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| Review
of Hugh Sockett's Creating a Culture for the Scholarship of Teaching By Sherry Linkon |
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| Review
of Hugh Sockett's Creating a Culture for the Scholarship of Teaching By Sherry Linkon |
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© Copyright 2000 by Sherry Linkon. The right to make additional exact
copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is
hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require
permission of the author. |
The Moral Dialogue Sockett's argument that we need to develop a common language for talking about teaching is absolutely on the mark, though my guess is that such a language will develop organically as scholarship of teaching and learning gains ground. While many faculty in schools of education have long histories and deep knowledge about educational research, scholarship of teaching and learning emphasizes research by faculty within disciplines, who need both to learn from colleagues in education but also build on previous work in new ways. We bring to the process the languages and cultures of our disciplines, but we also learn from each other by working with colleagues from other fields and by sharing our findings. Along the line, we must question each other's assumptions, including the language and research models we use. As a Carnegie Scholar, I have had opportunities to think critically about central ideas in my field, but I also share my work with colleagues, at Carnegie and on my home campus, from other disciplines and provide support and response to my colleagues. Through such collaboration, I am slowly developing a deeper understanding of student learning, strategies for assessing learning, ideas about how to set up the kind of "alternative designs for teaching" that Sockett advocates, and ways of thinking through some serious problems involved in research on learning. None of us is yet an expert, and through our developing knowledge, a common language is emerging. Like any language, it will not be static or all-encompassing, but it will not only help us communicate with each other. It will help us think in new ways about the culture of education. It will point us towards aspects of teaching that are much more significant than whether we showed up on time, were prepared, or graded fairly (common issues on student evaluation forms), and it may help us shape the kind of moral dialogue that Sockett calls for.
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