SoTL through the Lenses of the Arts and Humanities

As the community of SoTL scholars has grown across Canada and around the world, however, there has been a growing sense that SoTL work has been dominated by the epistemologies, philosophies, and research methods of the social sciences, a view that has been supported by SoTL journal editors and resources dedicated to introducing faculty to SoTL (Gurung and Schwartz, 2009; Jarvis and Creasey, 2009; McKinney and Chick, 2010; Chick, 2012). To quote Nancy Chick (2012) in a recent book on the current state of SoTL in the disciplines, “while many well-known SoTL leaders come from humanities backgrounds …, the on-the-ground work largely marginalizes the practices of their disciplines.”

The question then follows: “How does the apparent under-representation of (arts and) humanities-based disciplines affect expectations for SoTL, from norms for research design and methodology to the genre and style of its products?” (McKinney and Chick, 2010).

This special issue of The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning seeks to explore this question, and also to provide examples of SoTL work that uses the genres, approaches, research designs, theoretical and epistemological frameworks, and methodologies of the arts and humanities to explore key topics in teaching and learning.

For the complete call for submissions, please click – Special Issue Call for Submissions

For more information, please contact Brad Wuetherick (brad [dot] wuetherick [at] usask [dot] ca).

The following was posted on H-Net:
We welcome manuscripts on teaching any historical subject, time period, or region. Here are some questions that may be addressed... other questions as well as proposals from diverse perspectives are encouraged.

  1.  What pedagogical or andragogical approaches should be used in teaching an undergraduate or graduate history class?
  2.  As our understanding of history and historical development changes, how should we adjust our teaching and learning facilitation methods to reflect these changes?
  3.  What types of methods work best at each level--high school, community college, undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate?
  4.  How appropriate or effective are currently broadly popular methods, such as cooperative learning (i.e. group work), service learning, and educational games, for the history classroom?
  5.  How much should we adapt old methods or move to completely new approaches? In other words, how and how far should we teach beyond the textbook?
  6.  How can we assess the relative effectiveness of new methods for teaching history?
  7.  What do we teach and/or should we teach in a secondary school history class: memory, heritage, traditional indigenous histories, counterfactual history, or reading and writing? How much history should be required in a school curriculum?
  8.  What educational technology is useful for teaching history?
  9.  How can we effectively use educational technology to promote historical understanding?
  10. What is the effect of computer-based technology on historical scholarship and teaching?
Who May Submit:
Manuscripts are sought from those whose experiences and methods in the college or high school classroom have produced meaningful ways to teach history, whether in the traditional classroom, through on-line courses, or a combination of class meetings and web-based work. Submissions may be in the form of research reports, case studies, research in progress, or theoretical papers. Please identify your submission with keyword: HISTORY

Submission deadline:
Thursday, 28th February 2013.
Submission Procedure:
http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/rufen1.htm

Dr. Gary Kieffner,
AEQ Teaching History Feature Editor
Assistant Professor, Department of History
The Fiji National University, Lautoka Campus
Tel. 679-6667-533 ext. 7017
gary [dot] kieffner [at] fnu [dot] ac [dot] fj<
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Checkout a post on edwired, T. Mills Kelly’s blog about all things education, history, and digital.  Kelly notes that while end-of-semester course surveys have gotten better, they still do not focus enough on assessing what student’s learned.  Further, Texas A&M University is considering offering “successful” instructors monetary incentives to improve teaching performance.  Click here to read all about it.