North Seattle Community College
The following is the October 2008 SoTL Research Update from North Seattle Community College as presented at the CASTL Student Voices Convening preceeding the 2008 ISSOTL Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Oct. 16-19).
We want to take our work into what we do not yet understand by listening deeply to students at work and making their experience visible. We are guided by this aim and this concept of teaching.
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York: Free Press, 1916.
(1) An educational aim must be founded upon the intrinsic activities and needs (including original instincts and acquired habits) of the given individuals to be educated.
(2) An aim must be capable of translation into a method of cooperating with the activities of those undergoing instruction. It must suggest the kind of environment needed to liberate and to organize their capacities... Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of the authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter.
(3) That education is literally and all the time its own reward means that no alleged study or discipline is educative unless it is worth while in its own immediate having. A truly general aim broadens the outlook; it stimulates one to take more consequences (connections) into account. This means a wider and more flexible observation of means. (p. 106-110)
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Teaching is important not because it is scholarship but because it can make significant contributions to other people and to the path of intellectual (and sometimes artistic) development in the world. (p. 195)
We wish to explore the opportunities offered in the documentation of learners, evolve our work toward an ethical ideal of excellence in education, and communicate that to others. We have demonstrated in our work how dialogue based on documentation enables educators to move beyond objectivism and relativism into a new kind of rational endeavor, a conversation grounded in our caring. The examination of traces of events in the classroom creates the space for dialogue, disagreement, and the emergence of complexities, so it can grow our schools -- through participation and willingness to risk -- into amiable spaces where we create a community of equals, a sense of public freedom, and a rediscovery of the solidarities we share in being human.
Our work this last year focused on interdisciplinary course in chemistry and biology. Learners were engaged in the task of representing aquaporin, a protein that transports water across a cell membrane. They were assigned the group task of creating a model of how it might happen using both biological and chemical understandings. One of the students in the course created the capture and presented this at the Undergraduate Research Symposium at the University of Washington. Faculty there commented that his poster was one of the most remarkable examples of student learning they had ever seen. The student's conjectures and representations were complex and quite remarkable. Students sustained an effort towards an unknown end that demonstrated initiative, co-construction of ideas and deep thinking. We saw and they saw themselves thinking like scientists and that altered their view of themselves as powerful learners. This joy of transformation stands in sharp contrast from the traditional view of first year college chemistry and biology as covering the necessary "content".
To learn more about student voices work being done at North Seattle Community College, visit the following sites:
http://webshare.northseattle.edu/tlc/forfaculty_sotl_research.shtm
http://valuesforeducation.org/
This page is under construction. More coming soon!