The Scholarship of Teaching
The 2001 University of Wisconsin conference on teaching and learning invited
Carnegie Scholars to structure the conference. Keynoter Pat Hutchings
noted that the scholarship of teaching begins with questions and offered these:
 | "What aspects of your students' learning do you puzzle over, wish you
knew more about, worry about?" |
| "Why is your question important?" |
| "What kinds of evidence would you need to answer" the questions
you derive from the previous two questions? |
| "What strategies could you use to get that evidence?" |
According to James Rhem, editor of The National Teaching and Learning
Forum, in the April, 2001 issue 4 of volume
10, the issue was based on the sort of questions that change teaching:
| Julie Stout renovated her neuropsychology course. Two crucial
realizations guided her. First, she decided that she should subject
her teaching to the same sort of external examination that she used for
drafts of research reports. She had the resource on campus of a
faculty consultant, who helped her make the second realization: "For
[students], class discussions and projects were disconnected from their idea of what was important, and consequently, from their study strategies and test
preparation as well. " The question that sparked her
renovation efforts, however, concerned how students should use the
information in the course; she hadn't been thinking explicitly in terms of
skills, but she used a list of the skills she expected as her basis for
making wise changes in course design.
Prof. Stout designed a more
experiential approach to her course that involved modeling and practice
(usually in groups) of the kind of diagnostic thinking required in her
field--with feedback from her--and then rehearsal by the students, with
increasing requirements for accuracy as the course progressed.
Concerning this sequence of analogous problem-solving exercises, Stout says,
"I applied this pedagogical sequence to several skill goals for the course, including analyzing patient data in terms of two opposing theories, reading and understanding media reports containing neuropsychological studies (e.g., the Einstein brain reports in the summer of 1999), and making
'real life' treatment decisions, both from the professional and the patient viewpoints."
Stout developed a new syllabus
that included not only content goals but also "professional
skills" targeted by her lessons. She also revised her
grading practices to signal methods of improvement to students
instead of simply documenting how far short they were of course
standards. Her evaluation methods came to include more comprehension
quizzes, more tests, and more writing--clinical reports, interpreting data
(e.g. from the perspective of two different theories), and formal
arguments. In addition, Dr. Stout revised her first day's lesson plan,
using Alzheimer's disease figures to instill a sense of urgency in students
for learning the behavioral and neurological connections that her course
offered. Her positive results included more articulate students, at
least some excellence for each student in the course on her varied tasks,
more fun for her, and better course evaluations from her students.
She plans to continue by handling
the trade-off of more articulate students but with some loss of
detail, by renovating her other courses, and by documenting
the changes she makes and the results she gets, so that she can report in
the spirit of the growing scholarship of teaching. |
| Nancy Barrineau wondered how she could get students better prepared for
class discussions. Her answer involved summaries. (Other faculty have
used online forums for posting prompts that would help students understand
and reflect on preparation materials or to reflect on the ideas of a
previous class session.) |
| Virginia Lee wonders how we should view ourselves as faculty, and how the
shifts in the concept of "teacher" shows that we have collectively
a "deepening understanding of teaching and learning." |
| Craig Nelson's "Carnegie Chronicle" poses a complex issue:
"What is the core issue, the big stumbling block between enthusiasm,
passion, mastery of one's subject and great teaching?" |
|
1999