This Fall, the College will begin the second phase of a teaching/learning initiative by embarking on a three year program of professional development sponsored by the Office for Academic Affairs for all College faculty. This program will focus on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) agenda promoted by the Carnegie Foundation and the American Association for Higher Education.
The project, facilitated by myself and Neil Wells and initiated in 2003-2004 with a group of faculty teaching in the College Achievement Partnership, will create an opportunity for all faculty to establish an ongoing conversation exploring the nature of teaching and learning across disciplines and specific to the environment of our institution.
SoTL is a national initiative forwarded by the Carnegie Foundation. Originally proposed by Ernest Boyer in his 1990 report Scholarship Reconsidered and currently promoted by Lee Shulman, Carnegie President and Senior Carnegie Scholars Pat Hutchings, K. Patricia Cross, and Thomas A. Angelo, as well as other prominent educators (see www.carnegiefoundation.org), SoTL provides a structure within which to construct a local conversation about teaching and learning to the mutual benefit of students and faculty. As Boyer wrote:
"Teaching is… a dynamic endeavor involving all the analogies, metaphors, and images that build bridges between the teacher’s understanding and the student’s learning. Pedagogical procedures must be carefully planned, continuously examined, and relate directly to the subject taught…. With this vision, great teachers create common ground of intellectual commitment. They stimulate active, not passive learning and encourage students to be critical, creative thinkers, with the capacity to go on learning after their college days are over" (pgs. 23-24). (See Question to respond to the quotation.)
It is the intention of this project to promote a coordinated, sustained conversation about the nature of teaching at CCP across all disciplines. During the 2004-2005 academic year we will provide a series of presentations/discussions lead by colleagues on subjects that speak to our profession, teaching, and its intended outcome, student learning. The theme of each presentation will vary; however, the focus of the series will be what it means to teach at Community College of Philadelphia and how we may best promote student learning.
In the Spring 2003 issue of Viewpoints, in an article titled “Shaping Classroom Practices: the Scholarship of Teaching,” I quoted W. Norton Grubb’s (1999) rather startling assessment of the community colleges he and his associates studied. Grubb wrote:
"With some notable exceptions most community colleges do little systematically to help their instructors improve their teaching. As a result, teaching looks like an individual activity, varying enormously from person to person, with out apparent rationale, and justifying the old saw that ‘good teachers are born, not made.’ But this isn’t necessarily so; it is so because community colleges, like so many educational institutions, have failed to assume much institutional responsibility for the quality of instruction" (p. 49).
While Community College of Philadelphia has over the last few years made significant efforts to promote professional development for faculty, this initiative, as a coordinated, sustained endeavor, should place us squarely among the “notable exceptions” referred to by Grubb and provide for all interested College faculty an opportunity to participate in what we hope will be rich and professionally satisfying conversations. The intention should be nothing less than establishing the Community College of Philadelphia as a major center for teaching and learning in the country.
References
Grubb, W. Norton & Associates. (1999). Honored but Invisible.. New York: Routledge..
Beginning this issue, Viewpoints will provide as a regular feature a quote from educational literature accompanied by a question to which the editors invite response from the College community. We begin with a quote from Ernest Boyer . Our question is the following: In your teaching, what is a metaphor or simile which would describe your instruction? How does the metaphor anchor your teaching?
You may send your replies to Tom Ott
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Maintained by Jay Howard,Sept 2004