New eJournal - Kwantlen Polytechnic University

We are pleased to announce that we are now live on-line with our fifth issue of Kwantlen Polytechnic University's eJournal -Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal. ISSN 1918-0853

My Classroom: Reflections on Practise and Practices
Personal SoTL about real learning by current educators
Volume 2, Issue 2

http://kwantlen.ca/TD/Current_Issue.html

Our main page is located at: http://kwantlen.ca/TD. We invite all of you to read, consider, and join in the dialogue. We look forward to more conversations.

Balbir Kaur Gurm, R.N., Ed.D.
Editor, Transformative Dialogues
Nursing Faculty, Community & Health Studies
Chair Progressions & Admissions Committees
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Tel: (604) 599-2267

Alice Macpherson CQ, MA
Editor, Transformative Dialogues
Professional Development & PLA Coordinator
The Centre for Academic Growth
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Tel: (604) 599-3040

http://kwantlen.ca/TD

Assistance with Dissertation Study on Faculty Burnout

Hi, my name is Janie Crosmer and I am a doctoral candidate at Texas Woman’s University Health Studies Department. As a requirement for a Doctor of Philosophy degree, I am working on my dissertation research project, which is a study on job workload among full time university faculty in the United States who are employed in traditional and virtual institutions. Your participation in this study contributes to the field of worksite health regarding workload in higher education, as well as develops relevant worksite health education for this population.

If you are a full time faculty member at a U.S.university, I’d like to invite you to participate in my study by clicking on the attached link and taking the Maslach Burnout Inventory – Educators Survey (MBI-ES) and a short demographic survey https://www.psychdata.com/s.asp?SID=126993. The MBI-ES can be completed in approximately 10-15 minutes and the demographic survey can be completed in approximately 5-10 minutes.

Submission of the electronic survey will signify your informed consent to participate in this research. All questionnaire results are anonymous and your name will not appear anywhere on the document. As with all electronic surveys, there is a slight risk of loss of confidentiality (i.e. computer’s I.P. address appearing) when data is downloaded from the survey site. However, only the researcher will have access to this information, no names or identifying information is required, and this information will be analyzed collectively. The data will be statistically analyzed and results of the study will be available, if requested.

You may choose to enter your email in a raffle to win an electronic Amazon gift card. You can enter your email by clicking on a separate link at the end of the survey. This link is not connected to the MBI-ES or demographic response. There will be no identifying mechanism from the online survey to the random drawing link.

Thank you very much for your help in this study. Additionally, please feel free to pass this link on to other faculty members who may be interested in participating.

Sincerely,


Janie Crosmer, MBA, MS, CHES

https://www.psychdata.com/s.asp?SID=126993

Call for Papers

You are cordially invited to submit a Proposal for the 2009 Southwest Teaching and Learning Conference.

The Great Southwest: Expanding Educational Opportunities
--Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship

March 27-28, 2009
Texas A&M University-Kingsville, System Center-San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas (USA)
Conference website: http://swtlc.memberlodge.org/

We are excited to welcome proposals for the 2009 Southwest Teaching & Learning Conference (SWTLC), sponsored by Texas A&M University-Kingsville System Center-San Antonio. Our primary mission is to facilitate the sharing of knowledge about teaching and learning in theory as well as through classroom best practices. We invite proposals from any field including but not limited to: Business, Education, Arts & Sciences, as well as technical and vocational programs. While our primary emphasis is on college and university teaching and learning, we welcome proposals from all scholars. Our conference aims to facilitate a discussion of the particular issues associated with educating traditionally underserved student populations. We hope to bring together scholars from not only the Southwest region of the United States, but also from around the country. We invite you to share the knowledge and wisdom you have gained through your own research and inquiry. Together, we can extend educational opportunities not only to students, but also faculty, scholars, administrators, and others involved in teaching and learning.

You can download a Call for Proposals here. Deadline for submissions is January 5, 2009. Proposals in a variety of formats are accepted including Research Proposals, Panel Presentations, Teacher/Classroom Workshops, and Multimedia/Poster Presentations. Guidelines for proposal submission can be found in the Call for Proposals.

If you have any additional questions, please contact the Conference Co-Chair:
Tracy A. Hurley, Ph.D.
Division Head - College of Business
TAMUK-San Antonio
1450 Gillette Blvd
San Antonio, TX 78224
210.932.6241 voice
210.932.6246 fax
thurley@tamuk.edu

Exploring Signature Pedagogies book

My co-editors (Regan Gurung and Aeron Haynie) and I stood in the ISSOTL 2006 book exhibit and talked about doing a book together. We brainstormed what issues inspired us and made us wanted to know more, and quickly came to signature pedagogies. Two years later, the book just came out--thanks to ISSOTL!--Nancy Chick

Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind
Edited by Regan A. R. Gurung, Nancy L. Chick, and Aeron Haynie
Foreword by Anthony A. Ciccone

From the Foreword
“These authors have clearly shown the value in looking for the signature pedagogies of their disciplines. Nothing uncovers hidden assumptions about desired knowledge, skills, and dispositions better than a careful examination of our most cherished practices. The authors inspire specialists in other disciplines to do the same. Furthermore, they invite other colleagues to explore whether relatively new, interdisciplinary fields such as Women’s Studies and Global Studies have, or should have, a signature pedagogy consistent with their understanding of what it means to ‘apprentice’ in these areas.” --Anthony A. Ciccone, Senior Scholar and Director, Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

How do individual disciplines foster deep learning, and get students to think like disciplinary experts? With contributions from the sciences, humanities, and the arts, this book critically explores how to best foster student learning within and across the disciplines. This book represents a major advance in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) by moving beyond individual case studies, best practices, and the work of individual scholars, to focus on the unique content and characteristic pedagogies of major disciplines.

Each chapter begins by summarizing the SoTL literature on the pedagogies of a specific discipline, and by examining and analyzing its traditional practices, paying particular attention to how faculty evaluate success. Each concludes by the articulating for its discipline the elements of a “signature pedagogy” that will improve teaching and learning, and by offering an agenda for future research. Each chapter explores what the pedagogical literature of the discipline suggests are the optimal ways to teach material in that field, and to verify the resulting learning. Each author is concerned about how to engage students in the ways of knowing, the habits of mind, and the values used by experts in his or her field.

Readers will not only benefit from the chapters most relevant to their disciplines. As faculty members consider how their courses fit into the broader curriculum and relate to the other disciplines, and design learning activities and goals not only within the discipline but also within the broader objectives of liberal education, they will appreciate the cross-disciplinary understandings this book affords.

“This volume sets out to create conceptual and empirical bridges between the scholarship of teaching and learning and the emerging study of signature pedagogies. The editors present a pioneering extension of the concept of signature pedagogy from the professions to the academic disciplines.” —LEE S. SHULMAN, President, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

“The authors challenge all of us to look carefully at our teaching, leading us in thoughtful questioning of inherited pedagogies and urging us to design intentional practices based on actual disciplinary priorities and evidence of student learning.” —JENNIFER META ROBINSON, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University

“What does it mean to think like a historian? Like a mathematician? Like a sociologist? The engaging essays in this extraordinary book pull back the curtain on twenty years of work on college and university teaching in fourteen disciplines, and highlight innovations that are turning classrooms, labs, and field sites into spaces where students practice what in earlier days professors simply preached. An invaluable resource for faculty and graduate students who are deepening and intensifying their own involvement with teaching as serious intellectual work. I really do love this book.” —MARY TAYLOR HUBER, Senior Scholar, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

“Exploring Signature Pedagogies is a remarkable achievement that is sure to find its way onto everyone’s short shelf of essential books on teaching and learning. This is the perfect book to give to faculty members who are dubious of ‘faddish’ education research. It also belongs in the hands of every beginning teacher or anyone wanting a good road map to the problems and possibilities of teaching the liberal arts.” —LENDOL CALDER, Associate Professor of History at Augustana College

Below is information about an upcoming conference; the deadline for proposal submissions is September 30. (By “institutions serving ‘minorities’”, they mean institutions that have significant numbers of “minority” students but are not federally declared as a Minority Serving Institution (MSI).

4^th annual National

Teaching and Learning for Empowerment Conference:

A Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference

for

Minority Serving Institutions and

Institutions Serving “Minorities”

January 16-19, 2009

hosted by

Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia

(Info at www.caucetlinfo.org)