Defending Our Life: How the Scholarship of

Teaching and Learning Can Help Rescue an

Academy Under Siege

Jeffrey L. BernsteinDepartment of Political Science

Eastern Michigan University

Keynote Address for the SOTL Academy ConferenceFindlay, OhioMay 18, 2015

The Academy Under Siege

• Increasing concerns about student academic performance and engagement

• Liberal learning vs. vocational training

• Cost-to-value concerns about higher education

• Research vs. teaching divide• Future of the tenure track

SOTL as a Solution

We must make teaching:• A pursuit of excellence• An act of scholarship• A relevant force for change

Why Should We Do this Kind of Work?

The best reason to do this kind of work is so that we can feed our investigations of student learning back into our teaching practices, and into our students’ learning.

E-mail from a Student

IF POSSIBLE I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THE RESULTS OF THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SIMULATION…

WAS IT BETTER TO HAVE THE PANEL PICKED OR RANDOMLY SELECTED?

PLEASE E-MAIL ME BACK BEFORE 3 PM

E-mail from a Student

Dr. B, I’m writing my post-simulation paper and I missed the last day. Can you tell me if school prayer should be allowed? Thanks.

Teaching vs. Learning

Lee Shulman on Scholarship“For an activity to be designated as scholarship, it should manifest at least three characteristics: it should be public, susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by other members of one’s own scholarly community.”

Shulman 2000

Scholarship Reconsidered Ernest Boyer (1990)

• The result of examining what faculty do

• The four scholarships:– Discovery– Integration– Application– Teaching

Scholarship Assessed Glassick, Huber and Maeroff

(1997)

• All forms of scholarship (including teaching and learning) require:– Clear goals– Adequate preparation– Appropriate methods– Significant results– Effective presentation– Reflective critique

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Starts with a

ProblemIn scholarship and research, having a "problem" is at the heart of the investigative process; it is the compound of the generative questions around which all creative and productive activity revolves. But in one’s teaching, a "problem" is something you don’t want to have, and if you have one, you probably want to fix it. Asking a colleague about a problem in his or her research is an invitation; asking about a problem in one’s teaching would probably seem like an accusation. Changing the status of the problem in teaching from terminal remediation to ongoing investigation is precisely what the movement for a scholarship of teaching is all about. How might we make the problematization of teaching a matter of regular communal discourse? How might we think of teaching practice, and the evidence of student learning, as problems to be investigated, analyzed, represented, and debated?

Bass (1998, p. 1, italics in original)

How Do We Make Our Teaching More Inquiry-Based?

• Observation: Begin with what you see … questions unanswered, problems perceived. What’s going on?

• Inquiry and Evidence: Construct an investigation into student learning. Look for artifacts and examples of student learning. How can you make sense of what you see?

• Go Public: Figure out how you want to share what you have learned with the broader community.

Beginning from a Teaching Problem

What is a teaching problem (in Randy Bass’ sense) with which you are struggling?

• What works? What works better?• What is it? What does it look like?• A vision of the possible – what can be

done?Adapted from Hutchings (2000)

Designing Your Inquiry

What types of evidence can you find?

• Student work – exams, papers• Student journals or reflection papers• The instructor’s own reflection –

blogging?• Videotaping or audio taping of class

activity• Talking to and working with your

students

A Progression of Teaching

Good teaching

Scholarly teaching

Scholarship of teaching and learning

McKinney (2004)

An Integrated Model

Stage 1: Growth in Own

Teaching

Stage 2:Dialogue About Teaching & Learning

Stage 3:Growth in

Scholarship of Teaching

Good Teaching

Scholarly Teaching

Scholarship of

Teaching &

Learning

Why Should We Do this Kind of Work?

I’ll repeat: The best reason to do this kind of work is so that we can feed our investigations of student learning back into our teaching practices, and into our students’ learning.

Unpacking the Reasons to be Inquiry-Based Teachers

1. Disciplinary reasons

2. Institutional reasons

3. Personal reasons

SOTL in the Disciplines

“At the core of the entire project of a scholarship of teaching and learning is the belief that disciplinary thinking is crucial to learning. Therefore, a central goal of this work is to define as clearly as possible the kinds of thinking that students typically have to do in each academic field and to devise strategies for introducing students to these mental operations as effectively as possible.”

Pace 2004

SOTL in the Disciplines

“[B]y making visible the ‘invisible’ cognitive work of historians, scholarship in history-specific cognition creates a richer, more nuanced picture of cognition than linear lists of skills or general taxonomies of thought.”

Bain 2000, p. 333

Bottlenecks

“places where significant numbers of students are unable to grasp basic concepts or successfully complete important tasks.”

Díaz, Middendorf, Pace and Shopkow

(2008, p. 1211)

The Puzzle

• What does expert thinking look like?• What does novice thinking look like?

• What can we learn from the way experts approach the task (the bottlenecks) that can inform how we teach our undergraduates?

The Think-Aloud Method

• Hearing thoughts as they occur

• Pull back the curtain – better view of student work

• Valuable tool for understanding learning and informing our teaching

Wineburg’s Think-Alouds

National Merit Scholars and history profs

No knowledge differences, but….Dramatically different ways that

experts and novices approach the task:

OrderingSourcingArguing

A Typology of Bottlenecks

General Bottlenecks• Biases in sources• Links between sources

Issue-Specific Bottlenecks• Politics as a contact sport • Efficiency as the holy grail• Majority rules/minority rights

Unpacking the Reasons to be Inquiry-Based Teachers

1. Disciplinary reasons

2. Institutional reasons

3. Personal reasons

Attaching Our Work to Campus Conversations

Where do conversations about teaching and learning take place on campus?

Assessment/AccreditationGeneral EducationProgram ReviewRecruitment/RetentionTenure/Promotion

Commoditization of Higher Ed

How do we avoid our courses, and our universities, being seen merely as commodities?

- Craig Nelson

Unpacking the Reasons to be Inquiry-Based Teachers

1. Disciplinary reasons

2. Institutional reasons

3. Personal reasons

Wisdom from Parker Palmer

“We teach who we are.”

So who am I? And what does that mean for my teaching?

SOTL as a Lobbying Force

Lobbying:• Getting people to change their minds• Getting people to change what they

value

We must become lobbyists for teaching in higher education!

Why Should We Do this Kind of Work?

One more time: The best reason to do this kind of work is so that we can feed our investigations of student learning back into our teaching practices, and into our students’ learning.

References

Arum, Richard and Josipa Roksa. 2011. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bain, Robert B. 2000. “Into the Breach: Using Research and Theory to Shape History Instruction.” In Stearns, Peter N., Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg, (editors). Knowing, Teaching and Learning History: National and International Perspectives. New York: New York University Press.

Bass, Randy. 1999. “The Scholarship of Teaching: What’s the Problem? Inventio, Volume 1, Number 1. http://www.doit.gmu.edu/archives/feb98/randybass.htm

Bernstein, Jeffrey L. and Sarah M. Ginsberg. “Toward an Integrated Model of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Faculty Development.” Journal for Centers for Teaching and Learning 1: 57-72.

Bok, Derek. 2006. Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Boyer, Ernest L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Princeton: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

More References

Díaz, Arlene, Joan Middendorf, David Pace and Leah Shopkow. 2008. “The History Learning Project: A Department ‘Decodes’ Its Students.” The Journal of American History 94 (4): 1211-1224.

Glassick, Charles E., Mary Taylor Huber and Gene I. Maeroff. 1997. Scholarship Assessed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Huber, Mary Taylor and Pat Hutchings. 2005. The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hacker, Andrew and Claudia Dreifus. 2010. Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Out Money and Failing Our Kids – and What We Can Do About It. New York: St. Martin’s.

Hersh, Richard H. and John Merrow, eds. 2005. Declining by DegreesL Higher Education at Risk: New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hutchings, Pat. 2000. “Introduction: Approaching the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” In Hutchings, Pat (ed.) Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Menlo Park, CA: Carnegie Publications.

More References

McKinney, Kathleen. 2004. “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Past Lessons, Current Challenges, and Future Visions.” To Improve the Academy 22: 3-19.

Nathan, Rebekah. 2005. My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Pace, David. 2004. “The Amateur in the Operating Room: History and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” American Historical Review 109 (October): 1171-1192.

Shulman, Lee S. 2000. “From Minsk to Pinsk: Why a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 1:48-52.

Shulman, Lee S. 1993. “Teaching as Community Property: Putting an End to Pedagogical Solitude.” Change 25: 6-7.

Smith, Michael B., Rebecca S. Nowacek and Jeffrey L. Bernstein, eds. 2010. Citizenship Across the Curriculum. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Wineburg, Sam. 2001. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Thank You!

Questions/comments/criticisms?

Jeffrey L. BernsteinDepartment of Political ScienceEastern Michigan University734-487-6970jeffrey.bernstein@emich.edu