Session Information
WERA SES 08 B, Researching the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Focusing on Assessment at Higher Education Institutions Teacher Training: Innovative Practices Expanding Boundaries
Symposium
Contribution
Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) or universities have shifted their focus radically from teaching to research activities as the demand for research outputs increased over the last century. Research outputs influence directly the ranking of HEIs worldwide. However, many faculty and academic staff members at HEIs still seem to prioritise teaching as the primary task of their profession. In spite of the fact that it is sometimes difficult to change perceptions to adhere to institutional strategic plans and targets related to research, there are scholarly publications on innovative projects that have integrated research with teaching. As both research and teaching have multiple facets and applications in common it is feasible to combine them. Research designs and methodologies can be combined with aspects of teaching such as assessment, teaching strategies and techniques, curriculum design and class size. Therefore a valuable contribution towards integrating research and teaching is through the “service of scholarship” which is fundamental to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) (Elton, 2010: 643). As assessment is only recently regarded as a distinctive part of teaching and learning (Hutchings, 2011), this research illuminates the central importance of assessment and its power to affect students’ learning. This is done through reporting on the research venture of an assessment project which involved staff members and fourth year Foundation Phase student teachers. This chapter portrays how SoTL provided us (as lecturer-researchers) the means to study the poster presentation as the assessment strategy when asking the question: How did the poster presentation assist fourth year Foundation Phase student teachers to construct their practice theory? Other questions that directed our thinking as lecturer-researchers’ were: How will the student teachers respond to this innovative assessment? How can deep learning be aligned to appropriate assessment procedures? In addition, we explicitly articulated the importance of the scholarship of assessment within the SoTL. The poster presentation offered us, at the University of Pretoria the opportunity to research how this assessment strategy enhanced greater discipline-based assessment, encouraged the final year student teachers’ learning in multiple ways; primarily to advance their practice and profession of teaching. From this venture we hoped to inspire academic staff to further develop their own methodological creativity related to teaching and assessment and to contribute to the SoTL, especially to the scholarship of assessment.
References
Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. 2009. Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research in the next generation. New York: Teachers College Press. Elton, L. 2010. Complexity theory – an approach to assessment that can enhance learning and – more generally – could transform university management. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35 (5), 637-646. Hutchings, P. 2011. From departmental to disciplinary assessment: Deepening Faculty Engagement. Change, September/October. Slabbert, J. A., De Kock, D. M. & Hattingh, A. (2009). The Brave ’New’ World of Education. Creating a unique professionalism. Cape Town: Juta. Smith, J. K. (2003). Reconsidering Reliability in Classroom Assessment and Grading. Educational Measurement: Issues and practices. Winter, 26-33.
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