Higher Education Commons^™

Living Engagement, Bell Hooks, Douglas Reimondo Robertson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In this “talking chapter” bell hooks reveals, through dialogue about her thoughts and experiences related to college teaching and learning, a profound and robust perspective on what could be called “deep” faculty development. Topics include engaged pedagogy, therapeutic conversations, spiritual practice, difference, conflict, and love.

The Abcs Of Fractal Thinking In Higher Education, Edward Nuhfer

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

All learning establishes and often stabilizes neural networks in the brain. These carry both cognitive and affective attributes and have fractal form. Fractal networks produce many actions and products that exhibit fractal qualities. Awareness of such qualities provides a unifying key to understanding and applying educational knowledge. It represents a marked shift in perception that differs from thinking customarily employed in considering information as a specialist. This alternate perspective helps professionals in higher education draw on diverse information from specialty research and apply it more effectively.

Faculty Development In Student Learning Communities: Exploring The Vitality Of Mid–Career Faculty Participants, Shari Ellertson, John H. Schuh

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Student learning communities result in numerous benefits for students and institutions, but less is known about the influence of learning community participation on faculty renewal and development. This qualitative study examines mid-career faculty members’ involvement in student learning communiities to explore the degree to which the construct of vitality appropriately describes and illuminates their experiences. Findings suggest that learning communities foster vitality by serving as a boundary-spanning activity where faculty can merge various work interests, allowing them to engage in purposeful production and providing them with experiences that help generate feelings of energy, excitement, and engagement with their work.

Making Meaning Of A Life In Teaching: A Memoir–Writing Project For Seasoned Faculty, Kathleen F. O'Donovan, Steve R. Simmons

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The University of Minnesota’s faculty development project, “Making Meaning of a Life in Teaching,” promotes collegiality and enhances self-reflection for those who are cxperienced classroom instructors. Started in October. 2003, this project provides a forum that invites participants to examine specific memories from their teaching lives and to transform those recollections into a written memoir. This chapter explores the use of memoir as an effective tool for faculty development, describes the project’s structure and components, and presents both co-facilitator and participant perspectives on the process and the memoir product.

Transforming A Teaching Culture Through Peer Mentoring: Connecticut College's Johnson Teaching Seminar For Incoming Faculty, Michael Reder, Eugene V. Gallagher

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter describes a yearlong seminar focused on teaching that is offered to all incoming tenure-track faculty at Connecticut College, a small residential liberal arts college. This seminar is distinctive because it is facilitated by second- and third-year faculty. We argue that this peer-mentoring model has three distinct benefits. First, it avoids many of the pitfalls identified with traditional one-on-one mentoring. Second, it addresses the distinctive challenges that faculty face at small colleges. Third, it provides a strong base for faculty to pursue the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). We believe that our peer-mentoring model may well be adaptable …

Preparing Future Faculty For Careers In Academic Librarianship: A Paradigm Shift For Collaboration In Higher Education, Sean Patrick Knowlton, Laura L. B. Border

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Nationwide, tire number of available faculty positions represents only a fraction of the master’s and doctoral degrees granted each year. Fortunately, faculty positions are available in academic librarianship, which is experiencing a decline in qualified applicants. A pioneering collaboration between a graduate student professional development program and an academic library has created a fellowship program that allows master’s and doctoral students to consider careers in academic librarianship through mentored fellowships. Initial results show that participants intend to pursue librarianship as an academic career in which to use and expand their advanced subject and/or language expertise.

How Do You Handle This Situation? Responses By Faculty In Great Britain And The United States To Workshops On The Ethics Of Teaching, Miriam Rosalyn Diamond

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty in the United States and Great Britain took part in workshops exploring educational ethics. Participants articulated concerns about balancing approachability with fairness, cross-cultural communication, conveying standards to students, and academic integrity. Responses to the session were positive, and both groups indicated an interest in continuing discourse on the topic. The groups differed on specific issues of interest, as well as feedback on the session. Some of these appear to be culturally influenced. Overall, this workshop presents a model for providing faculty with the opportunity to examine and formulate direction when dealing with ethical issues related to teaching.

Surviving To Tenure, James M. Lang

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

For most new faculty, anxiousness about the tenure application begins from the first day on the job. Surviving the six intervening years on the tenure track requires a range of time- and career-management skills that new faculty may only learn piecemeal along the way. New faculty need help in five specific areas in order to survive their path down the tenure track: 1) developing teaching strategies that will fit their personalities and reach as many students as possible, 2) managing their time to allow for research and publication, 3) determining what and how many service commitments to make, 4) existing …

A Critical Theory Perspective On Faculty Development, Stephen D. Brookfield

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter argues that critical theory implies a number of conceptions and practices of teaching, and it applies a critical theory perspective to conducting faculty development. It speculates on how faculty development might be organized according to some insights drawn from critical theory, and it reviews the chief reasons why teachers resist engaging with this perspective.

Structuring Complex Cooperative Learning Activities In 50–Minute Classes, Barbara J. Millis

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Given the power of learning-centered teaching, faculty can be coached to structure cooperative activities wisely and well, even within 50-minute class periods where there is a perception that complex group work is difficult. In addition to giving some basic advice on team formation and classroom management, this chapter provides examples of five complex cooperative learning structures—Jigsaw, Send-a-Problem, Cooperative Debates, Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning, and Bingo—that can be conducted within 50-minute classes. The specific literature-based examples are complemented by examples in a variety of other disciplines, making them seem doable to more faculty.

The Scholarship Of Civic Engagement: Defining, Documenting, And Evaluating Faculty Work, Robert G. Bringle, Julie A. Hatcher, Patti H. Clayton

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Civic engagement, which is presented as teaching, research, and service in and with the community, presents new challenges for evaluating faculty work as part of the reappointment, promotion, and tenure process. The nature of service-learning, professional service, and participatory action research are examined as faculty work that can be scholarly (i.e., well informed) and the basis of scholarship (i.e., contributing to a knowledge base). As such, examples of evidence for documenting the work and issues associated with evaluating dossiers are presented.

How Post–Tenure Review Can Support The Teaching Development Of Senior Faculty, Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Mei-Yau Shih, Mathew L. Ouellett, Marjory Stewart

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

A key question that campuses face as they develop and implement post-tenure review policies is how to blend the concepts of accountability and renewal. This chapter examines a faculty development initiative linked to a post-tenure review policy at a research-intensive university. It describes the goals, processes, and outcomes of a five-year study of the program, extending research on post-tenure review and its potential for positive faculty development.

Putting Students First: How Colleges Develop Students Purposefully, Jeffrey P. Bouman

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

No abstract provided.

Growth No. 7 (2007) - Full Issue

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

The full issue of the seventh edition of Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development.

The Christian College: A History Of Protestant Higher Education In America, Jason M. Morris, Michelle Lessly

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

No abstract provided.

Christianity And The Soul Of The University: Faith As A Foundation For Intellectual Community, Barry Loy

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

No abstract provided.

Journal Of Mathematics And Science: Collaborative Explorations

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

No abstract provided.

What Beliefs And Intended Actions Do Reform-Prepared Mathematics And Science Teachers Convey To The Workplace?, J. R. Mcginnis, G. Marbach-Ad

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

No abstract provided.

Synecdoche And Surprise: Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production, Anne Dalke, Elizabeth Mccormack

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

Using contemporary insights from feminist critical theory and the literary device of synecdoche, we argue that transdisciplinary knowledge is productive because it maximizes serendipity. We draw on student learning experiences in a course on “Gender and Science” to illustrate how the dichotomous frameworks and part-whole correspondences that are predominant in much disciplinary discourse must be dismantled for innovative intellectual work to take place. In such a process, disciplinary presumptions interrogate and unsettle one another to produce novel questions and answers.

A Time For Deeper Dialogue: Mentoring, Modeling, And Growing Your Own, Mildred M. Pearson Dr.

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Too often, new faculty members tackle teaching roles at an unfamiliar campus feeling lost and completely on their own. That is not a problem at Eastern Illinois University (EIU), where a rapidly growing faculty development program reaches out to new employees to encourage and support them in all facets of their lives, professional and personal.

Features Of Optimally Motivating College Classrooms: Perspectives Of Preservice Teachers, Donna S. Bogart

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The primary objective of this mixed methods study was to explore the parameters of college students' perspectives on classroom learning environments. Specifically, the investigation sought to identify and describe the relevant features of the college classroom context that undergraduate students distinguished as promoting and supporting academic motivation at one four-year postsecondary institution. Secondarily, the study sought to examine the extent to which there was an association between the achievement goals students endorsed and their perspectives concerning the motivating features of the classroom learning environment. The nonprobability purposeful sample of undergraduate students consisted of 122 preservice teachers who were attending a …

The Effectiveness Of Strategic Planning And Self Study Programs In Leading To Improvements In Institutional Performance And Organisational Learning In An Irish Higher Education Institute, Deirdre M. Lillis

Theses

Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) worldwide are investing increasing resources in strategic planning and self-study activities, in order to meet accountability and quality assurance requirements and to improve their performance. Despite this, little empirical research exists which can definitely answer the question as to whether these activities are effective in leading to improvements in institutional performance and organisational learning, let alone shed light on the reasons why.

This study investigated three strategic planning and three self study programs which were undertaken in one HEI in Ireland over an 8 year period from 1997 to 2006. The first research question determined whether …