Teaching-as-Research

Teaching-as-research involves the deliberate, systematic, and reflective use of research methods to develop and implement teaching practices that advance the learning experiences and learning outcomes of students/participants and teachers/facilitators.

Participants (those graduate students, post-docs, and faculty who take part in the suite of Delta activities) will learn to apply a research approach to their teaching practice. Conceptual steps in the teaching-as-research process are:

1. Learning foundational knowledge (What is known about the teaching practice?)
   
2. Creating goals for better student/participant learning (What do we want our students/participants to learn?)
   
3. Defining measures of success (What evidence will we need in order to determine whether students/participants have achieved learning goals?)
   
4. Developing and implementing teaching practices (What will we do [in and out of the classroom] to enable students/participants to achieve learning goals?)
   
5. Collecting and analyzing "data" (How will we collect and analyze information to determine what students/participants have learned?)
   
6. Reflecting, evaluating, and iterating (How will we use what we have learned to improve our teaching?)

Throughout our teaching practice, we use the following points as touchstones to remind us why the concept of teaching-as-research is valuable:

• The application of teaching-as-research is meant to lead participants to an on-going process of discovery and change.
  
  
• The application of teaching-as-research is meant to create inclusive learning environments that are effective for diverse audiences.
  
• The application of teaching-as-research will take place within a learning community - a collaborative environment that promotes shared learning and active participation, modeled after approaches to research.

Download these Teaching-as-Research Guidelines in MS Word format...

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