of Oz SoTL Professor Alice M. Thomas Howard University School of - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

My Journey to the Land of Oz SoTL Professor Alice M. Thomas Howard University School of Law

My Aims for Today: ► Share my Journey in SoTL with you ► Have us Engage in a Conversation regarding your interest in SoTL ► Explain it –  The What, Why, How, and Ways to Go Public ► Introduce you to some useful resources and where to locate them

It’s a Conversation…

A Conversation Around ► What ► Why ► How ► Going Public ► Using my Journey as one example

Where did it all begin ► I entered the teaching profession from the practice of law. ► I started here at Howard in the fall of 1993, teaching legal writing. ► I moved onto the tenure track at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law three years later

That’s when it happened ► While teaching there, I encountered a PROBLEM. ► I would teach (or so I thought) and assess, learning that my students seemingly did not master what I had hoped. ► One day, I shared my problem with a colleague who was the director of Academic Support.

What about You ► What brought you here today, to a lecture about SoTL? ► Share . . .

My eyes were opened ► Driven by my passion and commitment that my students would master the law, graduate and pass the bar exam, and be competent lawyers, I began to study learning styles and learning differences, like inattention. ► It was a beginning but there had to be more?

And ► I then recalled my undergraduate experience in psychology. ► First focusing on the broader question of how people learn best, searching existing scholarship for answers. ► I then went public with my problem, and my first proposed solution.

My core thesis ► That the act of teaching is mostly practice/anecdotally driven, and that it should not be. ► I posited that teaching should have, at least, two anchors – one, experience and the other, the scholarship about how people learn, believing that this knowledge would change how we teach and how well are students learn for the better.

Thesis Experience Scholarship ► Teaching based on what ► Teaching based on (and we learned about our informed by) researched students as we engaged explanations about how in the act of teaching, our students learn, and and making mental notes adapting my teaching to of what seemingly reflect those worked (or did not work), understandings and trying it again, hoping for a change.

So in my case ► Learning Styles ► Inattention ► More diagrams, etc. ► More Repetition ► Sang, Humor, Inflexion ► Structure ► Moved from behind the ► Posted more podium ► Deeper Learning ► Incorporated more rubrics, feedback ► Concept mapping ► Etc. ► Venn Diagrams ► Etc.

And, what came next? ► Following the publication of my article, about one year later, I was invited to be a Carnegie Scholar. ► That invitation changed my life. ► There I found a community of teachers from across academia equally driven by their desire to solve problems in their students’ learning and to improve teaching. ► It was like exciting!

A third dimension ► I was invited to be a participant in a third dimension. ► I was invited to be a researcher who produces the scholarship of teaching and learning. ► Exciting but intimidating! Still is!

The What ► So I began to learn what is the scholarship of teaching and learning through my Carnegie experience

Its Beginnings ► In 1990, Ernest Boyer in his article, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate posed several ideas, among them the idea of the Scholarship of Teaching (SoT): ► Boyer posited that the SoT studies education and uses the results to improve it and involves the constant interplay of teaching and learning.

CASTL and Lee Shulman ► The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) involves "systematic reflection on teaching and learning made public" (CASTL, 1998). The purpose of SoTL is to enhance student learning by approaching the process of teaching with the same empirical rigor that is applied to traditional research endeavors. Through this type of diligent, intentional attention to teaching impacts, one simultaneously improves the effectiveness of their own teaching while contributing to the larger body of knowledge on best practices in post-secondary teaching.

Lee S. Shulman’s “Taking Learning Seriously” (1999) presented the following reminder of the hallmark of any form of “scholarship”: ► “ An act of intelligence or of artistic creation becomes scholarship when it possesses at least THREE attributes: it becomes public; it becomes an object of critical review and evaluation by members of one’s community; and members of one’s community begin to use, build upon, and develop those acts of mind and creation.” (p. 15)

Another ► Indiana University at Bloomington: The SOTL program is an initiative that seeks the goal of improved undergraduate learning. To this end it encourages, supports, and publicizes course-focused research projects that are faculty defined and implemented. It also carefully fosters an interdisciplinary COMMUNITY of conversation and engagement centered on teaching and learning. This COMMUNITY supports and enhances both the inquiry of individual faculty and a more evidence-based approach to teaching generally. ► Rather than focusing on specific issues or learning methods, the SOTL approach encourages faculty to explore a variety of approaches and to reflect on questions about student learning derived from their own experiences in the classroom. As such it is self-renewing and self-broadening. . . .

Still Others ► Western Carolina University: SoTL at Western calls for a university-wide COMMITMENT and COLLABORATION among faculty, administration, staff and students in initiating and continuing SYSTEMATIC CONVERSATION, REFLECTION, RESEARCH AND DISSEMINATION about teaching and learning that is made public and open to critique in order to establish the scholarship of teaching and learning as research that is as institutionally valued and rewarded as traditional disciplinary scholarship with the ultimate goals of improved student learning, teaching effectiveness and enjoyment, faculty development and the creation of a deeply collegial academic community of and for teaching and learning. ► Illinois State University: SoTL is systematic reflection on teaching and learning made public.

If in doubt consult ‘Wikipedia’…?? ► “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL or SoTL; pronounced so'tl saw'tl or S O T L ) is a growing movement in post-secondary education. SOTL is scholarly inquiry into student learning which advances the practice of teaching by making research findings public”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarship_of_Teaching_and _Learning)

The Difference between Scholarly and SoTL? Scholarly Teaching skilfully combines knowledge of what works in teaching and what is to be taught, followed by reflection by the teacher – of self and on feedback SoTL involves overt, skilful and meaningful evaluation of Learning and Teaching activity which is then made public in some way, thus making it amenable to peer-review. The L+T work may be on one or more level – not just at the level of teaching students (e.g.. curriculum development, policy etc.)

Is there such a thing as non- scholarly teaching? ► Well, Maybe ► It too maybe scholarly if you expand the ► Teaching based solely definition of scholarly on experience/practice to include teaching in the classroom, etc. informed by your own field research (and your reflections) but it lacks a critical component of quality scholarship – do you know what that is?

At the heart of it ► Is Scholarship Scholarship ► deep knowledge base ► inquiry orientation ► critical reflectivity ► peer review and going/making public

So, What is Scholarship? Some authors don’t help because they use the words ‘scholarly’ and ‘scholarship’ regarding teaching, interchangeably – even the people in the work quoted here! The Carnegie Foundation asserted six ‘Standards of Scholarly Work’ in: Scholarship Assessed – Evaluation of the Professoriate (1997) by Glassick, Huber and Maeroff

Six Standards of Scholarly Work ► Clear Goals ► Adequate Preparation ► Appropriate Methods ► Significant Results ► Effective Presentation ► Reflective Critique Scholarship Assessed – Evaluation of the Professoriate (1997) by Glassick, CE. Huber, MT. and Maeroff, GI. An Ernest Boyer Project of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Jossey-Bass SF USA.

Teaching as Community Property ► Lee Shulman’s definition of scholarship emphasizes the aspects of scholarly work that are done in a community of scholars. The scholarship of teaching, in Shulman’s view, presents teaching as “community property” in ways similar to those in which research is viewed as community property.

Build a Community of Scholars ► Builds Power ► Helps you feel safe ► Congenial atmosphere ► Working together on common interests ► Building locally, nationally, internationally ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmdwXJTt5yA&ebc=A NyPxKqOIcP4YZypDb3vIBR_3LatNLHH0PblSF- JyktIWZFVbBKkgOJIcEHtHD1dwmiUXL5Vyt7 ► -

The Why