Being There: Mindfulness as Ethical Classroom Practice

Incorporating mindfulness practices in teacher training for writing programs is supported by disciplinary scholarship in composition, spiritual writing, and research in neuroscience

Making and doing: critical and cross-disciplinary engagement within interdisciplinary iSchools

Introduction: Like many iSchools, the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto integrates a variety of disciplinary fields (LIS, Records Management, Information Systems and Design, Critical and Cultural theory, Policy, Technology Studies, etc.) and a diversity of institutional foci (libraries, archives, museums, universities, government, corporate contexts, etc.) Such diversity is both an asset and a challenge for the Faculty as we seek to provide professional and academic training for our masters and PhD students and look to engage in collaborative work among faculty members. Importantly, the types of skills and experiences that we collectively bring to bear and the kinds of issues and questions addressed by faculty and graduate students transgress more than just standard disciplinary barriers. In order to address the important social, cultural, and political questions posed by the continuing transformation of information practices, the boundary between material and technical work and reflexive, critical, social scholarship must be bridged. This is a crucial challenge for iSchools ??? how do we bring various perspectives, interests, and backgrounds to bear while staying connected through an emphasis on common theoretical concerns

Scholarship in abundance: Influence, engagement, and attention in scholarly networks

In an era of knowledge abundance, scholars have the capacity to distribute and share ideas and artifacts via digital networks, yet networked scholarly engagement often remains unrecognized within institutional spheres of influence. The purpose of this dissertation study is to explore the meanings constructed and enacted within the networked practices of 13 scholars actively engaged in both institutional and networked participatory scholarship. Using ethnographic methods including participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, the study investigates networks as sites of scholarship, with the intent of furthering institutional academia’s understanding of networked practices. The three papers that make up the dissertation each articulate a specific thread of intersection between institutional and networked scholarship: the first focuses on what counts as academic influence within networked circles, the second on networks’ terms of value and reward, and the third on the relationships between attention, care, and vulnerability in scholarly networks. Together, the papers conclude that networked scholarly practices of engagement align broadly with those of academia, yet enable and demand scholars’ individual cultivation of influence, visibility, and audiences. Thus networked scholarship rewards connection, collaboration, and curation between individuals rather than roles or institutions, fostering cross-disciplinary and public engagement and a bridging of the personal/professional divide. The study contributes to knowledge by situating networked scholarly practices within the scholarly tradition, while articulating the terms on which knowledge abundance and networked practices open up new spheres of opportunity and vulnerability for scholars

Federal Bureaucratic Studies

A vast literature has developed in legal scholarship on the topic of bureaucratic governance. To date, this literature has focused squarely on the executive branch. Yet a second bureaucracy also exists in the federal government: the congressional bureaucracy. Recent legislation scholarship has brought this bureaucracy into focus—documenting its traits, practices, and culture. In so doing, it has created a rich new opportunity for cross-disciplinary dialogue—one where executive-branch studies and legislative studies collaborate toward a larger understanding of how bureaucracy operates, and can operate, in a presidentialist system. To begin that cross-disciplinary conversation, this Article turns to five themes in the executive-branch literature. These are: (i) the dual-allegiance problem, (ii) bureaucratic resistance, (iii) dual advising-adjudicating roles, (iv) agency capture, and (v) comparative understandings of the judiciary. In each case, theories developed in the executive branch context enrich our understanding of the congressional bureaucracy, while new knowledge about the congressional bureaucracy also forces revisions to those executive-branch theories. In many cases, the congressional bureaucracy also reveals new governance solutions in our tripartite system—solutions that are overlooked when bureaucracy scholarship is confined to studies of a single branch. Through an exploration of these and other lessons, the Article illustrates the many possibilities inherent in a new cross-disciplinary dialogue on the role of bureaucracy in our federal system

Discipline and research data in geography

Research data is essential to scholarship. The value of research data and its management has been increasingly recognized by policy makers and higher education institutions. A deep understanding of disciplinary practices is vital to develop culturally-sensitive policy, tools and services for successful data management. Previous research has shown that data practices vary across sub-fields and disciplines. However, much less is known about how disciplinary cultures shape data practices. There is a need to theorise research data practices based on empirical evidence in order to inform policy, tools and services. The aim of the thesis is to examine the interrelation between data practices and disciplinary cultures within geography. Geography is well-established and multidisciplinary, consisting of elements from the sciences, social sciences and humanities. By examining a single discipline this thesis develops a theoretical understanding of research data practices at a finer level of granularity than would be achieved by looking at broad disciplinary groupings such as the physical and social sciences. Data collection and analysis consisted of two phases. Phase one was exploratory, including an analysis of geography department websites and researcher web profiles and a bibliometric study of collaboration patterns based on co-authorship. Phase one aimed to understand the disciplinary characteristics of geography in preparation for Phase two. The second phase consisted of a series of 23 semi-structured interviews with researchers in geography, which aimed to understand researchers data practices and their attitudes toward data sharing within the context of the sub-discipline(s) they inhabited. The findings of the thesis show that there are contrasting intellectual, social and data differences between physical and human geography. For example, intellectually, these two branches of geography differ in terms of their research objects and methods; socially, they differ in terms of the scale of their collaborative activities and the motivations to collaborate; furthermore, the nature of data, how data is collected and data sharing practices are also different between physical and human geography. The thesis concludes that differences in the notion of data and data sharing practices are grounded in disciplinary characteristics. The thesis develops a new three-dimensional framework to better understand the notion of data from a disciplinary perspective. The three dimensions are (1) physical form, (2) intellectual content and (3) social construction. Furthermore, Becher and Trowler s (2001) disciplinary taxonomy i.e. hard-soft/pure-applied, and the concepts urban-rural ways of life and convergent-divergent communities, is shown to be useful to explain the diverse data sharing practices of geographers. The thesis demonstrates the usefulness of applying disciplinary theories to the sphere of research data management

Federal Bureaucratic Studies

A vast literature has developed in legal scholarship on the topic of bureaucratic governance. To date, this literature has focused squarely on the executive branch. Yet a second bureaucracy also exists in the federal government: the congressional bureaucracy. Recent legislation scholarship has brought this bureaucracy into focus—documenting its traits, practices, and culture. In so doing, it has created a rich new opportunity for cross-disciplinary dialogue—one where executive-branch studies and legislative studies collaborate toward a larger understanding of how bureaucracy operates, and can operate, in a presidentialist system. To begin that cross-disciplinary conversation, this Article turns to five themes in the executive-branch literature. These are: (i) the dual-allegiance problem, (ii) bureaucratic resistance, (iii) dual advising-adjudicating roles, (iv) agency capture, and (v) comparative understandings of the judiciary. In each case, theories developed in the executive branch context enrich our understanding of the congressional bureaucracy, while new knowledge about the congressional bureaucracy also forces revisions to those executive-branch theories. In many cases, the congressional bureaucracy also reveals new governance solutions in our tripartite system—solutions that are overlooked when bureaucracy scholarship is confined to studies of a single branch. Through an exploration of these and other lessons, the Article illustrates the many possibilities inherent in a new cross-disciplinary dialogue on the role of bureaucracy in our federal system

Creativity and Conflict: How theory and practice shape student identities in design education

By exploring the role of student identities in shaping attitudes to learning, this study asks how design students draw on experience to work across theory and practice. It explores how a specific group of design undergraduate students in a UK university perform on two distinct learning experiences on their course: work placement and dissertation. In particular, it considers the context for learning: the value placed on practice and scholarship; the role of social identity; links between art and design education. Using Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ the discussion considers the role of experience and motivation in learning in design education, and questions how useful historical divisions drawn between theory and practice are to student learning in design education. By questioning the value of internal disciplinary conflicts to student learning, it asks how we distinguish between vital pedagogic processes and divisive practices in higher education

Navigating the SoTL Landscape: A Compass, Map and Some Tools for Getting Started

Since the scholarship of teaching and learning entails the design of, and evidence-based inquiry into, teaching, learning and pedagogical practice – faculty new to this field face the challenging task of mastering perspectives, processes and practices that can be disparate to their disciplinary foundations. This paper offers an introductory overview of some essential ideas that help shape the design and intention of SoTL activities, and provides guidelines for undertaking SoTL projects

Implementing an Evidence-based Reflective Teaching Cycle: Using Scholarly Research in Curriculum Design

Course curriculum design using a research-teaching connection and reflective teaching is presented. The research-teaching connection is expanded to a three stage research-teaching-research cycle and reflection is expanded to include both faculty and students. Traditional disciplinary educational research was used to inform the design of the curriculum, and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research was used to measure the success of the course design in achieving its objectives for student learning. The objective of the course redesign was to better engage students in applying the authentic disciplinary practices of the field of history teacher preparation. The research project documented how the research-based instructional practices were taught to students, how the students subsequently put this knowledge into practice and how the course was modified over four years based on evidence-based reflection. Conclusions and implications for using evidence-based reflective teaching to improve teaching effectiveness as applied to other disciplines are discussed

Creating Interdisciplinarity: Grounded Definitions from the College and University Faculty

Definitions of interdisciplinarity often focus on the integration of disciplinary concepts or perspectives. Few definitions, however, are grounded in the work of faculty who conduct interdisciplinary scholarship. To better understand the practice of interdisciplinarity in research and teaching, and its implications for academics' professional lives, I interviewed college and university faculty affiliated with a variety of liberal arts and sciences disciplines in four U.S. institutions of varying size and mission. The study explored how interviewees practiced interdisciplinarity; how institutional, departmental, and disciplinary locations affected their scholarly identities, professional associations, and work lives; and the kinds of rewards they reaped from interdisciplinary work. In this article, I analyze a subset of the interviews, examining explicit and implied definitions of interdisciplinarity and their relationship to faculty members' understandings of disciplinarity and scholarly work. The analysis reveals that definitions of interdisciplinarity that emphasize integration exclude some forms of interdisciplinary work. I therefore suggest an alternative, more inclusive conceptualization that strives to encompass a range of interdisciplinary practices. Further study of interdisciplinary research and teaching might confirm that all interdisciplinary scholarship can be categorized according to the typology described here - or it might provide evidence of additional forms of interdisciplinarity