The emerging field of SoTL is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor, embracing a diverse range of research methods. It desires to be hospitable to a range of disciplinary differences in world views. However, the field lacks coherence in its conceptualization and communication. Ongoing debates in the community concern the use of theory, as well as definitional questions of what constitutes SoTL and the nature of its purpose. This article offers a framework for conceptualizing the field, which attempts to broadly delineate the available theories underlying and methodologies appropriate to studying teaching and learning, while intending to be hospitable to a broad range of diverse...
Janice Miller-Young; Michelle Yeo; Karen Manarin; Miriam Carey; Jim Zimmer
Date issued
2016
Description
This chapter briefly describes the SoTL research development program and context at Mount Royal University, reports initial results from a study of the program’s impact on participants’ teaching and scholarly activities, and situates the findings regarding individual impact, department-level impact, institution-level impact, and discipline-level impact within the current literature and the Canadian context described in this special issue
David Pace1, Janice Miller-Young2, Michelle Yeo2, Manie Moolman3, Jennifer Clark4, Adrian Jones5, Anette Wilkinson3, Deirdre van Jaarsveldt3 1 Indiana University 2 Mount Royal University 3 University of the Free State 4 University of New England, NSW 5 La Trobe University Decoding the Disciplines is being used to increase learning in at least nine countries on four continents, and the model has been enriched, as scholars of teaching and learning have adapted the paradigm to the needs of their institutions. This session will begin with a very brief introduction to the Decoding model, followed by presentations showing how teams in Canada, South Africa, and Australia are putting Decoding to...
Michelle Yeo; Mark Lafave; Khatija Westbrook; Jenelle McAllister; Dennis Valdez; Breda Eubank
Date issued
2017
Description
This chapter demonstrates how Decoding work can be productively utilized within a curriculum change process to help make design decisions based on a more nuanced understanding of student learning, and the relationship of a professional program to the field.
Jennifer Boman; Genevieve Currie; Ron MacDonald; Janice Miller-Young; Michelle Yeo; Stephanie Zettel
Date issued
2015
Description
Tuning in on teaching practice in any discipline may well run up against a problem of tacit knowledge--knowledge crucial to the discipline’s ways of thinking and practicing, but by nature obscure. Teachers who omit to make their tacit knowledge explicit in the classroom cause learning bottlenecks for their students. Tacit knowledge can be made explicit to its teacher owner, with positive effect on her teaching, in an interview that invites her to address how she thinks and practices in work her students, lacking her tacit knowledge, find impossible to master (Middendorf & Pace, 2004). We have conducted half a dozen such 90-minute to two-hour interviews with university teachers in...
Mount Royal’s Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has now operated the Nexen Scholars Program for 5 years. However, before now, the outcomes of the program have not been systematically investigated except to count the number of travel grants given and number of papers that program participants have produced. Therefore the purposes of this study were to investigate whether the program has helped faculty meet their own goals for participation, and how both their project and the program have influenced their teaching and scholarly activities. All Mount Royal faculty members who were accepted to the SoTL Scholars program in the years 2009-2013 were invited to participate in...
This chapter argues that expert practice is an inquiry which surfaces a hermeneutic relationship between theory, practice, and the world, with implications for new lines of questioning in the Decoding interview.
Scholars of teaching and learning around the world and in many disciplines have been using the Decoding the Disciplines process to make explicit the mental operations that students must master to succeed. Teachers, as experts in their disciplines, often hold this knowledge in tacit and implicit ways that are not easily accessible to novices, resulting in "bottlenecks" to learning. A key step towards addressing bottlenecks is a Decoding interview in which teachers uncover and unpack crucial thinking with the help of two interviewers outside their field. The interview can yield important insights for teachers, generate data for SoTL work, and also play an important role in developing the...
Jennifer Boman; Genevieve Currie; Ron MacDonald; Janice Miller-Young; Michelle Yeo; Stephanie Zettel
Date issued
2017
Description
In this chapter we describe the “Decoding the Disciplines” Faculty Learning Community at Mount Royal University, and how Decoding has been used in new and multidisciplinary ways in the various teaching, curriculum and research projects which are presented in detail in subsequent chapters.