scholarly journals Who is Represented in the Teaching Commons?: SoTL Through the Lenses of the Arts and Humanities

Author(s):  
Michael K. Potter ◽  
Brad Wuetherick

As the community of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) scholars has flourished across Canada and around the world, there has been a growing sense among humanists that SoTL work has been dominated by the epistemologies, philosophies, and research methods of the social sciences. This is a view that has been supported by SoTL journal editors and resources dedicated to introducing faculty to SoTL. To quote Nancy Chick (2012) in a recent book on the current state of SoTL in the disciplines, “while many well-known SoTL leaders come from humanities backgrounds …, the on-the-ground work largely marginalizes the practices of their disciplines” (p. 15). The question then follows: “How does the apparent under-representation of (arts and) humanities-based disciplines affect expectations for SoTL, from norms for research design and methodology to the genre and style of its products?” (McKinney & Chick, 2010, p. 10). This paper, which frames the special issue looking at “SoTL through the lenses of the Arts and Humanities,” explores the difficulties with, and opportunities provided by, creating an inclusive teaching commons where the scholarly traditions of the arts and humanities are recognized for the value they bring to the SoTL research imaginary. Alors que la communauté des universitaires qui oeuvrent dans le domaine de l’avancement des connaissances en enseignement et en apprentissage (ACEA) s’est épanouie à travers le Canada et dans le monde, on constate l’éclosion d’un sentiment, parmi les humanistes, que le travail de l’ACEA a été dominé par les épistémologies, les philosophies et les méthodes de recherche des sciences sociales. C’est une opinion qui a été appuyée par les rédacteurs de revues sur l’ACEA et par les ressources consacrées à l’introduction des enseignants à l’ACEA. Pour citer Nancy Chick (2012) dans un livre récemment publié sur l’état actuel de l’ACEA dans diverses disciplines, « alors que de nombreux leaders éminents en matière d’ACEA proviennent des sciences humaines ..., le travail sur le terrain marginalise grandement les pratiques de leurs disciplines » (p. 15). Ce qui nous mène à la question suivante : « Comment l’apparente sous-représentation des disciplines du domaine des (arts et des) sciences humaines affecte-t-elle les attentes pour l’ACEA, allant des normes de recherche et de méthodologie au genre et au style de ses produits? » (McKinney & Chick, 2010, p. 10). Cet article, qui encadre le numéro spécial consacré à « L’ACEA à travers le prisme des arts et des sciences humaines », explore les difficultés qui existent à créer une commune d’enseignement inclusive ainsi que les opportunités créées par cette commune, où les traditions de recherche en arts et en sciences humaines sont reconnues pour la valeur qu’elles apportent à l’imaginaire de recherche de l’ACEA.

Author(s):  
Simon Keegan-Phipps ◽  
Lucy Wright

This chapter considers the role of social media (broadly conceived) in the learning experiences of folk musicians in the Anglophone West. The chapter draws on the findings of the Digital Folk project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and begins by summarizing and problematizing the nature of learning as a concept in the folk music context. It briefly explicates the instructive, appropriative, and locative impacts of digital media for folk music learning before exploring in detail two case studies of folk-oriented social media: (1) the phenomenon of abc notation as a transmissive media and (2) the Mudcat Café website as an example of the folk-oriented discussion forum. These case studies are shown to exemplify and illuminate the constructs of traditional transmission and vernacularism as significant influences on the social shaping and deployment of folk-related media technologies. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the need to understand the musical learning process as a culturally performative act and to recognize online learning mechanisms as sites for the (re)negotiation of musical, cultural, local, and personal identities.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Offord ◽  
Vladislav Rjéoutski ◽  
Gesine Argent

-- With support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK and the Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau -- The French Language in Russia provides the fullest examination and discussion to date of the adoption of the French language by the elites of imperial Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is interdisciplinary, approaching its subject from the angles of various kinds of history and historical sociolinguistics. Beyond its bearing on some of the grand narratives of Russian thought and literature, this book may afford more general insight into the social, political, cultural, and literary implications and effects of bilingualism in a speech community over a long period. It should also enlarge understanding of francophonie as a pan-European phenomenon. On the broadest plane, it has significance in an age of unprecedented global connectivity, for it invites us to look beyond the experience of a single nation and the social groups and individuals within it in order to discover how languages and the cultures and narratives associated with them have been shared across national boundaries.


Author(s):  
Ginny R. Ratsoy

Increasingly, various sectors of Canadian universities are advocating an assortment of beyond-the-classroom learning models – from research assistantships through service learning and cooperative education placements. At the same time, faculty who engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and related inquiries into teaching and learning are striving to shift attention on their activities from the periphery to a more central position within campus culture – a particular challenge for Arts and Humanities professors, who may find themselves marginalized within SoTL. This article focuses attention on the intersections of experiential learning and SoTL and SoTL-related activity. Students have much to benefit from, and offer to, these activities – beyond their usual role as subjects of studies. I present a framework based on examples from research and my own experiences – with a focus on undergraduate Arts students, who, arguably, have the fewest opportunities for Experiential Learning in general – that illustrates varying degrees of involvement. As Arts faculty attempt to enhance and highlight inquiries into teaching and learning, they would be wise to conjoin them with experiential learning by including students in the process and product. Divers secteurs des universités canadiennes conseillent de plus en plus un assortiment de modèles d’apprentissage hors de la salle de classe – que ce soit par le biais de postes d’assistants à la recherche, de l’apprentissage par le service ou de stages dans le cadre de l’enseignement coopératif. En même temps, les professeurs qui sont actifs dans l’Avancement des connaissances en enseignement et en apprentissage (ACEA) et dans des domaines connexes liés à l’enseignement et à l’apprentissage s’efforcent d’attirer l’attention sur leurs activités pour les faire passer de la périphérie à une position plus centrale sur les campus – ce qui s’avère être un réel défi pour les professeurs des facultés de lettres et sciences humaines car ils se retrouvent marginalisés au sein de l’ACEA. Cet article se concentre sur les intersections de l’apprentissage par l’expérience et de l’ACEA et des activités liées à l’ACEA. Les étudiants ont grandement profité de ces activités et y ont beaucoup apporté, au-delà de leur rôle en tant qu’objets d’études. Je présente un cadre basé sur des exemples issus de ma recherche et de mes propres expériences – avec une concentration sur les étudiants de premier cycle en lettres et sciences humaines qui, et cela est discutable, ont le moins grand nombre d’occasions, en général, de participer à l’enseignement par l’expérience – qui illustrent divers degrés d’implication. Alors que les professeurs des facultés de lettres essaient d’améliorer et de rehausser la recherche en enseignement et en apprentissage, ils auraient intérêt à y ajouter l’apprentissage par l’expérience en incluant les étudiants dans le processus et dans le produit.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Bennett ◽  
Robin Roth

Conservation actions most often occur in peopled seascapes and landscapes. As a result, conservation decisions cannot rely solely on evidence from the natural sciences, but must also be guided by the social sciences, the arts and the humanities. However, we are concerned that too much of the current attention is on research that serves an instrumental purpose, by which we mean that the social sciences are used to justify and promote status quo conservation practices. The reasons for engaging the social sciences, as well as the arts and the humanities, go well beyond making conservation more effective. In this editorial, we briefly reflect on how expanding the types of social science research and the contributions of the arts and the humanities can help to achieve the transformative potential of conservation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-140
Author(s):  
Catriona Cunningham

This article considers the way we talk about learning and teaching the humanities in higher education in the UK. By using the tools of the arts and humanities within the scholarship of learning and teaching, and examining a personal perspective, the author explores the transformational impact of French language learning and teaching. Close textual analysis of literary language learning memoirs highlight the sensual and physical effects of language learning that can remain muted in our everyday conversations. As a result, the author suggests that rather than lament the death of the humanities in 21st century higher education, learning and teaching a language offers a pedagogy of desire that embodies the transformation aspect of our disciplines, as we deal with the business of being human.


Author(s):  
Sergey Lyutov

The processes of globalization and the challenges of post-industrial civilization expand the boundaries of research in the social and human sciences significantly and dictate the need for close interdisciplinary cooperation in exploring the ways for adapting traditional sociocultural phenomena to the new conditions of the developing information society. The shift in emphasis from studying traditional booklore from the historical aspects to new book culture is increasingly attracting the attention of researcher in the humanities who are trying to comprehend the current state and predict the vectors for the book culture development in the dynamically changing information environment.Over the past quarter of the century, changes in research approaches are obvious: from offering definitions for the “book culture” concept to understanding the multidimensional nature of this phenomenon and the need for interdisciplinary cooperation in the studies. Intensive discussions in academic periodicals demonstrate the diversity of ideas, concepts and research approaches [1].The author analyzes the findings of recent book culture studies from the standpoint of various scientific schools and approaches, provides examples of precise interpretations of philosophical, cultural, documentary aspects of the books’ functioning within the system of culture. The necessity for identifying mutually acceptable guidelines for interdisciplinary cooperation and updating the methodology for studying the books, booklore and book culture is substantiated.


Author(s):  
Steve Bruce

Basic questions about religion in the modern world (such as whether it is becoming more or less popular and who believes what) can be answered only with the perspectives and methods of social science. While the arts and humanities can help us understand religious beliefs and behaviour, only social science can provide us with the evidence that will allow us to discern and explain the social patterns, causes, and consequences of religious belief. Only through the statistical examination of big data can we be confident of what any case study represents. In a text described by one reviewer as ‘brilliantly accessible’, an internationally renowned sociologist addresses the major problems of theory and methods in the study of religion. Important topics in religious studies such as conversion, the relative durability of different types of religion and spirituality, and the social circumstances that strengthen or undermine shared beliefs are used to demonstrate the importance of social science and to address methodological issues such as bias, partisanship, and research ethics. Bruce presents a robust defence of a conventionally scientific view of value-neutral social science against its partisan and postmodern critics.


Author(s):  
Anne Whitehead ◽  
Angela Woods

The medical humanities, we claim, names a series of intersections, exchanges and entanglements between the biomedical sciences,1 the arts and humanities, and the social sciences. The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities introduces the ideas, individuals and scholarly approaches that are currently shaping the field. The medical humanities is an area of inquiry that is highly interdisciplinary, rapidly expanding and increasingly globalised. As this Introduction and the chapters that follow demonstrate, ...


Somatechnics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-206
Author(s):  
Sarah Cefai

This article reviews three recent queer studies anthologies: Queer Methods and Methodology: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research, by Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash (2010), Anarchism & Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships and Power by Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson (2011) , and After Sex? On Writing Since Queer Theory, by Janet Halley and Andrew Parker (2011) . A brief synopsis of the books is followed by discussion on three key observations. First, I discuss the specificity of the queer ‘body’, particularly with regard to the scholarly subjectivity articulated by contributors to these anthologies. Second, I discuss the distillation of queer identity from the field of queer corporeality as a specific move to embrace anti-identitarianism through conceiving identity as fluid. Lastly, questions of queer and identity are reconsidered as methodologically specific and, as such, as entailing sensitivity to the movement of concepts between the different epistemological fields of knowledge called the social sciences and the arts and humanities. Through discussion of these observations, this review aims to stimulate thought and reflection on these texts as responding to and participating in the highly contested institutionalisation of queer studies in the academy.


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