ERIC Number: EJ1094677
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1742-5964
EISSN: N/A
Towards Contextual Experimentation: Creating a Faculty Learning Community to Cultivate Writing-to-Learn Practices
Chang, Mary K.; Rao, Kavita; Stewart, Maria L.; Farley, Cynthia A.; Li, Katherine
Studying Teacher Education, v12 n1 p20-36 2016
In order to explore ways to integrate new pedagogical practices, five faculty members created an informal faculty learning community focused on writing-to-learn practices, an inquiry and process-based writing pedagogy. The faculty members learned the writing-to-learn practices together, periodically met to discuss how they implemented the practices, and reflected on each other's instructional methods in the contexts of their own experiences. The faculty members engaged in a self-study in order to understand how the collaborative nature of the learning community helped them to learn and use the new teaching practices. After participating in a series of workshops together, they shared written reflections about their experiences of employing the practices in their own classrooms. The findings of this study reveal that participation in a faculty learning community provided an engaging and effective way to learn and make use of new pedagogical practices. Participants gained practical adaptive strategies from each other, felt supported in their experimentation with the new practices, and analyzed more deeply the ways in which the new practices could be integrated into their teaching. The authors describe how an informal faculty learning community can be an effective tool for faculty to research, learn, and analyze the learning of specific pedagogical practices.
Descriptors: Teaching Methods, College Faculty, Teacher Collaboration, Communities of Practice, Inquiry, Writing Assignments, Writing Workshops, Reflection, Faculty Development, Student Attitudes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A