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Learning about our Disciplinary Reading through Interdisciplinary Conversations
Get PDFThis reflective essay explores some of what we have learned by participating in an interdisciplinary Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project about disciplinary reading. In dialogic form, we reflect on why we chose to get involved in this project, how this project has changed our understanding of reading in and across the disciplines, and how it affects our teaching practices going forward. We hope this form will reflect our excitement in these interdisciplinary conversations and will encourage readers to seek opportunities for their own interdisciplinary dialogues about reading. In our conclusion we offer a few framing suggestions for those who wish to set up more conversations about reading
 
Catalyzing Conversations: Critical Thinking Skills to Win the Battle for Truth in the Post-Truth Era
No full textThe Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is uniquely poised to address one of the greatest challenges in the “post-truth” era through catalyzing conversations that promote the effective development of critical thinking skills necessary for identifying and avoiding conspiracy theories. An interdisciplinary team of scientists, science communicators, public health nurses and educators has designed case studies, modules and activities that are curriculum-based for use in kindergarten to grade 12 classes to promote vaccine safety. Two serendipitous outcomes from this Building Resistance to Vaccine Misinformation program included: i) significant learning experiences for everyone in our team about the other disciplines, and ii) that the research assistants articulated their own emerging professional identities. Once this program receives ethics approval, we will work with education programs to beta-test the case studies, modules and activities then assess the impacts of this program through pre and post experience questionnaires and journaling.  
An Evidence-Based Anthropological Exploration of Lanka\u27s People
No full textSri Lanka’s rich palaeoanthropological and archaeological record as well as the present demographic aspects have much to offer in aiding our understanding of the island’s ancient past and recent population structure. Sri Lanka has yielded skeletal evidence for the earliest anatomically modern humans from South Asia indicating very early settlement of the region. Following early hunter-gatherer dispersals over 50,000 years ago, agricultural populations expanded to the region with historic settlements and urbanisation creating complex societies in the last three millennia. Through circum-Indian Ocean trade networks in historic times and colonial expansion in the last 500 years, population diversification has continued with groups of multiple genetic and ethno-linguistic backgrounds arriving and settling in the island. These early and later migrants share a gene pool that connects them to descendants of today, who form Sri Lanka’s multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious society. Using an anthropological perspective, this article investigates how complex societal and biological diversity would have developed over time in island Lanka. An appreciation of deep time, beyond historic records, helps us recognize that human evolution and diversification has been shaped over thousands of years, while an evidence-based, scientific approach is proposed to eliminate flawed ethnocentric interpretations
The Archaeologist Dressed in White: In Memory of Siran Deraniyagala
Get PDFAn appreciation of Siran Deraniyagala
Aux origines du tourisme lent : le sensualisme du XVIIIe siècle et les réorientations du regard du voyageur
Get PDFLa place croissante des descriptions , souvent dénommées "tableaux" dans les récits de voyage du XVIIIe siècle, interroge. Au midi du siècle, cet essor fait pour une part écho à une demande de connaissances objectives que le succès de l\u27Encyclopédie a indéniablement confortée. Ces connaissances attendues du voyage sont en fait d\u27ordres très divers : connaissances relevant de l\u27histoire naturelle (faune, flore, roches etc) mais aussi des moeurs et de l\u27histoire des pays visités. L\u27impact des grandes sommes des Lumières (de l\u27Histoire naturelle de Buffon à l\u27Encyclopédie et à l\u27Esprit des lois de Montesquieu) est manifeste. Mais dans une autre gamme de récits de voyage, plus tardive dans le siècle, il faut également prendre en compte les auto-mises en scène d\u27un narrateur voyageur de plus en plus attaché à noter ses sensations, ses rêveries, ses sentiments et ses remémorations. Le rythme même du récit de voyage se trouve alors fortement affecté et nécessairement ralenti : les étapes du voyage ne tiennent pas tant à des repères géographiques qu\u27à la succession de paysages mentaux différents. Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire de Jean-Jacques Rousseau s\u27avèrent alors particulièrement suggestives et les polygraphes de la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Louis Sébastien Mercier et Rétif de la Bretonne), dans le récit de leurs déambulations parisiennes, développeront particulièrement ce type d\u27écriture
Packing up the Big Tent: Que(e)rying and Decolonizing SoTL
Get PDFOur reflection begins with our presentation at the 2013 Banff Symposium in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning where we undertook a critique of the “big tent” metaphor that had thus far characterised much of SoTL’s thinking about its inherent diversity. We acknowledged that as proposed by its originators— Huber & Hutchings (2005) —the “big tent” of SoTL was intended as a capacious space, with room for all who wished to enter. Reflecting on this presentation, we argue that the celebratory big tent with its focus on better teaching and learning may helped SoTL become a more respectable academic enterprise. However, this success has entailed ignoring approaches that often bring into view the challenges of teaching “difficult knowledge” as well as students’ desires to remain ignorant of such knowledge. Now, in Canada at least, we argue the Big Tent must be packed away in order to focus on the messier aspects of teaching and learning. We offer some thoughts on what a decolonizing SoTL might look like
Considerations for Seeking Equity and Justice through Pedagogical Partnership : Four Partners in Conversation
Get PDFStudent-faculty pedagogical partnership has recently been understood to have the potential to contribute to equity and justice in postsecondary education. Nevertheless, important equity-related concerns about partnership have also been raised. In a presentation at a previous Symposium on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, one of the co-authors of this article proposed a series of "tentative principles" for working toward equity in and through student-faculty partnership, which synthesized and foregrounded some of these possibilities and critiques. In this article, we share these "tentative principles," as well as a series of critical responses to them, offered by the three co-authors. In so doing, we aim to offer an expanded set of significant considerations for those interested in student-faculty partnership and equity, and to invite and encourage further discussion and critique rather than reify singular principles
The Language of Students: How do Students Label and Define their Class Experience?
No full textEvery day hours are spent in classrooms with professors teaching and students learning - or so we think. As professors, we are expected to engage students in the learning process (Kuh, 2003), keep them entertained (Delaney et al., 2010), impart wisdom, etc. However, what professors see as effective class experiences may be very different from how and why students experience the class as they do. This qualitative study, as the first part of a multiphase research project, sought to identify the language students use to label and describe their perceptions of individual classes. The study involved semi-structured interviews with 24 students, ranging from first to fifth year. Developing an understanding of the labels and definitions students use to articulate their classroom experience may provide insight for both faculty and students in that they may be able to better communicate, or at minimum faculty may better understand how students describe class experiences. Findings may provide both students and faculty ideas into how to create a more effective learning experience
Siran - Companion, Scholar and Visionary: A Personal Note
Get PDFAn appreciation of Siran Deraniyagala