We know much about How People Learn (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 1999), including how the brain reacts to learning, what increases the chance of knowledge transfer, and what environments improve learning. It is also well accepted that teacher/scholars should approach teaching scientifically (AAAS 1990). That is to say, we should understand, implement, and evaluate this knowledge to help our students learn. Yet, this approach has not been widely adopted (Handelsman et al. 2004). In fact, many teacher / scholars continue to use ineffective teaching methods, assess student improvement intuitively, and even distrust teaching guidelines based on pedagogical research (Handelsman et al. 2004). Skepticism about pedagogical research is not the only roadblock to faculty becoming teaching research practitioners. For example, faculty who wish to adopt scientific teaching practices may find it difficult to broach an unfamiliar literature (D’Avanzo 2003). Although more and more ecology faculty employ non-traditional, student-active teaching techniques, few analytically evaluate the effectiveness of these teaching strategies (D’Avanzo et al. 2006). Several ecology education reform projects (i.e. TIEE, FIRST, and FIRST II) have supported faculty, who have little or no prior teaching assessment experience, in successful investigations of their teaching strategies and their students’ learning outcomes. Results/Conclusions
The presentations in this session will show a clear link between research and education in the pursuit of improving student understanding and perceptions of ecology. Just as importantly, we hope that case studies by faculty new to assessment will alleviate concerns of potential research practitioners, model successful approaches to teaching assessment, and motivate other faculty to begin their own research.
