Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons^™

How Do Graduate Students Approach College Teaching? Influences Of Professional Development, Teaching Assistantships, And Big Five Personality Traits, Elizabeth S. Che, Patricia J. Brooks, Anna M. Schwartz, Ethlyn S. Saltzman, Ronald C. Whiteman

Publications and Research

Introduction: Graduate students engage in college teaching with varied attitudes and approaches. Their teaching practices may be influenced by professional development experiences related to pedagogy, and their personality traits.

Methods: Through an online survey of graduate students teaching undergraduate courses (N = 109, 69.7% women, M age = 30 years, 59% psychology), we examined whether self-reported participation in professional development related to pedagogy, teaching assistantship (TA) experience, academic discipline (psychology vs. other), and Big Five personality traits were associated with variation in teaching practices.

Results: Participation in professional development correlated positively with years of undergraduate teaching experience and with …

Clemson University’S Teacher Learning Progression Program: Personalized Advanced Credentials For Teachers, Luke J. Rapa, Jeff C. Marshall, Stephanie M. Madison, Christopher Flathmann, Bart Knijnenburg, Nathan J. Mcneese

Publications

This chapter provides an overview of Clemson University's Teacher Learning Progression program, which offers participating middle school science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) teachers with personalized advanced credentials. In contrast to typical professional development (PD) approaches, this program identifies individualized pathways for PD based on teachers' unique interests and needs and offers PD options through the use of a “recommender system”—a system providing context-specific recommendations to guide teachers toward the identification of preferred PD pathways and content. In this chapter, the authors introduce the program and highlight (1) the data collection and instrumentation needed to make personalized PD recommendations, (2) …

Yes, You Can Get A Job With That Major! Goal 5 Strategies For Facilitating, Assessing, And Demonstrating Psychology Students’ Professional Development, Kristin M. Vespia, Karen Z. Naufel, Jerry Rudmann, Jaye F. Van Kirk, Deborah Briihl, Jason Young

Publications and Research

The Summit on the National Assessment of Psychology was held on June 2016 to chart a path for assessing student achievement of the goals of the undergraduate psychology major. Our subcommittee was charged with identifying evaluation strategies and tools for students’ professional development, which included applying psychology to various careers; engaging in effective self-regulation, project management, and teamwork; and developing lifelong professional skills. In this article, therefore, we not only review a wide range of assessment tools for facilitating and evaluating professional development in psychology, but we also discuss the larger importance of the learning goal both to students and …

Cct Professional Development Bulletin August 2020, Marie O' Neill

Teaching and Learning Bulletins

No abstract provided.

Structured Professional Development For Academic Developers: A Collaborative Approach, Fiona O'Riordan, Íde O'Sullivan, Mary Fitzpatrick, Margaret Keane, Claire Mcavinia, Angelica Risquez

Articles

This paper shares the experience of a group of academic developers’ engagement in collaboratively working towards the completion of an online open-access professional development (PD) course designed to support higher education teachers to engage with a new professional development framework. Committee members of the Educational Developers in Ireland Network set out to complete the course as a demonstration of their commitment to their own PD and to experience the process with a view to becoming facilitators of the course. An auto-ethnographic approach was used to capture this experience, and findings demonstrate an inspiring alternative to PD that supports academic developers …

A Word From The Writing Team (March 2019), Jennifer Wilson, Ms, Els, Pam Walter, Mfa

A Word From the Writing Team (Newsletter)

This issue includes:

• Key to Great Writing: Rewriting
• 3-Minute Thesis Competition (3MT)
• Upcoming Workshops

Graduate Student Perspectives Of Interdisciplinary And Disciplinary Programming For Teaching Development, Katherine E. Bishop-Williams, Kaitlin Roke, Erin Aspenlieder, Meagan Troop

Publications and Scholarship

Interdisciplinary (i.e., university-wide programming) and disciplinary (i.e., programming open to participants from one college or department) teaching development programs for graduate students have been used for many years in higher education. Currently, research on the benefits of these teaching models remains scant in terms of a contextualized understanding, and empirical studies are needed. The purpose of this study was to determine graduate students’ perspectives related to interdisciplinary and disciplinary teaching and learning experiences. Two online surveys were used: a quantitative survey and a qualitative follow-up survey. Three participatory focus groups were also conducted to allow for further in-depth exploration in …

Transforming Instructional Design: Using Professional Learning Communities (Plcs) To Invoke Change And To Incorporate The Framework Into Instructional Practice, Natalie Bishop, Pamela Dennis

Dover Library Faculty Professional Development Activities

When challenged with migrating to LibGuides 2.0, we sought to implement an easily accessible tool that would be useful to our students. With the recent launching of Framework threshold concepts by ACRL, we saw the opportunity to combine LibGuides migration with Framework introduction to improve our existing instructional design practices. In order to attain buy-in by our library faculty, we chose to create a Professional Learning Community (PLC), allowing us to take agency for our own professional development/learning. PLCs function as a collaborative effort to improve student learning through action research and job-embedded learning (DuFour, et al., 2006). Recognizing that …

Politics And Action Research: An Examination Of One School’S Mandated Action Research Program, Ryan Flessner, Shanna Stuckey

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Action research has been shown to empower educators, create lasting changes in schools, and have an impact on student learning outcomes. Given these positive results, many school leaders are beginning to mandate the use of action research within their schools. While some in the field have warned against mandating action research, there is little research examining the effects of doing so. This study examines the mandated school-wide action research program at Fieldstone Elementary. While some results align with the action research literature (importance of collaboration, necessity of time to conduct action research, etc.), this article also examines the political tensions …

What Helps Law Professors Develop As Teachers? -- An Empirical Study, Gerald F. Hess, Sophie M. Sparrow

Law Faculty Scholarship

The overall goal of this article is to provide concrete suggestions for how law schools can improve teaching and enrich law student learning. In doing so, it reviews and analyzes the data collected from two national surveys about the kinds of faculty development activities that are most effective in improving law professors’ teaching. One survey was designed to quantify how many law teachers engaged in twenty-two types of teaching development activities over the previous five years and to assess the effectiveness of each of those activities. The other survey focused on the effectiveness of a national conference on teaching and …

Tying It All Together: Implications For Classrooms, Schools, And Districts, Ryan Flessner, Kenneth Zeichner, Kalani Eggington

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Ryan Flessner, Kenneth Zeichner, and Kalani Eggington's contribution to "Creating Equitable Classrooms through Action Research"