Jason’s Class Reflection 1/26

Posted by on January 27, 2010 
Filed under Reflections

First off, I was very interested in the idea of the scholarly article vs. the teaching portfolio as a way for the SoTL to “go public”. Before class I would have sided strongly with teaching portfolio’s. But after seeing the influence that “traditional” articles had on the definition of SoTL over time, I come to a different conclusion. While I still think that a class portfolio is the best way to publicly share a course with other teachers, the traditional article may be very useful in discussing SoTL as a practice. So, I leave the class having moved much more to the 50/50 both are necessary position.

Secondly, I enjoyed the discussion on “Pedagogical Content Knowledge”, or as I think of it, it not just knowing a lot about your discipline it’s knowing how to teach what you know that really matters. I still think this fact is glossed over all too often. As we discussed the PhD is still seen as a green light to teach. I also believe that many of the teachers today thrived in a lecture based learning environment, so they recreate what taught them well, which probably serves to disadvantage a majority of students (which by the way, I’m not fully convinced this only disadvantages “the technology generation” I think it has probably always disadvantaged students that for whatever reason don’t fit into a read/lecture learning environment).

Finally, I got a lot out of the discussion of arguments against SoTL. The arguments against going public to me break down rather easily and seem to operate as rationalizations for the status quo more than legitimate concerns. Although they do raise some concerns that would need to be dealt with, such as student anonymity in the publishing process, I think there are ways to reduce or eliminate most issues. At the community college, I think that the overloaded plate argument is less valid. Since we are not required to publish, maybe publishing SoTL could be built into the reward system somehow. Certainly a record of self reflection and student achievement should be reinforced in some way. I would love to see the community college system lead the way in the SoTL movement in the future. The freedom from publish or parish at community colleges is a real advantage creating a more favorable environment for SoTL activity.

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