Educational Administration and Supervision Commons^™

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

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

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 …

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.

Mentoring Honors Thesis Students: A Lawyer’S Perspective, Linda Vila

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As a mentor of thesis students in an honors program, I find that students acquire tremendously helpful substantive knowledge through courses they take during college but rarely develop a honed skill set necessary to succeed in graduate or professional education or employment in the real world. These skills range from problem solving to effective communication to analytical thinking. To address these weaknesses, I constructed an approach, borrowed from my law school days, for engaging students in an active, student-centered learning process during the thesis stage of their honors curriculum. My purpose is to provide them the opportunity to cultivate, if …

Learning By Leading And Leading By Teaching: A Student-Led Honors Seminar, Luke Vassiliou

Honors in Practice Online Archive

In the fall of 2004, the honors program at the two-year Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College offered six core classes and two one-hour seminars for the Honors students, and nothing else. The classes themselves were rewarding for both students and teachers and encouraged student participation, but since the program’s existence was limited to the space within the classroom walls, it had low visibility on campus and none beyond our campus. As a new (and completely inexperienced) honors director, I consulted both the NCHC executive committee’s statement of “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program” (1994) and Rew Godow’s article on …

Honors Calculus: An Historical Approach, Todd Timmons

Honors in Practice Online Archive

When the honors program at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith (then Westark Community College) began in 1990, it was decided that the honors mathematics course would be College Algebra, a decision based on the premise that our student population required an opportunity to earn honors credit at an introductory level, at least in mathematics. The course developed by the mathematics department met with some success by stimulating interest in algebra topics using an environmental modeling approach. The textbook, Earth Algebra (by Schuafele, Zumoff, Sims, and Sims), provided a wonderful opportunity for our students to learn the techniques of College Algebra …

A Dangerous Thing: A Memoir Of Learning And Teaching By Betty Krasne, Paul Strong

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Betty Krasne’s A Dangerous Thing: A Memoir of Learning and Teaching opens with her paternal grandparents, the Krasnoschezeks (the name means “red cheeks” and probably refers to a beard), leaving the Ukraine and its pogroms for the safety and hope of America. Once here, they set up as retail grocers, then wholesalers, then owners of Krasdale Foods and Bernice Foods. Both sides of the family make a good living. Betty’s mother’s parents, the Goldsteins, own a Philadelphia brownstone with a Steinway grand in the living room; her father’s family lives in a large apartment on Manhattan’s Central Park West. They …

Honors 2025: The Future Of The Honors College, Richard Ira Scott, Philip Frana

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As we attempt to foresee the future, we recognize that the increase in the number of honors colleges over the past decade appears to be an accelerating trend. We base our predictions on the continuation of this trend and on our need as honors administrators to anticipate and welcome the multiple impacts it will have on current and future honors colleges. We have selected four connected areas as the focus of our consideration: mission; curriculum; assessment and accreditation; and recruiting.

Literary Ornithology: Bird-Watching Across Academic Disciplines With Honors Students, Kateryna Schray

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As professors of literature, we have a fairly good chance of engaging our students when we teach Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” True, the text can seem daunting on a first read, but who can resist a moody if not downright creepy ghost story told by the survivor of a nightmarish ordeal to a detained and gradually mesmerized wedding guest? The story has an intriguing psychological component in the progressive isolation of its main narrator, strong theological references, and vivid tactile images. And it has a bird in it, an albatross, the image of which has …

Creating Faculty-Student Interaction, Lindsay Roberts, Jessie Salmon

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Creating a thriving community is a challenge for any honors program or college, especially for a program in transition like the Honors College at Towson University. The Honors College has approximately nine hundred students out of about sixteen thousand undergraduate students, and within the past three years it has undergone major curricular and structural changes. To keep honors students and faculty connected and invested in their honors experience through this transition period, the Honors College has focused on establishing a tighter bond between faculty and students, one that is unique to the college and recognized by the university as a …

Cultural Studies As The Foundation For An Honors Program: Documenting Students’ Academic And Personal Growth, Sara Quay, Amy Damico

Honors in Practice Online Archive

A new honors program based on the field of cultural studies rigorously combines theory and practice, resulting in significant academic and personal growth among participating honors students. Particular activities and assignments connect academic theories to real world experiences, including writing a ‘shopping’ paper, eating dinner at an Indian restaurant, conducting an ethnography, playing the Game of Life, and participating in a walking tour of Ground Zero. Pre- and post-test assessments, five qualitative surveys, and an end-of-the-year comprehensive portfolio are used to document student learning. A new honors journal publishes an essay by each student from the first year in the …

Portable Widgets And Techie Tattoos: Honors Of The Future, Rosalie Ortero

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Just twenty-five years ago, in 1982, Gray Austin from Ohio State was the NCHC President. William Daniel from Winthrop College was the program chair for the NCHC conference that was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conference fee was $46 and a room at the Hilton cost $37 a night. Writing Across the Curriculum was big news, and interdisciplinary seminars centered on the Great Books concept were a major component of honors programs. Today, there are honors programs and colleges at large and small universities, colleges, and community colleges. Service Learning is big news as is Outcomes Assessment. Honors curricula …

Sweden In The Summer: Developing An Honors Study-Abroad Program, Gayle Levy

Honors in Practice Online Archive

I want to begin this paper by making a claim with which, at first, not everyone might agree. Any good study abroad experience can be considered an honors experience. This short sentence raises any number of questions, which I cannot fully answer in this space, nor is it the primary topic of my essay. It is, however, a way to contextualize our one-month honors study abroad program at University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Using External Review In The Honors Project Process, Joyce W. Fields

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Understanding the competitive nature of applications to graduate programs, Ferrari and Davis (2000) surveyed psychology faculty to discover their level of awareness of resources for undergraduate research publication. They found that most of the psychology faculty members they surveyed were unaware of such resources. Their finding made me curious about how many honors directors, faculty, and advisors are aware of such resources for their students not only in psychology but in all disciplines across the curriculum. Most of us realize the importance of helping our students become competitive for graduate work, and we know that publication and/or presentation of research …

Honors In 2025: Becoming What You Emulate, Craig Cobane

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Predicting the future is always difficult and fraught with many dangers; just ask your local weather forecaster. The process of looking into the future, even if the predictions are in error, is nevertheless an important tool for honors faculty, staff, and administrators; it is part of the strategic planning process that helps develop new and interesting ideas. The goal of this essay is to look over the horizon, make some predictions about what honors education will look like in the year 2025, and encourage people to think about the future of honors. My predictions will most likely seem naive to …

History: Live At Five And Er, Marilyn L. Grady

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

Great sadness, the inability to sit in front of the television and watch history in action, I lament missing every moment of the Democratic candidates in front of the television cameras. The Democrats are providing the best in historical entertainment, live at five, every day. If we only had time to capture each verbal parry and spar. Think of how our political savvy would be enhanced from these lessons brought to us by the Democratic presidential candidates. Each day is a new extravaganza of "pulling out all the stops." My recent favorite was the Hilary Clinton family parade across my …

First Things First: Writing Strategies -- Do It Now, Marilyn L. Grady

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

Perhaps you know writers who, "Bat it out and fix it later" as their writing strategy of choice. This method is an excellent means of getting it down while the material is fresh and the flow of writing is brisk. In fact, this is an ideal method of avoiding the practice of over editing the first sentences to avoid writing! One major flaw in this technique is the failure to keep an accurate reference list. "Going back" and "doing it later" are not effective. The details slip away in stacks of papers and mountains of books. Before you begin to …

First Things First: Writing Strategies--Accountability, Marilyn L. Grady

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

How do you keep yourself on the writing path? Writing requires persistence and determination. Writing is a lonely task. Who are you accountable to when you are writing? First, you are accountable to yourself. Only you know what your writing goals are. You set the goals; you monitor the accomplishment of the goals. How clear are you about establishing your writing goals? Do you write everyday? Do you write on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Do you write in two-hour blocks or do you have the luxury of taking a whole day or more for writing? Do you make a list of …

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

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 …

The Monroe County Intermediate School District: A Case Study, Donald A. Spencer

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Background: Throughout the history of public education in Michigan, there has been an intermediate unit of educational government. This unit of educational government exists between the State Department of Education and the local school districts. Currently, there are fifty-seven intermediate school districts in Michigan providing educational services and governance functions.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand the Monroe County Intermediate School District in order to inform educational leadership.

Research Design: This study was an interpretive, historical case study. The study explored the manner in which culture was perpetuated via the system of education in Monroe, Michigan, throughout …

Superintendent In Action: A Qualitative Study Of An African -American Female Superintendent, Janice M. Kennedy

Doctoral Dissertations

Remarkably few females hold the position of superintendent of schools; although, there are capable women in the educational field who are qualified and interested in obtaining the position of superintendent of schools. Researchers proposed many reasons for this disparity, including the lack of studies regarding females in the superintendency. This research study sought to determine how one African-American female entered the male dominated executive position to become superintendent of a large school district in a southern state.

The following research questions were used to determine how this African-American female constructed her understanding of her leadership role through the lenses of …

The Social Participation Of Young Children With Developmental Disabilities In Inclusive Early Childhood Programs, Sue Walker Ph.D., Donna Berthelsen

Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education

The study reports an analysis of the social integration of six focus children with developmental disabilities in four preschool programs and their relative competences in relation to the typically developing children in the early childhood programs. For the 85 children in the preschool programs, including the children with developmental disabilities, peer acceptance was measured with sociometric interviews; social competence was rated by teachers; and observations of play activities and social engagement were made during four free play periods. A social constructivist analysis focuses on how learning was supported in the settings and implications are drawn about how opportunities for learning …

Fostering A Healthy Body Image: Prevention And Intervention With Adolescent Eating Disorders, Michelle Giles, Michael Hass

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Eating disorders are among the most frequently seen chronic illnesses found in adolescent females. In this paper, we discuss school-based prevention and intervention efforts that seek to reduce the impact of this serious illness. School counselors play a key role in the prevention of eating disorders and can provide support even when not directly involved in psychological or medical treatment. Because of their ability to play a leadership role in school-based prevention of eating disorders, school counselors are essential in facilitating a collaborative approach to the prevention of and intervention in eating disorders and their associated risk factors.

Directions For Change In H.E. In The Mekong Region: Pasts-Thinking To Futures-Thinking, And City Universities To Village Colleges, Martin Allinson

EDU-COM International Conference

Written by a retired university and college engineering teacher, who (at 73) is now Khon Kaen University‘s oldest student, doing a PhD study of Sustainable Development‘s Curriculum Effects, the paper is directed primarily to young members of faculty who are looking forward to their careers in universities as those universities will be in the future. The paper provides a challenge to universities in response to geopolitical change. While at first glance the scenario of global resource depletion and impact on the local Mekong Basin community presents a depressing picture, the paper provides an optimistic option based on forward thinking led …