Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal
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Supporting Science Graduate Teaching Assistants and Undergraduate Learning Assistants\u27 Teaching Professional Development
Get PDFDespite evidence of the need to improve student achievement through active learning implementation across undergraduate STEM disciplines, many students struggle to meet academic expectations in college science courses. Additionally, many science instructors receive inadequate or inconsistent pedagogical training. Improved training in active learning is one of several elements that may support improved student learning outcomes in sciences. Our institution, like many others, relies on graduate teaching assistants (TAs) and undergraduate learning assistants (LAs) to co-teach science courses. However, like other instructors, TAs and LAs may not receive adequate pedagogical training on implementation of evidence-based, student-centered pedagogies. Our program was designed to purposefully support trainees with professional development in scientific teaching through experiential education, faculty mentorship, and a science education community of practice. We found that consistent and structured pedagogical training provided LAs and TAs with an early introduction to best practices for inclusivity, active learning, and regular assessment. Through quantitative and qualitative responses, TAs and LAs reported that mentorship, a structured weekly journal club focused on pedagogy, and opportunities to practice new teaching techniques provided a valuable experience and prepared them for future professional opportunities
What Does It Mean to Empower Students to OWN Their Learning?
Get PDFStudent ownership of learning is paramount in the classroom, but also outside of the classroom. Organized in 5 themes (choice, accountability, control, engagement, and language), we provide advice on how to ensure students have the opportunity to own their learning, both inside the classroom and in other areas of campus life (e.g., advising and student service). Possible barriers are also discussed
The Courage to Teach Well Online
Get PDFThis paper explores the principles at the heart of Parker Palmer’s seminal book on teaching with purpose and passion, The Courage to Teach, within the online environment. It reports the results of four faculty members from diverse disciplines who teach online and who have discussed, debated, and explored Palmer’s ideas in the context of online teaching. The paper argues that, as with traditional, face-to-face teaching, effective online teaching must address many of the same kinds of paradoxes originally described by Palmer. In particular, it focuses on ways in which identity and wholeness, fear and separation, and community present challenges that require courage in order to teach well online
What is Education? A Scholarly Inquiry of Currere and Collaborative Ethnography
No full textThis scholarly inquiry employs currere and collaborative ethnography to examine an emerging response to the question, what is education? Three doctoral co-researchers, given a short time limit to respond, found a method to research, discuss, analyze and synthesize reflecting on various philosophies of education. Collaborative ethnography allowed for the doctoral co-researchers to dialogue and discover based on their own perspective while finding new understanding through the others. Currere offered a framework of ongoing reflection on each doctoral co-researchers’ life experience in relation to the inquiry question. The result is an intertwined collaboration of reflection on educational experiences, looking towards the future, analyzing the present moment in inquiry and creating an intriguing synthesis of new understanding. 
The Value of Being Seen: Faculty-Student Relationships as the Cornerstone of Post-Secondary Learning
Get PDFThis article discusses the importance of the faculty-student relationship to the endeavor of teaching and learning in higher education. Through personal reflection, it highlights institutional-level approaches to measuring such relationships and provides insight into how faculty might think about their role in relationship-building, student engagement, and student success
Scaffolding Civic Engagement Projects: A Study into the Effectiveness of Supported Small-Scale, Interrelated, Student-Designed Projects
Get PDFThis study examines the efficacy of scaffolding in a revised civic engagement project at a community college as compared with the outcomes of a previously studied civic engagement project that did not utilize scaffolding. The new project, Experiments in Ethics, consists of small-scale, interrelated assignments. Course design ensures that scaffolding is built into this new project through an iterative process of reflection and feedback to support community college students. Results show that using scaffolding significantly helps students gain important communication, citizenship, practical, and critical thinking skills. Investigators believe that replacing semester long CE projects, that culminate in a large-scale assignment, with scaffolded and supported smaller-scale, interrelated experiments is a highly effective strategy. A limitation of this study is that data are self-reported by students. It is believed this scaffolding strategy can be applied to assignments from various disciplines in introductory classes at both two and four-year institutions. Future research could examine this
The Growing Seed: Ecofeminist Values in Classroom, Campus, and Community
Get PDFThe authors share an overview of, and narratives tied to, a new course on Ecofeminism. The course and its attributes are offered as a model for educators of various disciplines and interests to integrate inclusivity, communal learning, hope and community engagement in classrooms with an aim to advance sustainability. The concept of place and a highly collaborative approach to course design provide rich fodder for critically considering daily practices, how we engage with the world and the importance of connections to each other and the more-than-human world
Poem as Literature Review: Poetic Rumination on the History of Poetic Inquiry
Get PDFThis poem, akin to a literature review, is based on a presentation made at the 2019 Canadian Society of the Study of Education (CSSE). It focuses on Poetic Inquiry (an umbrella term used for research that uses poetry in the data gathering process and/or in data processing or dissemination). The aim of the poem is to play with the form of a literature review while exploring the history of Poetic Inquiry, bringing to light some of the internal debates that exist within the community who use poetry in their academic work, and consider if the work requires labelling to exist in the realm of scholarly methods and tools
