Learning matters: reflections on valuing inquiry into teaching
Teaching matters at any institution only if learning matters and the learning that matters at a research institution is intimately connected to the idea of inquiry. Whether we are describing the impetus for our own disciplinary scholarship, one of our cherished classroom strategies, or the perspective on learning we want our students to believe in and practice, inquiry is an integrative value that brings coherence to our professional lives.
In this keynote, I’d like to highlight a few of the particular lessons we have learned by valuing and practicing inquiry into teaching: the critical importance of listening to and watching students learn; the essential role of encouraging and practicing reflection in and on teaching and learning; and the ongoing need to study collaboratively the important institutional question of how we can help students learn how to learn.
Valuing inquiry into teaching and learning, that is, valuing the process by which we ask meaningful questions, gather and explore evidence, test, refine and share our insights, and frame the inevitable next questions, is one sure way to encourage a coherent vision of our work as researchers, teachers, and faculty developers, and thus to make teaching and learning matter at any institution.
About our Speaker
Anthony (Tony) Ciccone (Ph.D. SUNY/Buffalo) is professor emeritus of French and President of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). He is the former founding director of the Center for Instructional and Professional Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and has served as Director of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) and the Wisconsin Teaching Scholars program, recipient of a Hesburgh Certificate of Excellence. Tony has presented the scholarship of teaching and learning nationally and internationally, most recently at conferences in London, Dublin, South Africa, and Quebec. He has provided book chapters on doing SoTL work at the institutional level, and published his own SoTL research on student reflection based on his study of student learning in his freshman seminar on comedy and laughter. With Pat Hutchings and Mary Huber, he co-authored The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered: Institutional Impact and Integration. He has also authored a book and several articles on Molière, and two French language textbooks.
Tony is especially proud of his two children, Emily (31) who is in her last year of medical residency at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Mark (27) who is working on his doctorate in History at UW-Milwaukee.
Tony enjoys a good game of golf – and is hoping to have one some day.