Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal
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“We\u27re not going back to what was before, and we don’t know what the future will look like either”: Exploring the Voices and Images of Educational Administrators in Crisis
No full textThis paper considers the impact the global pandemic that began in early 2020 has had on educators with an aim to use these experiences to better understand how to navigate educational crises. We use a framework of science-fiction to re-center the what could be within education. Using a mélange of arts-based educational research and post-intentional phenomenology, this paper argues that while we are unsure of what the future brings, we can situate the pathway forward through a more nuanced understanding of the today. While not all science-fiction engages in the critical hope for a more just and equitable future, we use the frame of the what could be as a starting point for this project. Through this work, we discovered how educators navigated this crisis in education with an eye to document what was happening and to understand how these experiences can be retrofitted to tackle other crises within education
The Fraser River: Creative Ecologies for Transformative Pedagogy
Get PDFRivers are agents of change and transformation, and in this paper, they offer metaphorical and literal inspiration. The three authors are university instructors and artists from the sciences and the fine arts. The poetry, narrative, and visual artwork presented amplify the voice of the more-than-human world, in particular, the Fraser River, and exemplifies art-based learning across the curriculum. University students are dealing with unprecedented stresses: the climate crisis, mental distress, and pandemic-fueled screen fatigue. Art reveals interrelationships and a personal connection to place and pedagogy, while creative expression can cultivate climate resiliency and a path toward better understanding ourselves and our place in the world. Finally, examples of arts-based pedagogical applications connected to waterways are outlined
Understanding a Transformative Learning Experience during a Global Pandemic through Collaborative Autoethnographic Dialogues
Get PDFThis study employs a collaborative autoethnographic research design, connecting three autoethnographies to create a better understanding of the process of transformative learning during the global pandemic. The goal of this paper is to expand our understanding of transformative learning experiences from women’s perspectives and share our lessons learned from this process. In this study, an assistant professor and two graduate students (all women, age range 30-45) from a midwestern university engage in a dialogue about their transformative learning experience during the global pandemic. For the data collection process, we chose photographs, personal narratives, and ongoing dialogues for an extended period. Our data also includes reflections from the authors at different times in their learning process throughout and after the semester. These reflections and dialogues present personalized accounts of moments of vulnerability and the challenges of transformative learning. We hope this paper will be helpful for educators who intend to use transformative learning theory as a foundation of their pedagogical practice
The Challenge of Advanced Scientific Writing: Mistakes and Solutions
Get PDFThis essay presents four common mistakes committed by advanced students preparing manuscripts and other scientific writing: trying to do too much, failing to tell a story, using flowery language, and inconsistency in terms and labels. Strategies are outlined for mentors to guide trainees to rectify those mistakes, and for students to work themselves to overcome them
Fostering Proving Skills in Upper-Division Mathematics Classes through Peer Feedback Assignments
Get PDFTeaching proving skills is one of the most challenging tasks university mathematics professors face. Often professors are not successful in solving this challenge, and they pass the burden along to the next instructor. We try to address this issue by using peer feedback assignments—an approach that has shown itself fruitful in other fields and lower-division mathematics classes. In this paper, we describe this approach in detail so that interested readers may reproduce this experiment in their classes. Moreover, we reflect on our experiences as educators and provide students’ feedback on these assignments. Overall, the paper provides an easy-to-implement approach that can be used in a fully remote setting. In our opinion, it yields an efficient way to help students learn how to prove
Research to Publication: A First-Time Researcher’s Narrative
Get PDFThis is the story of a non-traditional, first-time researcher’s journey into academic research resulting ultimately in publication. His efforts were inspired by a Community of Scholars created at a local campus of a major university to encourage and mentor research and scholarship among its faculty. He collaborated with an experienced research partner who accompanied him during all aspects of the journey. This narrative inquiry is presented from three perspectives: those of the researcher, his research partner, and the campus leaders in charge of the Community of Scholars. The path from research to publication for this first-time researcher and his partner is shown to be perplexing and challenging. Their time was filled with collaboration, discovery, high and low moments, misstarts, and restarts. Lessons learned from this experience are summarized for future first-time researchers and those working with or assisting them
Helping Students to Become Effective Learners: Early Evidence on Embedding Learning Skills Instruction in Content Coursework
Get PDFThe current research is part of an ongoing research project—Creating a Culture of Learners—which aims to help institutions equip students to become better learners. An exploratory, pre-post design was used to examine changes in student learning when embedding learning strategies within a content course required for all new students at a liberal arts institution in the Midwest. Dependent t-tests were conducted to evaluate change between the pre- and post-tests. Two years of data are included. Results indicate statistically significant gains with moderate effect size. Our findings suggest that embedding learning strategies is a promising strategy for improving student learning. We also include suggestions for learning strategies as a part of the regular classroom instruction and curriculum
Unguarded Moments: Eavesdropping, Arts-Based Practices, and Transformative Teaching Spaces
Get PDFWhat have we learned from the experiences of teaching during COVID-19? Our participant-author group all introduced arts-based practices as a way of reaching students. Arts-based research (ABR) is a diverse field (Leavy, 2020), and in particular the arts can embody and integrate empathetic knowledge when it comes to the emotional aspects of learning (Chilton & Leavy, 2015). Yet, effective ABR practice relies on authentic connection not only with our students but also with each other. In formal institutional spaces, under conditions of stress and anxiety, finding moments of connection is not only challenging, but also requires careful listening as we endeavor to be fully present in these spaces. We use narratives and overheard conversations to explore how we coax our students to connect to content, to ourselves, and to each other. We notice these vulnerable spaces through seeing and listening and draw on our experiences as teachers in a Faculty of Education, a postsecondary community, to explore the themes of arts-based practices and deep listening. We show how arts-based practices require us to be present in our bodies, to look, listen, and notice. Although sometimes risky, the unpredictable aspect of arts-based practices taps into the vitality and spontaneity of human lives that students find meaningful and enjoyable. The purpose of this paper is to share our experiences and to examine exactly why these practices worked
Transforming International Higher Education in a Post-COVID World: Using the Methodologies of Futures Thinking and Arts-Based Research to Amplify Students’ Voices
Get PDFOur institutional approaches to problems in the changing global landscape of international higher education (IHE) are being challenged, and many scholars call for new approaches for understanding and addressing the complex problems we face (e.g., Patel, 2016; la paperson, 2017; Lee, 2021; Stein, 2018, 2020). The pandemic has sped up the need to make changes in how we approach our evolving problems and possibilities for transformation. This paper is a call to action and proposes the use of new approaches to research and educational practice—specifically, critical futures studies (see Equity Futures (Brown, 2017; Institute for the Future [IFTF], 2019)) and arts-based research (see Barone & Eisner, 2012; Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008). This paper will outline four participatory methodologies that could be used: design futures (Costanza-Chock, 2020), scenario building (Dator, 1998; Fergnani & Song, 2020), ethnographic experiential futures (EXF; Candy & Kornet, 2017), and poetic inquiry (Prendergast, 2009; Reilly, 2013). The proposed IHE Design Futures approaches, outlined in the framework and toolkits included, can help us re-envision and re-learn how we engage with IHE during the evolving global COVID-19 pandemic