“Once a Scientist…”: Disciplinary Approaches and Intellectual Dexterity in Educational Development

Abstract

The authors claim that disciplinary epistemologies—disciplinary habits of mind and ways of thinking—offer productive lenses for observing teaching practices. Furthermore, they argue that educational developers who draw from multiple epistemologies in combination provide rich evidence with regard to teaching and learning and can speak to academic colleagues from an array of disciplines. Clarity is provided for career paths in educational development for colleagues from academic disciplines who are contemplating part‐ or full‐time work in a teaching center. The authors hope that this opening collection develops into a toolkit and area of inquiry about disciplinary approaches to the practice of educational development.

Perceptions of Outreach, Theory, and Practice at Centers for Teaching and Learning

“…They used their previous knowledge of teaching and their own strengths to guide their theoretical work. This connects with previous researchers claim that CTLs, as a field, utilize multidisciplinarity in ways that propel the future of the field, but do not necessarily, alter its status as a field (Kearns et al, 2018;Skead, 2018). Further, for some, interviewees, there weren't any specific theoretical lens which grounded their programming and work as a CTL employee.…”

“…Previous researchers have named characteristics which make theorizing and generalizing difficult including university structure (Dickens et al, 2019;Reder, 2014), CTL structure (Kelley, 2018), and university constraints (Beach et al, 2016). Additionally, CTL employees come from a multitude of disciplinary and educational theory backgrounds creating further attributes to how a CTL may communicate, reach out, and practice within a university (Kearns et al, 2018;McDonald, 2010). However, much as there has been discussions and research regarding the common top-down, bottom-up and lateral decision making of units (Baker et al, 2018;Cook & Kaplan, 2011;Cruz, 2018;Diamond, 2002;Little, 2014;Mitchell, 2015).…”

“…In this way, educational developers act as a tool to aid educators stuck by the constraints of their own disciplines. For example, a chemistry professor confused by repeated low student evaluations may be enlightened through an educational developer from the chemistry discipline who can use an example from their shared experiences in the discipline to explain why the evaluations may be low or why change is needed in the pedagogy of the chemistry professor (Kearns et al, 2018).…”

“…Due to the diverse nature of university needs, types, sizes and CTL structures, literature has not explored how these three concepts-practice, scholarship, and outreach-may be understood differently based on the variables of the university. Many scholars have hesitated to generalize the nature of CTLs because of the diversity in disciplinary background (Cruz, 2018;Kearns et al, 2018), leadership (Palmer et al, 2010), funding (Kelley et al, 2017), type of institution (Baker et al, 2017;Goto & Davis, 2009;Smith & Gadbury-Amyot, 2014), needs of the university (Diamond, 2002;Cruz, 2018;, and other constraints (Diamond, 2002;Green & Little, 2016;Leibowitz et al, 2015). While Hellstrӧm et al (2018) explored how CTLs work as centers for interdisciplinary collaboration, they only investigated the director's perspective of how he or she worked to build interdisciplinary collaboration.…”

“…Finally, previous researchers have named characteristics which make theorizing difficult, including, university structure (Dickens et al, 2019;Reder, 2014), CTL structure (Kelley, 2018), and university constraints (Beach et al, 2016). Additionally, CTL employees come from a multitude of disciplinary and educational theory backgrounds creating further ways in which a CTL may theorize, reach out, and practice within a university (Kearns et al, 2018;McDonald, 2010). Therefore, this study attempted to assess how characteristics of CTLs can be conceptualized and differentiated based on a two of these key factors: university structure and CTL structure.…”