Enhancing Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning

In this book, Maryellen Weimer provides an essential resource for anyone who is engaged in efforts to improve teaching in higher education. This comprehensive book draws on a wide array of sources to help practitioners build on the foundation laid by existing scholarly work on teaching and learning. Enhancing Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning reviews previously published work on teaching and learning to better guide those engaged in pedagogical scholarship and to help develop a literature that meets the needs of faculty.

Enhancing Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning includes an analysis of the practitioner literature on teaching and learning in two main categories—the wisdom of scholarship and research scholarship. The first category uses the lens of experience to analyze instructional issues, and the second category employs more objective frames to assess instructional issues. The book explores four experiential approaches to teaching and learning (personal accounts of change, recommended-practices reports, recommended-content reports, and personal narratives and includes an analysis of the three most common research methods (quantitative investigation, qualitative studies, and descriptive research). Enhancing Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning also includes information about other methods in addition to the main approaches.

Preface ix

The Author xxi

1. Why and How to Look 1

2. What to Look At 19

3. Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning: An Overview 39

4. The Lens of Experience: Wisdom of Practice 53

5. The Lens of Objectivity: Research Scholarship 91

6. Promising Possibilities 123

7. Looking Ahead: Learning from What’s Behind 141

8. From Looking to Doing: Advice for Faculty 169

9. From Looking to Doing: Advice for Academic Leaders 193

Appendixes

A. Discipline-Based Pedagogical Periodicals 211

B. Cross-Disciplinary and Topical Pedagogical Periodicals 215

References 217

Name Index 231

Subject Index 237

Maryellen Weimer is an Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Berks Lehigh Valley College of Penn State and served as one of the college's academic officers on an interim appointment from 1998?to 2000. Previously she was an Associate Director of the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning and Assessment, a five-year, $5.9 million, U. S. Department of Education research and development center. The Center was part of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State University where Dr. Weimer was a senior research associate before returning to the teaching faculty in 1994.
Dr. Weimer has served on the editorial boards of four journals, and has consulted with over 175 colleges and universities on instructional issues. Since 1990, Dr. Weimer has delivered keynotes at eight national meetings and seven regional conferences.?For more than a decade?she has edited the Teaching Professor, a monthly newsletter on college teaching with 14,000 subscribers. She has edited or authored nine books, including the recent Jossey-Bass title, Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice.