What does inquiry in teaching and
learning look like?
2. How does it get started?
3. Why should we value it?
4. What needs to happen in the university
to bring teaching inquiry ‘out of the
closet’ and into mainstream culture?
1.
1. On the
Question of Value

Teaching is not seen as requiring or even
as sometimes involving
investigation/inquiry accompanied by
discussion, publication, peer evaluation
and critique.

It is just something we ‘do’.
As one scholar puts it...
“One telling measure of how differently teaching is
regarded from traditional scholarship or research
within the academy is what a difference it makes
to have a “problem” in one versus the other. In
scholarship and research, having a “problem” is at
the heart of the investigative process; it is the
compound of the generative questions around
which all creative and productive activity revolves.
But in one’s teaching, a problem is something you
don’t want to have, and if you have one you
probably want to fix it. Asking a colleague about a
problem in his or her research is an invitation;
asking about a problem in one’s teaching would
probably seem like an accusation.”
Randy Bass, 1999
Georgetown
Director Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship
Research Culture- Deeply rooted in
inquiry, intellectual debate, peer review
 Teaching Culture – One of Individualism
and isolation

The university is a place of learning and
inquiry, and, yet, there is very little
systematic inquiry about learning going
on.
 The university calls itself a community of
scholars and yet, with rare exceptions,
no such community exists for those who
want to pursue serious inquiry into
teaching and learning.

Faculty who ordinarily demand rigorous
standards of evidence and justification
for knowledge–claims within their special
field of inquiry, seem content with lesser
standards for beliefs and practices in
regard to their teaching.
 It is not at all clear that problems in
teaching are less significant and less
deserving of rigorous investigation than
research problems within the disciplines.

How do students experience my discipline?
 How can it be understood/misunderstood?
 What is it to understand, and how is it
(understanding) manifested and
measured?
 Why should understanding a particular
subject-matter, rather than the retention of
facts about it, be the goal of teaching in
the first place?

What is it to educate , rather than to
train or indoctrinate?
 What does the word ‘higher’ in Higher
Education mean?


How do first-year students understand
the idea of critique and the goal of
being critical, not just in the narrow
confines of a philosophy or economics
class, but as a matter of course?

Because it is consistent with, indeed,
arguably demanded by, the inquiry
function/identity/mandate of the
university.
There is a very good chance that such
reflection and inquiry will make you a
better teacher.
 Better??
 In the sense that you will be a more
reflective, aware, and engaged
teacher.
 The kind of teacher who is willing to try
out innovations

2. Bringing Teaching Inquiry
out of the Closet
Teaching inquiry needs to be recognized
and rewarded.
 Changing Collective Agreements


This means that teaching inquiry can’t
be treated as just something extra that a
faculty member does -- an add-on to her
real - i.e., disciplinary -- scholarship. It
needs to be recognized and rewarded
as scholarship, full stop.
Development of a new collegial culture around teaching and learning.
 Discussion groups/Communities of Practice
 Development of critical mass of scholars in
teaching and learning
 DALVision 2020
 Dalhousie Teaching and Learning
Conference
 Bringing students into the picture
 Institutional support
3. What does Teaching and
Learning Inquiry look like?
and
4. How does it get started?
The question you are asking
 And the research methodology that is
called for to answer it



Interdisciplinary when ... The question you are
asking calls for working with the literature of
another discipline.
Example:
As a teacher of critical thinking I want to help
my students understand the idea of evidence,
and see that there is a necessary connection
between evidence justified, reasonable belief
Read works in cognitive and developmental
psychology such as Deanna Kuhn’s, The Skills
of Argument (1991)

Goal: Reflective , self-regulating
thought, known as metacognition
Piaget and Inhelder, 1969
John Flavell, 1976, 1979
Ku and Ho, 2010
Interdisciplinary when...the question
calls for the deployment of a
methodology which is not part of your
disciplinary training.
 Partnership/collaboration
Example:
Anthropologist of religion, using
questionnaires and ethnographic
interviews

Why are my students having difficulty
with this idea?
 Do I really understand the idea myself?
 How do I achieve my goal of helping
them to understand ’x’?
 Conversation with colleagues.

Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching
 Opening Lines: Approaches to the
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Reconceptualisation of teaching in the
university
 Subverting and disrupting the longstanding narrative of the 2 solitudes
 Implications??
 Do I take this to imply that everyone
should engage in teaching inquiry?
 Probably not practical

Thank you!