more readings

From Janette Barrington:

Here are some suggested readings for the Provost�s committee on teaching and learning. Electronic versions of the articles are attached.

TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION (2007)

Going back to the early 1900�s John Dewey advocated for a democratic revolution in education � with everyone at every level working consciously to solve the central problems confronting their society. Now there is a worldwide movement from big science entrepreneurial universities to community-engaged civic universities. This extract from the book �Dewey�s Dream� describes how the University of Pennsylvania has transformed itself through continuous involvement in research to improve their public school system. A wide range of departments �are now seriously considering how they might revise existing courses, or develop new courses that would enable their students to benefit from innovative curricular opportunities to become active learners, creative real-world problem solvers, and active producers, not simply passive consumers of knowledge� (p.92).

Read more at the following website:
International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy
http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/programs-and-research/index.php

Sustainability guru David Orr, argues for a university education focused on the environment, mastering one�s self not a body of knowledge, social responsibility for one�s self and exemplified by the university, and the importance of how learning occurs � active rather than passive. Written 17 years ago but still as vital today.

DEVELOPING TEACHING EXCELLENCE

Pat Hutchings, Vice-President of the Carnegie Foundation, recommends moving away from one-time workshops to faculty inquiry � sustained over time, in collaboration with others, and focused on evidence about student learning. Predicated on an understanding of teaching as a public set of practices that need a social and organizational context in which to be discussed and developed.

John Biggs, now retired but very influential in Europe and Australia higher education, describes three levels of teaching competence and how quality assurance of a university system can use the same standards. A level 3 system operates �at the department level, with the course as target, [this] means that the reluctant under-performing teacher is drastically redefined. Teaching is now the focus, not individual teachers.� (p. 227)

An award-winning short film on Biggs� theory can be viewed online at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5629273206953884671

THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

Mary Taylor Huber, senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and colleagues describe lessons learned from a major U.S. initiative on making integrative learning (helping students tie things together) a campus-wide concern: �collaborative efforts at the campus, program, and departmental levels are needed, both to introduce new practices where necessary, and to ensure that programs already in place reinforce and build on one another.�

A report by the Higher Education Academy in the UK that argues the teaching-research nexus (connecting teaching and research roles) is central for student intellectual development. Links are not automatic, there are important disciplinary variations, and academic departments are key as well as the sharing of case studies.

Researchers for Tomorrow (January 2008)
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/2008/01/07/researchers-for-tomorrow.aspx

Jean Nicolas argues that PhD students are not being trained for the jobs awaiting them (30% of Canadian PhD graduates do not become academics). Describes an interdisciplinary PhD seminar at the University of Sherbrooke designed to develop essential skills in doctoral candidates that employers say they are lacking.