Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Finding Key Faculty To Influence Change, Joan K. Middendorf

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

To succeed in getting faculty to accept new teaching approaches, academic support professionals can benefit from the literature on planned change. By understanding the different rates at which faculty accept change, we can also identify the faculty most likely to lead their colleagues to accepting new approaches. Opinion leaders can offer insight into faculty reactions to new approaches; their involvement in project planning can influence acceptance. Innovators, when selected carefully, can demonstrate and test new teaching approaches. Knowledge of when and how to involve these two kinds of faculty can reduce frustration and enhance efforts to spread new ideas about …

Student Collaboration In Faculty Development: Connecting Directly To The Learning Revolution, Milton D. Cox, D. Lynn Sorenson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Although faculty developers have worked successfully with faculty to focus on ways to enhance learning and listen to student voices, developers have rarely formed partnerships with students. This chapter reviews established practices involving students directly in faculty development, such as student observer/consultant programs. It also describes the nature, dynamics, and outcomes of some interesting new programs involving students in teaching development activities, thereby empowering students to join developers as change agents ofcampus culture. Finally, this chapter raises issues for faculty developers to reflect on as they consider establishing direct connections-partnerships-with students.

Transforming Introductory Psychology: Trading Ownership For Student Success, Randall E. Osborne, William Browne, Susan J. Shapiro, Walter F. Wagor

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

As colleges struggle to maintain enrollments, many have shifted from a primary focus on recruitment of new students to an increased focus on retaining students once they begin attending the college or university. An examination of introductory courses on our campus, however, revealed significant differences between faculty perceptions of student skills and the actual skills students brought into the classroom. This prompted shifts in the manner in which we teach introductory psychology on our campus in order to enhance the skills necessary for success in survey courses and to provide a foundation of learning and thinking skills that would translate …

“It's Hard Work!”: Faculty Development In A Program For First–Year Students, Martha L. A. Stassen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Academic programs designed specifically for first-year students provide an important opportunity for faculty growth. This chapter contributes to the limited literature on this topic through a qualitative analysis of interviews with faculty members who taught in an experimental living-learning community for first-year students at a Research I Public University. The analysis suggests atleast four dimensions of faculty growth as a result of their involvement in first-year programs. In addition to outlining the types of impact this experience has on the faculty involved, the article suggests the implications of these findings for faculty development.

The Influence Of Disciplinary Differences On Consultations With Faculty, Virginia Lee

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In recent years researchers have begun to investigate the nature of disciplinary differences in higher education and their implications for teaching and learning. While researchers have studied several aspects of disciplinary differences, they have given comparatively little attention to the significance of these differences for faculty development. After reviewing selective, representative studies from the literature on disciplinary differences, this paper develops a general framework for determining how the characteristics of a discipline influence the dynamics of the consulting relationship using the example of the hard sciences. It explores what kinds of discipline-specific knowledge will be important for consultants and under …

Nefdc Exchange, Volume 9, Number 2, Spring 1999, New England Faculty Development Consortium

New England Faculty Development Consortium Exchange

Contents

Developing New and Junior Faculty Careers - Mary Deane Sorcinelli. University of Massachusetts, Amherst

From the President - Susan J. Pasquale, Harvard Medical School

2nd Annual NEFDC Faculty Development Roundup May 26, 1999 Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire

Review: Two very different books of teaching cases - Jeffrey Halprin, Nichols College

Board of Directors

Anglo (Mis)Understandings Of Latino Newcomers: A North Georgia Case Study, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This paper examines how Anglos in a small north Georgia city imagined, or conceptualized, Hispanics during the late 1990s as thousands of Spanish-speaking immigrant newcomers transformed the community’s demography. Based on two years of ethnographic research, the paper outlines the local play of several macro-social dynamics, such as businesses’ externalization of indirect costs, the ethnic segmentation of the work force, the use of sojourner labor, and the role of mediating institutions. The paper uses these dynamics to explain the emergence and sustenance of what Suárez-Orozco (1998) calls the “pro-immigration” and “anti-immigration scripts” and illustrates how these can be used to …

Book Review - On The Border Of Opportunity: Education, Community, And Language At The U.S.–Mexico Line, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

On the Border of Opportunity is a good, important, but limited book. Marleen Pugach describes the links between school and community that she, her two school-aged children, and a graduate assistant encountered during a seven-month stint in a New Mexico border town (pseudonymously called Havens). She extensively considers how binationalism was and could have been promoted in the local schools and how such promotion could distinguish the education on offer there. Pugach seems unsure whether to characterize Havens as an exemplary binational, inclusive community or whether to present a critique of Havens by chronicling what it could be but was …

Listening In The Classroom: A Two-Way Street, Elisa Carbone

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Listening to our students creates a supportive environment in which students feel respected. If students feel respected and valued, they will be less afraid to ask questions, express opinions, and share insights; and they will be more likely to listen to each other during discussions. This is an environment conducive to the enhancement of learning.

It is well worth taking the time to teach students how to improve their listening habits. Let them know about the differential between thought speed and speech speed. Encourage them to do mental summaries of your lecture while you re speaking. Have them act out …

The Nature Of Expertise: Implication For Teachers And Teaching, Ronald A. Smith, Richard G. Tiberius

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

How do teachers become experts at teaching-at helping their students become experts? In a culture dependent on high performance, teachers need to understand the nature of the expertise that their students want to acquire as well as the nature of their own expertise. How we view expertise determines the goals we set for our students, as well as the standards we use to inform and measure our own development as experts in teaching.

The Uses Of Uncertainty In The College Classroom, Virginia S. Lee

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Psychological research has corroborated the importance of uncertainty to learning at the psychophysiological level. Recent studies in brain dynamics have demonstrated that the brain manifests an inherent variability that increases with the presentation of new stimuli. This psychophysiological uncertainty plays a significant catalytic role in learning, It opens up the organism to experience, causing it to investigate the environment with enhanced receptivity, preparing it for different behavioral actions, and facilitating the central processing and encoding of information received from such renewed exploration. Searching, exploring, and trial-and-error behaviors indicate psychophysiological uncertainty and accompany the appearance of reorganization, stability, and progressive development …

Class In The Classroom, Lee Warren

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Class is an often invisible form of difference. Yet it is there all the time, affecting how and what students learn at every turn. It pervades the values and the purposes of colleges and universities. It contributes to determining the courses offered and the books read and discussed. Still, it is a diversity issue rarely acknowledged.

Critical Thinking Requires Critical Questioning, Karen J. Thoms

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Just what is a critical thinker? According to Richard Paul (1990), a critical thinker is someone who is able to think well and fair mindedly about his or her own beliefs and viewpoints as well as those which are diametrically opposed. The critical thinker does not just think about these beliefs and viewpoints, but explores and appreciates their adequacy, cohesion, and reasonableness. Attitudes and passions are included. To become a critical thinker is not to be the same person you are now, but only with better abilities; it is to become a different person (page iii).

Critical thinking is expected …

1999-00 Unopa Executive Board Minutes

UNOPA: Minutes

No abstract provided.

Interdisciplinary Teaching And Learning, Deborah Dezure

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Interdisciplinary initiatives are proliferating throughout higher education at an unprecedented rate (Edwards, 1996; Gaff and Ratcliff, 1997; Klein, 1996). They can be found in general education, replacing and augmenting distribution requirements; in emerging disciplines, such as cultural and gender studies, environmental studies, and neuroscience; in new curricular designs, such as learning communities, capstone courses, and service learning; and in the new pedagogies, such as collaborative learning, discovery and problembased learning, and the use of technology, particularly the Internet for instruction.

If we want our students to engage in complex intellectual tasks to integrate the insights of different disciplines, then lets …

Learning Outside The Box: Making Connections Between Co-Curricular Activities And The Curriculum, Myra S. Wilhite, Elizabeth A. Banset

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Students have much to gain from the integration of co-curricular activities into the curriculum. In out-of-class experiences, students tend to take greater responsibility for their own learning; they learn from one another as well as their instructors. In addition, cocurricular activities promote personal growth, physical and mental health, academic achievement, social and cultural awareness, and help students formulate short- and long-range goals.

Successful co-curricular programs encourage the development of friendships, a sense of belonging, enhanced intellectual awareness, improved academic performance, an appreciation of different perspectives, and close interaction with faculty and staff members who really care about students.

Are We Going To Cyberspace, Or Is This Just Another Trip To Abilene?, William K. Jackson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The costs of technology are high, and the options for its use are varied. In order to avoid arriving at a technological Abilene, we must continually ask and answer the question "what ought we do with technology?" and not "what can we do with technology?" Purpose must lead deployment. Otherwise, we risk expending great efforts and scarce resources to produce the educational equivalent of "Thank you for calling, press 1 if you. . ."

Attitudes Of Oregon Agricultural Science And Technology Teachers Toward Integrating Science, Gregory W. Thompson, Mark A. Balschweid

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

The purpose of this study was to determine the attitudes of Oregon Agricultural Science and Technology (AST) teachers toward integrating science into their agricultural education programs. Results of the study indicated that almost one fourth of Oregon 's AST teachers have a teaching credential with a science endorsement, while almost half the teachers indicated students receive science credit for agriculture classes in their high school. Teachers felt prepared to teach biological and physical science concepts and that integrating science into agriculture classes has increased their ability to teach students to solve problems. Teachers believed that administrator and parental support for …

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back: The Stormy History Of Reading Comprehension Assessment, Loukia K. Sarroub, P. David Pearson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

After closely examining the recent history of reading comprehension assessment in the United States, we have concluded that although both the forms of assessment and the key players in the assessment process have changed in significant ways, the functions of assessment have remained relatively constant. In terms of function, we have always used, and continue to use, assessment tools to evaluate programs, to hold particular groups accountable for some specified set of outcomes (though it may seem that that is all we do these days), to inform instruction, either for individuals or whole classes, and finally, to determine who gains …

Assessment In Literature-Based Reading Programs: Have We Kept Our Promises?, Tanja Bisesi, Devon Brenner, Mary Mcvee, P. David Pearson, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

We have made incredible progress, both conceptually and practically, in the development of literacy assessment tools that appropriately reflect the goals and activities of literature-based reading programs. This progress, however, has not come without obstacles, many of which have not yet been (and may never be) fully negotiated. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the "promises" we as a literacy assessment community have made to ourselves, as we implement new forms of assessment for new purposes, and to critically evaluate our progress toward keeping those promises. We begin by briefly describing recent shifts in literacy …

Model Limitations, Randy Yerrick, Linda James, Jon E. Pedersen

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

SPACE EXPLORATION HAS SPAWNED MORE interest in science among teachers and students than any other topic in recent science education history, and teachers can use space science as an opportunity to encourage students to observe and make new discoveries for themselves. Many times, however, we run into obstacles. One trend we have noticed is that students can form misunderstandings based on simplistic explanations such as catchy astronomy activities on the back of cereal boxes, cartoon renderings of life on the Moon, or linear models in textbooks depicting the Solar System. These misrepresentations of science present problems for instructors.

Book Review - Moving Beyond Dichotomies To Outline Discourse Strategies In A Transnational Community, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Intended both for ethnographers and for scholars of literacy and rhetorical studies, Juan C. Guerra’s Close to Home: Oral and Literate Practices in a Transnational Mexicano Community is at once groundbreaking and important, though because of the sophistication and detail of its reasoning, it may not be accessible to a broad audience. The book—the fortieth title in the Teachers College Press Language and Literacy Series—is pioneering in a number of ways. Most notable is Guerra’s refusal to fit the group he is focusing on—the multigenerational social network of an extended Mexican-origin family—into a single geographic frame of reference. Guerra explains …

Problem-Based Learning: Preparing Students To Succeed In The 21st Century, Barbara J. Duch, Deborah E. Allen, Harold B. White Iii

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

College graduates who can think critically, solve complex problems, communicate clearly, and work effectively in teams will be prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. Problem-based learning (PBL) helps students develop these crucial skills.

Keys To Using Learning Groups Effectively, Larry K. Michaelsen

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Irrespective of such factors as subject matter and class size, small group work can produce positive motivational and learning outcomes. The key is appropriately managing the variables discussed in this essay.

Adding Online Computer Methods To Your Repertoire Of Teaching Strategies, Nancy A. Diamond

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

On-line teaching methods offer interesting strategies for teaching whatever you already want to teach. This essay describes a broad range of on-line methods and details the elements necessary for their optimal use.

Relating Student Experience To Courses And The Curriculum, Virginia S. Lee

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

This essay offers a rationale for incorporating students’ personal experience into the curriculum and techniques for doing so to facilitate both cognitive and affective curricular objectives.

The Critical Match Between Motivation To Learn And Motivation To Teach, Ronald Teeples, Harvey Wichman

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Student motives to learn cannot be effectively understood as something independent of prevailing pedagogies, which are shaped by motives to teach. The authors discuss bringing these two aspects of motivation into closer congruence.

Developing A Philosophy Of Teaching Statement, Nancy Van Note Chism

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Suggestions are presented for preparing a statement about one’s philosophy of teaching in relationship to the preparation of a teaching portfolio. Included are ideas on developing several common components of such statements.

Writing To Learn, Judith Kalman, Calvin Kalman

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The authors explain a technique that discourages the viewing of material as an agglomeration of disembodied facts and fosters students’ awareness of the concepts underlying the topics being discussed.

The Effects Of An Agricultural Literacy Treatment On Participating K-12 Teachers And Their Curricula, Mark A. Balschweid, Gregory K. Thompson, R L. Cole

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

Oregon State University ‘s Summer Agriculture Institute (SAI) is an agricultural literacy program aimed at Oregon 3 non-agriculture K-I2 teachers. Since the debut of this program in 1998, no study has been conducted to determine SAI ‘s effectiveness with participating K-12 teachers. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which participating teachers used the material received at SAI in their curricula, and to determine teacher perceptions of the content, structure, and usability of the agricultural literacy program presentations and materials. Additionally, the study sought to iden@ existing barriers that prevented teachers from integrating agriculture into their …