Bottom Row, l to r: Steven C. Bauman, Brian Patrick Green, Jenny Patten Gargiulo
Middle Row, l to r: Dante Quick, Maureen A. Maloney, Ed.D. (Project Adminstrator), Elizabeth Drescher, Ph.D. (Cand.) (Research Associate), Sanna Reinholtzen, Michael Sepidoza Campos, Erin Brigham
Top Row, l to r: Terri Tanaka, Ph.D. (Cand.), Melissa James, Courtney Gulden, Ricky Manalo, Ajit Abraham
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Fresh from a winter break in which they had the opportunity to let the lessons of the Fall 2008 Teagle Seminar for Future Faculty soak in a bit, the GTU's twelve Teagle-Wabash Fellows were back to work in January during the two-week Learning and Teaching Academy II. During this follow-up to the summer LTA I, the focus has been primarily on the Fellows' own pedagogies as they play out in practical approaches to classroom teaching. Following content sessions by Alyssa Ninan Nickell, Ph.D. (Cand.) (St. Mary's University) on collegial communication, Kelly Bulkley, Ph.D. (GTU, JFK) on classroom management, Kris Veldheer (GTU) on advanced classroom technologies, and Linda Buckley (USF) on student assessment, the fellows have been presenting pedagogical colloquia that illustrate their developing teaching and learning practice."I subscribe to pedagogical methods that re-imagine shared knowledge and accountability as a means of engaging text. Within such spaces, learning is evaluated just as much by the student as the teacher; and knowledge is understood not as a commodity to be acquired, but as holy space that must be held in reverence."~Michael Sepidoza Campos, Teagle-Wabash Fellow in Interdisciplinary Studies
The pedagogical colloquia model emerges from the work of Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and an advisor to the Teagle-Wabash Preparing Future Faculty project. "Traditionally, in hiring...we have candidates give a talk on their doctoral dissertation. The pedagogical colloquium is a way for a hiring institution to say that it would like candidates to do something that begins to demonstrate their understanding of the teaching of their discipline," he explains. The goal, then, is to enter the academic job market prepared to talk not only about scholarly research, but also about how pedagogical preparation and reflection and classroom practice has prepared a scholar to teach real students in a real institutional session. The Teagle-Wabash Fellows' colloquia have aimed to show their development as teaching scholars along these lines.
In a generous conversation with GTU President Jim Donahue and Teagle-Wabash Research Associate Elizabeth Drescher last spring, Shulman recommended the pedagogical colloquium as a tool that would enable to fellows to present themselves professionally as "plug-n-play" faculty. "The more prepared doctoral students are to situate their research in the context of teaching as it happens in an academic department with all its disciplinary commitments and institutional obligations," Shulman insisted, "the more successful they are going to be not just as scholars who can get a job, but as scholars and educators who can connect their own work to the 'big questions' that drive institutions, disciplines, departments, classroom teaching, and the larger world."
Through the first week of colloquia, it is clear that the Teagle-Wabash Fellows have embraced the challenge of illustrating the ways in which their scholarship is animated in a classroom setting through the practice of what George D. Kuh and Robert M. Gonyea, drawing on the research of Alexander and Helena Astin at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, have highlighted as "deep learning"--learning which engages students as ongoing, intentional learners who are able to carry the lessons of the classrooms into their longer and wider life trajectory. Michael Sepidoza Campos, Teagle-Wabash Fellow in Interdisciplinary Studies, addressed this kind of 'big questions'-oriented learning in his colloquium through a "Pedagogy of Listening" that will shape a course he is teaching in Spring 2008 at Pacific School of Religion entitled "EnGendered Pedagogy: Queer and Postcolonial Imaginations in Teaching."
"I subscribe to pedagogical methods that re-imagine shared knowledge and accountability as a means of engaging text," Campos explained in his colloquium. "Within such spaces, learning is evaluated just as much by the student as the teacher; and knowledge is understood not as a commodity to be acquired, but as holy space that must be held in reverence. A transformative pedagogy enlivens a “third space” that embraces, rather than dispels, difference."
Inspired by Chela Sandoval's metaphor of the learning process as not unlike falling in love, Campos continued, "A loving encounter provokes an ecstatic positionality that destabilizes static notions of selfhood and alterity. The lover and the beloved are dis-located—forced to stand beyond self, rendered ecstatic—and so opened to possibilities that allow for the reconfiguration of traditional discourse. When teacher and student apprehend each other for the first time, difference can easily melt into assimilation or give birth to new ways of being."
Attempting to avoid the risk of the pedagogical colloquium highlighted by Shulman--that it not become an "occasion ... for soliloquies on teaching" -- Campos and other Fellows were challenged to apply their reflections to classroom activities that demonstrate their pedagogical range as educators within defined institutional settings and disciplinary locations with specific student populations. This challenge will continue through the Spring 2008 semester as the fellows teach courses at various GTU schools and the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of their project mentors.
GTU students and UCB graduate students can register for these courses during the regular Spring 2008 registration period. GTU Teagle-Wabash Fellows and Mentors will have the opportunity for sustained engagement with Helen and Alexander Astin in the February project forum.
Sources mentioned in this post include:
George D. Kuh and Robert M. Gonyea, "Spirituality, Liberal Learning, and College Student Engagement," Liberal Education (Winter 2006): 40-47.
Lee S. Shulman, "The Pedagogical Colloquium: Three Models," Electronic Educational Environment, University of California, Irvine.
https://eee.uci.edu/news/articles/0512colloquium.php
Michael Sepidoza Campos, "Pedagogy of Listening," Unpublished seminar paper (December 12, 2007).
[Posted by Elizabeth Drescher, January 19, 2008]
