Teaching+for+Civic+Capacity

**IARSLCE Dissertation Award Honorable Mention**

**Teaching for civic capacity and engagement:** **How faculty members align teaching and purpose** Jennifer M. Domagal-Goldman, Ph.D., National Manager of the American Democracy Project, American Association of State Colleges and Universities [domagalj@aascu.org]



**Keywords:** Faculty beliefs, course planning, civic education, multidisciplinary faculty communities, public scholarship, teaching and learning

**Track:** Faculty roles and professional development **Format:** Research paper **Date & time:** Thursday 10:50-12:00 **Location:** Salon 7 **Summary:** Institutional efforts to educate college students for productive lives as informed and engaged citizens depend, in large part, on curricular planning of faculty. If we hope to be successful in these efforts, we must understand how faculty members think about and teach for civic capacity and engagement. The goal of this study is to contribute theoretical and practical knowledge about the role of faculty interactions in the development of educational goals and practices. The study seeks to extend our understanding of (a) how faculty members design courses consistent with their beliefs about educational purposes and (b) the influence of particular professional experiences on their educational beliefs and teaching. To explore these questions, I examined the course planning activities of faculty engaged in the Public Scholarship Associates (PSA) at The Pennsylvania State University. The PSA is a voluntary association of faculty members from a variety of disciplines who are interested in building students’ civic capacity. I explored whether and how participation in this group shaped or supported faculty members’ commitment to teaching for civic purposes as an educational purpose as well as their abilities to develop course plans congruent with their espoused civic purposes. The study was conducted using a qualitative, phenomenological approach focused on how faculty members made meaning of the concepts of civic engagement and public scholarship, how their participation in the PSA group influenced that meaning-making, and how these influenced their course planning (including, for example, selection of course content and instructional methods). The findings from this study suggest some steps colleges and universities might consider in order to foster faculty members’ learning about how to teach for civic purposes. In addition to the PSA, participants identified a number of enabling settings and contextual constraints on their ability to teach for civic capacity and engagement.

**References:** Lattuca, L. R., & Stark, J. S. (2009). //Shaping the college curriculum: Academic plans in context// (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;">Packer, M. J., & Goicoechea, J. (2000). Sociocultural and constructivist theories of learning: Ontology, not just epistemology. //Educational Psychologist, 35//(4), 227-241. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;">Stark, J. S., Lowther, M. A., Bentley, R. J., Ryan, M. P., Martens, G. G., Genthon, M. L., Wren, P. A., & Shaw, K. M. (1990). //Planning introductory college courses: Influences on faculty// [National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, Tech. Rep. No. 89-C-003.0]. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;"> Walker, G. E., Golde, C. M., Jones, L., Bueschel, A. C., & Hutchings, P. (2007, December 14).The importance of intellectual community [The Chronicle Review].//The Chronicle of Higher Education//, //54//(16), pp. B6-B8. Retrieved from [|http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i16/ 16b00601.htm] <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;">Wortham, S. (2004).The interdependence of social identification and learning.//American Educational Research Journal,// //41//(3), 715-750. <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;">Wortham, S. (2006). //Learning and identity: The joint emergence of social identification and academic learning//. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
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