In the midst of COVID restrictions last Fall, several faculty members presented at virtual conferences. We’d like to highlight their research and scholarship here, which include presentations outside of traditional Composition conferences.
Ariel Goldenthal, Billy Howell, and Jessica Matthews presented virtually at the annual EDUCAUSE Conference last October. This is the first time someone from our program has been accepted to present at this national conference.
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EDUCAUSE is a large non-profit association founded more than 20 years ago to support improvements in higher education through the use of information technology.
Their presentation, “New Perspectives on Evaluating Quality Online Teaching and Learning,” describes the results of a four-semester IRB study conducted with the support of Dr. Ying-Ying Kuo, an instructional designer for the Stearns Center. This study collected quantitative and qualitative data from students and faculty that measured how students evaluated the quality of their learning in online and hybrid courses, and how faculty evaluated their teaching in those courses.
Few rubrics used to evaluate the quality of online and hybrid courses incorporate student and faculty perspectives on the quality of their learning and teaching experience. Goldenthal et al. also explained how they used the data to make improvements to our course design and delivery.
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Composition instructors Jenny Goransson and Emily Staudt, together with Dr. Kristien Zenkov, Dr. Marriam Ewaida, and Marion Taousakis of the Secondary Education (SEED) program, presented virtually at the 70th annual LRA Conference last December. The Literacy Research Association is a non-profit professional organization that supports literacy research, theory, and practice.
Their presentation, “Traditional and Critical, Project-Based (CPB) Literacy Clinical Experiences: Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs about Teaching, Writing Instruction, and their Teaching Identities,” describes the results of their recent collaborative research project, which was led by Dr. Zenkov and in cooperation with Masters students in the Education program, cooperating teachers at a local high school, and one class of high school students.
This study compared the clinical experiences of 17 Masters students in secondary education, 12 of whom participated in the critical, project based (CPB) model as part of the study. The CPB model invites preservice teachers to participate in a research project based on a grand question, interact with high school students 1-on-1, and regularly reflect in writing on their pedagogy and teaching identity(ies). The CPB model is unique in that it allows for more interactions with students and requires greater involvement on the part of preservice teachers, and it answers the call in teacher education for these experiences to be more authentic and literacy-based.
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Results from the study suggest that future English teachers might best develop their teaching identities and writing instruction strategies via clinical experiences that position them as pedagogues and require them to explore their teaching personas. Zenkov et al. also noticed that participants’ reflections on their pedagogy affected their teaching identity, and vice versa. The authors are working on multiple writing publications based on their research experience.
Have you recently presented at a conference or published your writing? We’d love to highlight your work—let us know!
January 25, 2021
