The measurement of meaning

by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

THE ninth annual report of the president and the treasurer of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, for the year ending September 30, 1914, shows a total endowment of 2,850,000l., a surplus of 249,000l., an annual income of 149,200l., and an annual expenditure of 143,200l. Of this 9400l. was spent in administration, 9400l. in educational inquiry, and 126,800l. in retiring allowances and pensions. During the year twenty-nine retiring allowances and fifteen widows pensions were granted, the average grant being 329l. 10s., The total number of allowances now in force is 332, the total number of widows' pensions 100, the general average grant being 319l. The total number of allowances granted since the beginning of the foundation is 595, the total expenditure for this purpose being 710,200l.

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The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

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Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom by Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt

Argumentive reasoning skills are featured in the new K–12 Common Standards (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010), yet with little said about their nature or how to instill them. Distinguishing reasoning skills from writing skills, we report on a multiyear intervention that used electronically conducted dialogues on social issues as the medium to develop argumentive reasoning skills in two cohorts of young adolescents. Intervention groups demonstrated transfer of the dialogic activity to two individual essays on new topics; argument quality for these groups exceeded that of comparison groups who participated in an intervention involving the more face-valid activity of extensive essay writing practice, along with whole-class discussion. The intervention group also demonstrated greater awareness of the relevance of evidence to argument. The dialogic method thus appears to be a viable one for developing cognitive skills that the comparison-group data show do not routinely develop during this age period.

Dialogic Argumentation as a Vehicle for Developing Young Adolescents’ Thinking

Book review of Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind, Gerald Graff, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003

http://jpaap.napier.ac.uk/index.php/JPAAP/article/download/58/pdf

Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind

Increasing numbers of ‘teaching-only’ staff are being appointed in higher education institutions in the UK. At one research-intensive university, a new category of academic staff was recently introduced: University Teachers, who are required to engage in scholarly activity as part of their conditions of employment. For many this scholarly activity equates to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). In an attempt to support this growing body of staff in their engagement with SoTL, a year-long Learning Community (LC) was formed. This paper outlines the activities of the LC and presents the outcomes of a collaborative project to explore its members' experiences. We describe the developmental process of LC membership and consider the parallels between our findings and theories of social capital and transformative learning. We conclude with a consideration of how LCs might be used as an engaging form of academic staff development.

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From anxiety to empowerment: a learning community of university teachers

This paper is a response to Cotton, Miller and Kneale’s 2017 paper on the current state of higher education research within UK universities. It seeks to contribute to the debate surrounding...

The scholarship of teaching and learning and pedagogic research within the disciplines: should it be included in the research excellence framework?

In this paper, we focus on the experience of faculty learning to do the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Our two studies uncovered similar threshold concepts in SoTL in two contrasting ...

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Investigating support for scholarship of teaching and learning; We need SoTL educational leaders

Increasingly, academics are engaging with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). However, within United Kingdom higher education, the definition of and activities that constitute SoTL remain open to debate. In this article, we explore SoTL through four career histories that give insight into how SoTL has developed and played a role in the careers of four life sciences-based, teaching-focused academics in UK universities at different points in their careers. The recurring themes in the career histories include collaboration; professional development; sharing and dissemination; and funding. The career histories also highlight aspects of and the importance of communities of practice. We reflect on the role of communities of practice in supporting SoTL and discuss how communities of practice external to one’s home institution can play a role in developing SoTL and teaching practice. Internationally there is a growing focus on SoTL, and although the four career histories presented here are authored by academics based in UK institutions and focused on the UK context, the themes they reveal are widely applicable.

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Anne Margaret Tierney

Papers

Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind

From anxiety to empowerment: a learning community of university teachers

The scholarship of teaching and learning and pedagogic research within the disciplines: should it be included in the research excellence framework?

Investigating support for scholarship of teaching and learning; We need SoTL educational leaders

Supporting SoTL Development through Communities of Practice.