1. Scholarship of Teaching: Action Research in the College Classroom
Tunde Szecsi, Ph.D.
Lucas Center
March 27, 2017

2. Why is teaching of scholarship important and beneficial?
Provides evidence based information about your teaching for self- improvement. Action research makes you a better teacher AND researcher.
Provides data for documenting your effectiveness in teaching for promotion.
Connects and strengthens the interconnectedness of your teaching and scholarship- two way process and benefits
Artifacts related to teaching that have been published or presented at conferences demonstrates the quality of your teaching AND scholarship.

3. Three Different Models: Scholarship Teaching in Courses
#1: Need-driven scholarly activity----- infused in course
#2: Scholarly products on the impact/effectiveness of the course project /assignment
#3: A course development: Reflection on and evaluation of the course

4. Need driven scholarly activity- infused in course
Previous semesters: the need becomes clear. E.g. lack of preservice teachers’ understanding about the importance of play/of the importance of the responsibilities for heritage language maintenance; therefore there is need for a comprehensive approach to target this gap/need.
Prior to next semester: (1) design an action research and (2) secure IRB permission
Next semester: Implementation-e.g. pre-survey, activities and assignments addressing the given needs, and post survey. Both surveys and assignment results can serve as data for your study.
Possible scholarship artifacts: studies on the change/improvement OR studies on the process of implementing these steps.
Examples: Play study and heritage language study.

5. Scholarly products on the impact/effectiveness of the course project /assignment
Steps:
Designing a course project/assignment
Collecting and assessing project/assignment
Recognizing e.g. emerging themes which helps you answer a question “What understanding do preservice teachers about culture and pedagogy?”
Applying for IRB
Analyzing the projects/assignments & write a paper & publish it.
Examples: Dubai project, transformation & books project

6. A course development: Reflection on and evaluation of the course
A new course: Service and Research in Humane Education (HE) in the Honors program
Three scholarly outcomes for this new course:
Students were teaching (HE) in kindergarten--- joint article with three students on teaching strategies in humane education for young children (no IRB )
A book chapter on the process– how HE is infused in higher/teacher education (no IRB) –unique nature of the course
Published research study on benefits of undergraduate student.- (IRB – YES!) – analysis of students’ reflection papers for benefit– What did they gain from the undergraduate research experience.
ADDITIONAL OUTCOME FOR STUDENTS: presenting their research at conferences