in this chapter starts by developing a Model of Good Teaching. This model is then used to create a set of evaluation procedures based on four key dimensions of teaching: design of learning experiences, quality of teacher/student interactions, extent and quality of student learning, and teacher’s effort to improve over time. The challenges and benefits of using these procedures are discussed.
Faculty Development At Small And Liberal Arts Colleges, Kim M. Mooney, Michael Reder
Faculty Development At Small And Liberal Arts Colleges, Kim M. Mooney, Michael Reder
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
The notable growth of faculty development programs and centers at small institutions warrants attention before their next stages of growth. We aim to capture and convey the central issues coalescing around the professionalization of teaching and learning activities and the work of faculty developers at small colleges. While this descriptive review draws direct comparisons to other types of institutions, particularly large research and comprehensive universities that serve as the norm for our profession’s faculty development practices, its main purpose is to address the distinctive characteristics of professional development at small colleges in general and liberal arts colleges in particular. Toward …
Co-Teaching As A Faculty Development Model, Andrea L. Beach, Charles Henderson, Michael Famiano
Co-Teaching As A Faculty Development Model, Andrea L. Beach, Charles Henderson, Michael Famiano
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
Co-teaching is a promising and cost-effective approach to promoting fundamental research-based instructional change. In this chapter, we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of co-teaching and describe our initial experience with it. A new instructor (MF) co-taught with an instructor experienced in physics education research-based reforms (CH). An outsider (AB) conducted separate interviews with each instructor and observed several class sessions. Results include immediate use of research-based instructional practices by the new instructor and a significant change in teaching beliefs over time. Recommendations are made for implementing co-teaching as part of a faculty development program.
Assessment Of A Faculty Learning Community Program: Do Faculty Members Really Change?, Susan Polich
Assessment Of A Faculty Learning Community Program: Do Faculty Members Really Change?, Susan Polich
To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development
In this study, participants in a faculty learning community (FLC) program were followed to see if they had really changed their epistemological beliefs and teaching methods. Of the 39 FLC participants, 87% reported a change in their epistemological beliefs and 79% reported a change in their teaching methods. Seven participants were followed in-depth to determine if their reported changes actually occurred. Observations suggest that none of the seven appeared to have changed epistemological beliefs although all changed teaching methods. More importantly, the participants adopted their new pedagogy only when the pedagogy was aligned with their beliefs.