Engaging Student Voices in the Study of Teaching and Learning

This book addresses the all-important dimensions of collaboration in the study of learning raised by such questions as: Should teachers engage students directly in discussions and inquiry about learning? To what extent? What is gained by the collaboration? Does it improve learning, and what do shared responsibilities mean for classroom dynamics, and beyond? Practicing what it advocates, a faculty-student team co-edited this book, and faculty-student (or former student) teams co-authored eight of its eleven chapters. The opening section of this book explores such dimensions of student voices in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) as power and authority in the classroom, collaborative meaning-making, and the role of students as both learners and experts on their own learning. It opens up the process of knowledge-building to a wider group of participants, and expands our conception of who has expertise to contribute – for instance recognizing students’ “insider” knowledge of themselves as learners. Using various institutional models to illustrate these foundational concepts, part one provides a context for understanding the detailed examples that follow. The case studies in the second half of the volume illustrate how these concepts play out inside and outside the classroom when students shift from serving as research subjects in a SoTL study to working as independent researchers or as partners with faculty in such work as studying curricular design/redesign, readings, requirements, and assessment. This co-inquiry brings the principles and benefits of the broader undergraduate research movement to the topic of teaching and learning. It also increases student researchers’ sense of themselves as independent learners. While recognizing the impossibility of engaging every student in the scholarship of teaching and learning in every course, the editors and contributors make the case for making such opportunities available as broadly as possible because, as this volume also makes clear, this is transformational work – with the potential to produce paradigm shifts, turning points, new insights, and changes in classroom culture – for both faculty and students. The contributors demonstrate how they validated student voices in theory, method, and methodology across a wide variety of disciplines and while engaging with different pedagogies. Disciplinary examples include: anthropology, communication, chemistry, criminal science, education, English, geography, history, human services, mathematics, psychology, sociology, theater arts, philosophy, and political science.