Carrie Ann’s 1/26 Class Reflection
Posted by cdelane2 on February 1, 2010
Filed under Reflections
After class this past week I kept thinking about our discussion about the classroom as a private space and how most professors even today view the classroom as “private”. It was interesting to hear how others in the class feel about this issue, as I am only truly versed in my own content area, learning about how this “private teaching area” relates to other content areas is something I would like to discuss more. In music, especially in music performance, we put our product out there for the public to see/hear, so that is where my original viewpoint has come from and I through the upcoming study of the SoTL, I wonder if this will change.
As we were looking at the various definitions of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, it amazed me at how “incomplete” some of the definitions were. As per Rice’s description in 1991, we saw that it was missing the process of what learning is in terms of outcomes. Then Martin in 1999 built on the Rice definition by adding the process of self-reflection bringing us closer to scholarly teaching. Finally, we discussed the Shulman definition, and for me this was the most complete in terms of design and process, having built on the Martin and Rice models of the SoTL. There seemed to be more interdisciplinary connections and this makes it more accessible to a broad audience. As of this point in time, I find more connections to the Shulman definition due to my content area and the classes I currently teach. I need to find interdisciplinary connections with the class content, since I primary teach non-majors and for true learning to occur the class content needs to be synthesized with “real life”.
As we go further into depth into the SoTL, our views of the aforementioned definitions will change and we will develop or own based on our content area of study. After our first class I am truly looking forward to our class discussions on this and other topics and I love seeing what I can learn from other’s content areas and how I can add them into my own teaching.
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acastro on February 7th, 2010 6:28 pm
Aracelie_Response to posts_9 Feb 10
Rereading the postings has lead me back to the fleeting thoughts and questions that come to me in class, or as I am reading but have not yet had time to develop or explore. I was drawn back to Carrie Ann’s 26 Jan Reflection requesting we revisit the “private teaching area” concept. Is it possible not publishing one’s lessons might be driven by that person’s thoughts that he or she will no longer be credited for it and possibly lose a competitive advantage when it comes time for promotion/advancement? To use Jason’s comparison to Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis, could that be why some fear others “peeking behind the curtain”? Would that even be a valid concern? Other than what we discussed in class, I am not familiar with the tenure process or other types of advancement in higher education, so I am not sure it would.
Because I have not worked in education before, I relate things to my experiences working for the government or to my time spent as a student in various settings such as college courses, contracted seminars, graduate school, military training, etc. (This habit of relying on prior experience will be addressed more in my reading log for this week. Stay tuned for that.) In this instance, I equated “private teaching area” with the term “stovepipe”. It is a term that has been widely-used to describe the way organizations in the Intelligence Community (IC) did business prior to the events of 11 Sep 01. Many of the agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Security Agency (NSA), for example – had information on the same suspected terrorists. However, although the IC agencies were required to share information vertically, (i.e., from the lowest level employee up to the President), they were not sharing horizontally (i.e., agency to agency). Today, to new employees, it seems ludicrous for those agencies to have operated that way. However, it has taken many years for the old employees to let go of “the way we’ve always done it” mentality and learn to share information horizontally.
Could this be what we are experiencing within higher education? Will it take an almost catastrophic event in the field for those who are in it to realize “sharing is caring”? It seems a shift in thinking would be required for classrooms, and in turn, associated teaching tools and lessons to be regarded as part of the public domain.