Selected Examples of Several of the Different Genres of SOTL
Craig E. Nelson
Indiana University, Bloomington
These examples
illustrate several of the genres (A-M) of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
(SOTL), as I currently understand them. The genres overlap and could be
combined or subdivided variously. The particular examples illustrate the
importance of SOTL for improving learning and teaching and learning.
(Most from my bibliography, How To Find Out More About College Teaching
And Its Scholarship: A Not Too Brief, Very Selective Hyperlinked
List (periodic revisions posted at the AAHE's Carnegie Academy Campus
Program website, http://aahe.ital.utexas.edu/, search for Nelson
under resources; also available at http://php.indiana.edu/~nelson1/TCHNGBKS.html).
Two opening
points: 1. Learning and teaching are complex activities where approximate,
suggestive knowledge can be very helpful, and, indeed, may often be the
only kind that is practical or possible (D. A. Schön. 1995. Knowing-in-action:
The new scholarship requires a new epistemology. Change 27:27-34).
2. Much important expertise on teaching resides in the day to day practices
of good faculty. Typically, this knowledge remains private and is totally
lost when its possessor retires. A key task in this field is systematically
making much more of this expertise public.
GROUP 1: REPORTS ON PARTICULAR CLASSES
A. It worked!
Important
pieces of our expert knowledge as experienced practitioners can be preserved
by writing up examples approaches to content or pedagogy that work especially
well in our own classes. In this genre, the teacher's own impressions of
the effectiveness frequently serve as sufficient assessment. The trend
now is to try to document the effectiveness a bit more formally using classroom
assessment techniques (CATs) and classroom research (see citations in "B"
and at the end of this bibliography). Numerous examples can be found in
many of the disciplinary journals listed on the web site for Indiana
University's SOTLProgram(http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/sotl/).
B. Before & After: Qualitative Assessments Of Changes In Practice.
The many
examples of this genre in Angelo and Cross include a calculus class (pp.
69-72) in which the professor wanted to help students improve their problem
solving skills. This example illustrates the process of refining the pedagogical
questions and the successive modifications that are often necessary to
make new pedagogical approaches work successfully. In this case, the new
pedagogy improved student success sufficiently that no student made an
F, despite the maintenance of high academic standards. (T. A .Angelo &
K.P. Cross. 1993. Classroom Assessment Techniques. 2nd Edit. Jossey-Bass.
For a quick introduction to "CATs" see: http://www.psu.edu/celt/CATs.html)
C. Before & After: Quantitative Assessments Of Changes In Practice.
R. E. Fullilove
& P. U. Treisman. 1990. Mathematics Achievement Among African American
Undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley: An Evaluation
of the Mathematics Workshop Program. Journal of Negro Education
59: 463-478. The impetus was finding that about 60% of the African Americans
who took calculus were unsuccessful (D/F/W). Initial work used extensive
interviews and observations of students to establish differences in study
approaches that distinguished the more successful groups of students. These
group-study approaches were then incorporated into the requirements for
the workshop program, which dropped the D/F/W rate to 4%. For additional
discussion of the initial study and of faculty preconceptions that had
to be overcome, see also: [P.] U. Treisman. 1992. "Studying Students Studying
Calculus: A Look at the Lives of Minority Mathematics Students in College."
College Mathematics Journal 23: 362-372.
GROUP 2: REFLECTIONS ON SEVERAL OR MANY YEARS OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE, IMPLICITLY OR EXPLICITLY INFORMED BY OTHER SCHOLARSHIP ON TEACHING
D. Essays Developing Good Ideas
L. S. Shulman.
1993. Teaching as community property: Putting an end to pedagogical solitude.
Change
25: 6-7. Good articulation of a central rationale for SOTL.
E. Summaries Of Expert Knowledge Gained By Self-Reflection And Experimentation In Ones Own Teaching.
P. Frederick. 1981 The Dreaded Discussion: Ten Ways To Start. Improving College &University Teaching 29:109-114.
P. J. Frederick. 1986. The Lively Lecture--Eight Variations. College Teaching 34:43-50
Many course
portfolios posted on the web will fit here too. Path breaking examples
are by Randy Bass (http://www.georgetown.edu/bassr/portfolio/amlit/) and
W.W. Cutler, III. (http://www.chnm.gmu.edu/aha)
F. Integration Of Larger Frameworks With Classroom & Curriculum Practice
B. P.Coppola, S.N. Ege, & R.G. Lawton. 1997. The University of Michigan Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum. 2. Instructional Strategies and Assessment. Journal of Chemical Education74: 84-94. Not just a report of UM changes, but an integration with related work.
J. D. Herron. 1975. Piaget for Chemists: Explaining What "Good" Students Cannot Understand. Journal Chemical Education 52:146-150. One factor that explains why bright, hard-working students can do poorly and how we can help them. Easily applicable in all quantitative fields.
R. J. Kloss. 1994. A nudge is best: Helping students through the Perry scheme of intellectual development. College Teaching 42:151-158. Another factor that explains why bright, hard-working students can do poorly and how we can help them. Easily applicable across the curriculum.
M. D. Svinicki
& N. M. Dixon. 1987. The Kolb Model Modified for Classroom Activities.
CollegeTeaching
35:141-146. Addressing heterogeneous learning styles using learning-cycles.
GROUP 3: LARGER CONTEXTS: COMPARISONS OF COURSES & COMPARISONS OF STUDENT CHANGE ACROSS TIME
G. Qualitative Studies Designed To Explore A Key Issue. [3 Very Important Studies]
Wm. G. Perry, Jr. [1970] 1998. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years, A Scheme. New introduction by Lee Knefelkamp. Jossey-Bass. The impetus here was the observation that students could flunk out of Harvard despite working quite hard at learning the course material. The longitudinal design used extensive interviews with students at the end of each of their four undergraduate years. Patterns of intellectual development were inferred and checked for inter-judge reliability. A very influential study. (A comparison of Perry with subsequent studies: B. Hofer & P. Pintrich.1997. The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of Educational Research 67: 88-140.)
M. Rose. 1989. Lives On The Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Underclass. Penguin. How traditional pedagogy unintentionally and unnecessarily discriminates against less-privileged students from and on how to make teaching more equitable.
M. Shaughnessy.
1977. Errors and Expectations. Oxford University Press. Students'
"errors" as windows into their thinking.
H. Quantitative Comparisons Of Different Courses Or Sections
M. D. Sundberg
& M. L. Dini. 1993. Science majors vs nonmajors: Is there a difference?
Journal
of College Science Teaching. Mar/Apr 1993:299-304. Question: Does covering
more teach more?. Both courses taught with traditional pedagogy and by
multiple instructors, but with different intensities of 'coverage.' Learning
assessed with the ACT exam for AP Biology (which was already used as the
exemption exam for both courses. Despite much higher rates of drop for
the majors course: "The most surprising, in fact shocking, result of our
study was that the majors completing
their course did not perform
significantly better than the corresponding cohort of nonmajors."
I. Comparisons Of A Wide Array Of Different Courses Using A Common Assessment Instrument.
R. R. Hake.
1998. Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A six-thousand-student
survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American
Journal of Physics 66: 64-74. (http://carini.physics.indiana.edu/SDI/welcome.html#z44).
Uses qualitative multiple choice pre- and post-tests of the understanding
of Newtonian physics, developed and validated by D. Hestenes, to compare
increases in understanding achieved by a wide range of pedagogies in introductory
physics courses at institutions ranging from high-schools to Harvard. Found
that "interactive engagement" approximately doubles the amount of physics
learned. An especially
important model for emulation
in other disciplines.
GROUP 4: FORMAL RESEARCH
J. Experimental Analyses
C. M. Steele.
1997. A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity
and performance. American Psychologist 52:613-629. [For further
discussion see also: C. M. Steele. 1999. "Thin Ice: 'Stereotype Threat'
and Black College Students." Atlantic Monthly Aug.1999: 44-54. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99aug/9908stereotype.htm]
GROUP 5: SUMMARIES AND ANALYSES OF SETS OF PRIOR STUDIES
K. Annotated Bibliographies.
R. N. Johnson,
D. M. Enerson & K. M. Plank. 1996. Diversity: A Selected and Annotated
Bibliography. Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Pennsylvania
State University. http://www.psu.edu/celt/diversity_bib.html
L. Brief, Annotated Summaries Of Key Findings In The Research Literature.
T. A. Angelo. 1997. The campus as learning community: Seven promising shifts and seven powerful levers. AAHE Bulletin 49:3-6.
R. B. Barr
& J. Tagg. 1995. From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for undergraduate
education. Change 27:13-25.
M. Formal (Quantitative) Meta-Analyses
L. Springer,
M.E. Stanne & S.S. Donovan. 1997. Effects Of Small-Group Learning
On Undergraduates In Science, Mathematics, Engineering And Technology,
A Meta-Analysis. National Institute for Science Education, University
of Wisconsin. 608/263-4214 [average effect size "would move a student from
the 50th percentile to the 70th..."]
SOME BASIC REFERENCES FOR DOING SOTL IN THE CLASSROOM
T. Angelo. Ed. 1998. Classroom Assessment and Research: An Update on Uses, Approaches, and Research Findings. Jossey-Bass
K.P. Cross & M. Steadman. 1996. Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship ofTeaching. Jossey-Bass.
C.E. Glassick, M.T. Huber & G.I. Maeroff. 1997. Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. Jossey-Bass.
P. Hutchings & C. Bjork. 1999. An Annotated Bibliography of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Carnegie Foundation. (To find follow site links: Carnegie Academy; Higher Education; bibliography at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/OurWork/OurWork.htm)
B.E.F. Walvoord & V.J. Anderson. 1998. Effective Grading: A Tool For Learning And Assessment. Jossey-Bass.
National
Science Foundation. 1997. User-Friendly Handbook for Mixed Method
Evaluations. NSF97 153. Updated 5/2000. Available as free PDF file
at: http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/REC/pubs/NSF97 153/pdf/mm_eval.pdf