A Pedagogy of Slow: Integrating Experiences of Physical and Virtual Gallery Spaces to Foster Critical Engagement in SoTL

This article makes a case for SoTL practitioners to engage in what we term a pedagogy of slow. Here, “slow” connotes with waiting and patience. It takes time to learn and acquire the skills that a SoTL scholar needs. “Doing SoTL” we therefore argue, requires a pedagogy that takes time and sees time as an ally instead of as an opponent. In what the university has become, there seems little room for a pedagogy of slow that both offers and allows for time. In this article we present a case for considering engagement with the visual arts as part of a pedagogy of slow and the development of SoTL. By making the familiar strange, we acknowledge the implications of visual thinking strategies for social engagement by highlighting teaching and learning as relational. Working with colleagues in the context of continuing professional development, we collected data via focus groups and written reflections within physical and virtual gallery spaces to glean insight into participant experiences of slow looking as the antithesis to fast-paced and pressurised environments. We highlight how learning to become a SoTL scholar is an iterative process that requires time and generates what we term “productive friction.” This is the iterative process which creates dislocation and uncertainty within participants, but which also has the capacity to nudge towards a transformation of the professional self

From research to clinical settings: validation of the Affect in Play Scale \u2013 Preschool Brief Version in a sample of preschool and school-aged Italian children

Affect in Play Scale-Preschool (APS-P) is one of the few standardized tools to measure pretend play. APS-P is an effective measure of symbolic play, able to detect both cognitive and affective dimensions which classically designated play in children, but often are evaluated separately and are scarcely integrated. The scale uses 5 min standardized play task with a set of toys. Recently the scale was extended from 6 to 10 years old and validated in Italy preschool and school-aged children. Some of the main limitations of this measure are that it requires videotaping, verbatim transcripts, and an extensive scoring training, which could compromise its clinical utility. For these reasons, a Brief version of the measure was developed by the original authors. This paper will focus on an APS-P Brief Version and its Extended Version through ages (6\u201310 years), which consists \u201cin vivo\u201d coding. This study aimed to evaluate construct and external validity of this APS-P Brief Version and its Extended Version in a sample of 538 Italian children aged 4-to-10 years. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded a two correlated factor structure including an affective and a cognitive factor. APS-P-BR and its Extended Version factor scores strongly related to APS-P Extended Version factor scores. Significant relationships were found with a divergent thinking task. Results suggest that the APS-P-BR and its Extended Version is an encouraging brief measure assessing pretend play using toys. It would easily substitute the APS-P and its Extended Version in clinical and research settings, reducing time and difficulties in scoring procedures and maintaining the same strengths

How the University Workshop Hinders New Writers from Engaging with Ideas (and what to do about it)

When Vladimir Nabokov was suggested for a chair in literature at Harvard, Professor Roman Jakobson (qtd. in Grudin 1996: 529-30) famously objected. What s next? he asked. Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology? A similar view was expressed a few years ago at a conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Asked why no Australian writers had been invited to speak, an organiser quipped, would you invite the sheep to a wool growers conference? (Adams 1995). Being a fiction writer and a teacher of writing is a lot like that we re the relatives you d prefer not to invite to the wedding, the awkward school friend you ve outgrown, the sheep that belong on the farm. University creative writing programs employ us to facilitate writing workshops because, whilst we have doctorates and the gravitas such a qualification confers as writing practitioners we are also trade. We speak from our experiences about ideas and inspiration, research, discipline, editing, publishers and agents. We pass on what we understand about writing, says Australian writer, Glenda Adams (1995)

Vision to reality: From Robert R. Wilson's frontier to Leon M. Lederman's Fermilab

This paper examines the roles of vision and leadership in creating and directing Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from the late 1960s through the 1980s. The story divides into two administrations having different problems and accomplishments, that of Robert R. Wilson (1967-1978), which saw the transformation from cornfield to frontier physics facility, and that of Leon Max Lederman (1979-1989), in which the laboratory evolved into one of the world's major high-energy facilities. Lederman's pragmatic vision of a user-based experimental community helped him to convert the pioneering facility that Wilson had built frugally into a laboratory with a stable scientific, cultural, and funding environment

Incorporating Arts-Based Pedagogy: Moving Beyond Traditional Approaches to Teaching Qualitative Research

Arts-based pedagogy has the potential to reimagine “traditional” research to engage learners in expanded and innovative methods, while also creating space for student voices. Grounded in a Deweyan experiential framework informed by arts-based pedagogy, this reflective dialogue revolves around a pedagogical reframing of a data analysis unit in a qualitative research course with specific focus on the incorporation of creative analysis. We came together as three participants (instructor, student, and scholar) within this experience to collaboratively share insights on the pedagogical approach, particularly as experienced through the eyes of the learner. Implications include how arts-based experiential inquiry can empower novice researchers to explore new avenues for sense-making while also extending across disciplines to support the inclusion of arts-based reflective practices in higher education. Click here to read the corresponding ISSOTL blog post

Spartan Daily, October 4, 2006

Volume 127, Issue 22https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10280/thumbnail.jp

Studying the Complexity of Craftsmen’s Creativity: Calling for a Cross-Disciplinary Research in the Future

Creativity has been given much attention by researchers in various areas, but recent studies lack particular discussions on craftsmen’s creativity. This article presents an analysis of craftsmen’s creativity as a complex phenomenon that indicates the need for a cross-disciplinary research to enable creativity research to reach its full potential in the future. We regard craftsmen’s creativity as a contextual-based activity, involving a range of socio-material aspects in practice. This underpins the need for a holistic and cross-disciplinary view of craftsmen’s creativity that is built upon a hybrid of insights gained from diverse fields including psychology, cognition, arts, humanities, design, and learning, etc

Critical issues in Islamic education studies : rethinking Islamic and Western liberal secular values of education

This paper examines two sets of interrelated issues informing contemporary discussions on Islam and education that take place within both Muslim majority and minority contexts. The first set of issues concerns the academic conceptualisation of the study of education within diverse historical and contemporary Islamic cultural, intellectual, political, theological and spiritual traditions. After a critical examination of the current literature, the paper suggests that ‘Islamic Education Studies’ offers a distinctive academic framing that incorporates an interdisciplinary empirical and scholarly inquiry strategy capable of generating a body of knowledge and understanding guiding the professional practice and policy development in the field. Lack of conceptual clarity in various current depictions of the field, including ‘Muslim Education’, ‘Islamic Pedagogy’, ‘Islamic Nurture’ and ‘Islamic Religious Pedagogy’, is outlined and the frequent confusion of Islamic Education with Islamic Studies is critiqued. The field of Islamic Education Studies has theological and educational foundations and integrates interdisciplinary methodological designs in Social Sciences and Humanities. The second part of the inquiry draws attention to the lack of new theoretical insights and critical perspectives in Islamic Education. The pedagogic practice in diverse Muslim formal and informal educational settings does not show much variation and mostly is engaged with re-inscribing the existing power relations shaping the society. The juxtaposition of inherited Islamic and borrowed or enforced Western secular educational cultures appears to be largely forming mutually exclusive, antagonistic and often rigid ‘foreclosed’ minds within contemporary Muslim societies. The impact of the educational culture and educational institutions on the formation of resentful Islamic religiosities and the reproduction of authoritarian leadership within the wider mainstream Muslim communities have not been adequately explored. The study stresses the need to have a paradigm shift in addressing this widely acknowledged educational crisis. The formation of a transformative educational culture remains the key to being able to facilitate reflective and critical Muslim religiosities, and positive socio-economic and political change in Muslim majority and minority societies. This inquiry explores a significant aspect of this crisis by re-examining the degree to which Islamic and Western, liberal, secular conceptions and values of education remain irreconcilably divergent or open to a convergent dialogue of exchange, reciprocity and complementarity. The originality of the paper lies in offering a critical rethinking of Islamic Education through mapping the main relevant literature and identifying and engaging with the central theoretical issues while suggesting a new academic framing of the field and its interdisciplinary research agenda

A Creative Journey In Higher Education: The Story Of Personal And Organizational Change

This project explores my personal and professional journey as a teacher in higher education and how it parallels the unique journey of the institution where I teach, Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. This is a story about the pursuit of creativity in education and the transformation as a result of creativity. Drawing on current theories of creativity, in particular the 4 P’s (person, process, product and press), it examines what factors played a role in initiating and managing change. Presented as a narrative, this project documents the various aspects of personal and organizational change. The questions asked include: “What sparked the personal and organizational pursuit of creativity in education at Sheridan?” and “What elements fostered creativity to grow and build a community for the purpose of teaching and learning for creativity?

The Spiritual Nature of the Italian Renaissance

This study seeks to investigate the influence of faith in the emergence and development of the Italian Renaissance, in both the artwork and writing of the major artists and thinkers of the day, and the impact that new expressions of faith had on the viewing public. While the Renaissance is often labeled as a secular movement by modern scholars, this interpretation is largely due to the political motives of the Medici family who dominated Florence as the center of this artistic rebirth, on and off again throughout the period. On close examination, the philosophical and creative undercurrents of the movement were much more complex. The thinkers of the era would often place Greco-Roman philosophers in the context of their Christian era and use their wisdom in addition to, rather than superseding, church and biblical authority, embracing figures like Virgil and Augustine in concert rather than opposition. These Christian humanists saw their work as a way to engage humanity in a quest for knowledge in ever expanding ways, but still with an undercurrent of reflection on the role of the divine. Spiritual inquiries of Dante, Lorenzo Valla, and Petrarch in written works are similarly manifested in the visual arts by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarotti, and Raphael Sanzio. These ‘big three’ painters of the Renaissance portrayed their individual Christian ideas through their own writings, sketchbooks, and all forms of artistic expressions, many of which are evaluated in this paper. Finally, the transition of art to a scale inviting the viewer to experience it personally marked a vital change. The shift from divine proportions to more naturalistic and relatable art also logically harmonizes with the mindset of the broader Renaissance movement. This paper seeks to examine the depth and complexity of key Renaissance figures and how concepts of Christian faith and spirituality translated into their works