Teaching Fellows Program

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A Research-Based Approach to Teaching and Learning

In the twentieth century, the learning sciences developed extensive and powerful insights into human learning: what it means to learn, how best to cultivate it, and some of the social and personal forces that can either inhibit or stimulate it. At the same time, emerging technologies produced powerful tools that may help us build stimulating learning environments.

In the 1990's, especially after the publication in 1990 of Ernest Boyer's seminal work Scholarship Reconsidered, scholars in various disciplines began to treat the learning of their own students as an object of systematic inquiry. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Pew Charitable Trusts gave those efforts a considerable boost when they launched in 1998 the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) to support the development of a scholarship of learning and teaching in academe. The resulting Scholarship of University Learning and Teaching began to investigate the nature of learning within those disciplines and the conditions in which it would most likely flourish.

We are a university that values research and scholarship, and we will use the research on human learning and teaching to inform how we help and encourage students to learn. In the dinner seminars and the retreat, the Fellows and Senior Mentors will develop new courses or revisions of existing courses that reflect what we think we know about human learning and, where appropriate, employ emerging technologies to create robust and highly motivating learning environments.

Teaching Fellows and the Scholarship of University Learning and Teaching

The program will help Fellows and Mentors improve the learning environments for their own students, but it will also help them become important catalysts for change within their schools and departments, and national and international leaders in the Scholarship of University Learning and Teaching movement. Montclair State University can make significant contributions to the emerging Scholarship of University Learning and Teaching, and the Fellows and Mentor will be well prepared to play an important role in that enterprise, treating the learning of their students as an object of scholarly investigation. Indeed, in the seminars and retreat, we will explore methodologies for doing the Scholarship of University Learning and Teaching and opportunities for publication of the results.

What the Best College Teachers Do

The seminar for 2008-2009 will borrow heavily from an award-winning, fifteen-year study of the thinking and practices of highly successful college teachers. That study found that teachers who help their students achieve the most remarkable learning create natural critical learning environments. We will explore the meaning of those environments, how we can create them most easily and powerfully, and some of the mistakes that can inadvertently undercut them. We will address how teaching and research can complement one another, how to motivate students to achieve deep learning, and the use of advanced technologies, among other issues. Ken Bain will lead the seminars and retreat. He is Vice Provost for Instruction, Director of the Research Academy for University Learning, Professor of History at Montclair, and author of the award-winning book What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard University Press, 2004).

The program culminates in a recognition ceremony and dinner at the end of the spring semester, attended by current Fellows, Mentors, members of the Research Academy's advisory committee, and University dignitaries.

Tentative Dates for Seminars and Retreats

Once participants are chosen, we will establish dates and times for seminars and retreats that will accommodate the participants and the seminar leaders.