Weaving Together Undergraduate Research, Mentoring of Junior Faculty, and Assessment: The Case of an Interdisciplinary Program

Scholars in teaching and learning value student research and program assessment as strategies to promote excellence in undergraduate education. Yet, in practice, each can be complex and difficult to sustain. This case study demonstrates how undergraduate research, mentoring of junior faculty, and assessment can be integrated in ways that enrich the educational experiences of students and the professional development of faculty and improve research on teaching and learning. The authors describe a lively undergraduate research project that became tied to the mentoring of assistant professors and then to program assessment. We conclude with recommendations for implementing such a project in other academic settings. Elizabeth Thomas is Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and teaches courses on inquiry in the social sciences, community psychology, and psychology and the arts. Her research examines sociocultural contexts for learning and development with a particular focus on the role of the arts and the potential of participatory action research strategies. Diane Gillespie is Professor and Associate Director of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) at The University of Washington, Bothell, received her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln in Cultural and Psychological Studies in Education. She teaches multicultural social science courses and qualitative research. Her recent publications explore the importance of narrative for reflective teaching and learning, learning in small groups, and the role of human rights in nonformal education.     

Beautiful minds and unruly bodies: embodiment and academic identity in Still Alice and The Theory of Everything

ABSTRACT

This article explores the representation of disability and academic identity in two award-winning films: Still Alice and The Theory of Everything. Drawing on scholarship about embodiment and the ‘normal professor body’, I demonstrate how the complex images of disabled academics in these films take up and replicate (to differing extents) dominant discourses of disembodied intellectualism that shape conceptions of the professoriate. As examples of public pedagogy, these representations have significant ramifications for popular understandings of disability and higher education.     

The Effects of Contingent Teacher Praise,as Specified by Canter's Assertive Discipline Programme,on Children's On‐task Behaviour

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of contingent teacher praise, as specified by Canter's Assertive Discipline programme, on children's on‐task behaviour. In Western Australian primary schools (and in an increasing number of British schools) Canter's programme is widely used. However, while there are many anecdotal reports of its effectiveness there is a relative absence of well controlled research studies reporting objective data. In the present study, three teachers from three separate primary schools and eight randomly selected children from each of their classes were systematically observed. Continuous data collection indicated that following training in the appropriate use of praise, as specified by Canter, all three teachers successfully increased their rates of praising. Of the 24 children, all but one evidenced increases in levels of on‐task behaviour. However, observations conducted during a follow‐up phase revealed reductions in the use of praise by the teachers and in some levels of on‐task behaviour.     

Research Fictions: Arts-Informed Narratives That Disrupt the Authority of the Text

In this paper I examine the dilemma faced by reflexive narrative inquirers who write in the first-person “I” while advocating for a postmodern reading of the “self.” This paper asks the question: How can the reflexive educational researcher craft a research narrative that, on the one hand, strives for self-presence, while on the other hand, denies the transparency of language? I discuss current post-structuralist critiques of educational research rhetoric, and extend the critique to narrative research, suggesting that an arts-informed approach to narrative allows researchers to disrupt the authority of their text. I explore the use of a specific fictionalizing technique – the unreliable narrator – to assist readers in critically deciphering reflexive research narratives.     

Knowledge Integration in Science Teaching: Analysing Teachers' Knowledge Development

This paper tests the utility of a new sociocognitive frame for analysing the development of teachers' knowledge – the knowledge integration perspective (Linn, Eylon, & Davis, in press; Linn & Hsi, 2000). In doing so, the paper describes one prospective elementary teacher's developing knowledge and highlights its complexity. The prospective teacher demonstrates relatively well-integrated science subject matter knowledge, but she makes some problematic links to lessons and develops some instructional representations that show where she needs to distinguish between different scientific ideas. She also, however, links science concepts to appropriate real-world experiences, indicating that she has nascent useful pedagogical content knowledge. The paper discusses what teacher educators can learn about their learners from this analysis, argues for the utility of the knowledge integration perspective for conducting similar analyses, provides ideas to help science teacher educators apply the perspective easily as they teach their students, and points to areas ripe for future research.     

Fostering collaborative teaching and learning scholarship through an international writing group initiative

The research presented here explored the experiences of participants in an international collaborative writing group (ICWG) initiative that ran in conjunction with the 2012 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL) conference. The ICWG sought to cultivate collaborative pedagogical scholarship by bringing together a range of international academics to co-author articles on teaching and learning topics of shared interest. Data were collected via online surveys at the beginning and end of the initiative and interim focus groups/interviews. In addition to suggesting that the ICWG is an effective means of fostering collaborative writing, the results point to a number of factors that might also influence collaboration in other contexts: modes of collaboration, opportunities for social dialogue, developing a shared vision and voice, and leadership. Implications and applications of the findings, as well as areas of further research, are discussed.     

Social interaction and the use of analogy: An analysis of preservice teachers' talk during physics inquiry lessons

Analogies have been argued to be central in the process of establishing conceptual growth, making overt connections and carryover into an intended cognitive domain, and providing a generative venue for developing conceptual understanding inherent in constructivist learning. However, students' specific uses of analogies for constructing arguments are not well understood. Specifically, the results of preservice teachers' knowledge gains are not widely studied. Although we would hope that engaging preservice science teachers in exemplary lessons would assist them in using and generating analogies more expertly, it is not clear whether or how such curricula would affect their learning or teaching. This study presents an existence proof of how preservice science teachers used analogies embedded in their course materials Physics by Inquiry. This fine‐grained analysis of small group discourse revealed three distinct roles of analogies including the development of: (a) cognitive process skills, (b) scientific conceptual understanding, and (c) social contexts for problem solving. Results suggest that preservice teachers tend to overgeneralize the analogies inserted by curriculum materials, map irrelevant features of analogies into collaborative problem solving, and generate personal analogies, which counter scientific concept development. Although the authors agree with the importance of collaborative problem solving and the insertion of analogies for preservice teachers' conceptual development, we believe much more needs to be understood before teachers can be expected to construct and sustain effective learning environments that rely on using analogies expertly. Implications for teacher preparation are also discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 443–463, 2003     

Artifactual dimensions of visual rhetoric: what a content analysis of 114 peer-reviewed articles reveals about data collection reporting

This content analysis examined how the authors of 114 peer-reviewed journal articles explained their empirical approaches to visual rhetoric scholarship. The authors content analysis sought to answer the question: how do scholars engage with the material dimensions of visual culture, specifically in terms of artifact selection and reporting data collection procedures? The answers to this question, the authors argue, are needed urgently as visual rhetoric research continues to expand because inconsistent reporting will hinder replicability and the reader’s access to the author’s argument. The authors use the findings of their content analysis to surface the implicit norms of empirical visual rhetoric research and to develop recommendations for reporting visual data collection procedures.     

Pathways to understanding mind: construct validity and predictive validity of maternal mind-mindedness

The construct validity of maternal mind-mindedness (MM) was investigated in the context of its relations with children's later understanding of mind. MM measures were obtained from infant-mother (N = 52) interactions at 6 months, and from maternal interviews at 48 months. Children's understanding of mind was assessed using theory of mind (ToM) tasks at 45 and 48 months, and a stream of consciousness (SoC) task at 55 months. One of the early MM measures--mothers' appropriate mind-related comments--was a positive independent predictor of: (a) MM at 48 months, and (b) ToM and SoC performance at 45 to 55 months. Path analyses suggested direct links between mothers' use of appropriate mind-related comments and children's later understanding of mind.