Professional learning may be the most significant when the teacher feels fundamentally challenged and questioned about their practices, beliefs, or identities. In this paper, the elements that cause such fundamental challenges and questions -- disruptions -- are called 'disruptive hooks'. In the process of addressing such disruptive hooks,…

To further teaching and learning, there has been a push to engage faculty to pursue research on teaching. With the recognition that science research often is done by teams, we sought to create a research-cluster approach to support faculty engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This article describes a faculty-focused process…

In this collaborative autoethnography, we, two early career academics used arts-based methods to explore and transform our understanding of scholarly impact. We began by narrating the disorienting dilemma we experienced while preparing our review, tenure, and promotion portfolios. After a brief review of Mezirow's transformative learning theory,…

We are interested in the transformative potentials of intersubjectivity as it is enacted through second-person contemplative approaches. Our work here focuses on contemplative practice as a pedagogy that reveals and enacts intersubjectivity within postsecondary education. How might contemplative higher education practice as a pedagogy enable…

In this essay, I review Sarah M. Stitzlein's "Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens," which addresses the decline of honesty in education and politics in the context of rising populism. Stitzlein advocates for a pragmatist inquiry approach to teaching, arguing that students should engage in…

Purpose: Sensemaking is the difficult art which lies at the heart of academia. Academics bring their own ways of examining and explaining things they see. A key challenge for Carrie is how to make sense of complex and challenging situations, recognize available solutions, choose the best path moving forward, and convey all of the above to the…

The educational benefits of challenge- or problem-based approaches to learning are now well established. Action Research (AR) and Action Learning (AL) together provide educators with an ethic, a research methodology and a pedagogical strategy for harnessing and developing the motive power of purposeful activity for reflective enquiry in teaching…

A new didactical approach named "Learning by Being" (LBB) is proposed and its correlation with current educational paradigms in science teaching is analysed. The key idea in LBB is the assumption by the students of cognitive goals, and three components are mandatory in LBB: a) student's personal learning effort, b) student-teacher mutual…

The instrumental approach is a useful theoretical lens for understanding students' learning processes with a main focus on the transformation of an artefact (a human design for a goal-directed activity) into a meaningful instrument (i.e. an artefact and schemes developed by the student). In this paper, we articulate the instrumental approach for…

While constructivism enjoys considerable popularity in higher education, both in Australia and internationally, it nonetheless takes a variety of forms. These different interpretations make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about constructivism as a whole. In this essay, we therefore take a psycho-philosophical approach: reviewing and…

The image is the raw material of the twenty-first century. Images infiltrate all social and cultural spaces. Its digital-mediated realities drive communication, industry and knowledge. Images saturate life and adolescent learners are familiar with the participatory nature of image production and its social, educational and personal communicative…

Inquiry-based teaching aims to increase student engagement through the development of the hands-on, minds-on skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, and communication, needed for the 21st century (The Partnership for 21st Century Skills 2015). This approach respects the complexities of the learning process, values the knowledge and…

Teachers face a growing call for implementing inquiry-based teaching and learning in a current pedagogical environment that contradicts this through educational practices that silo content, disseminate knowledge, and produce classrooms of passive learners. We address a hot topic in the United States on how a push for more "academics" is…

In the context of China's social transformation and educational reform, addressing the problems of fragmented and ineffective learning in traditional teaching modes and enhancing students' academic levels and developing their comprehensive abilities through structured classroom learning have become critical issues in educational reform. The…

Experiential learning has been documented as an effective method for student learning, yet its use in large-enrollment classes remains limited. Kolb's experiential learning theory emphasizes that experiential learning requires a hospitable learning space (HLS) that is conducive to learning. In this article, we reframe the challenges to…