Call for Participants
The CSULA Center for Effective Teaching and Learning (CETL) and Office of Community Engagement were just awarded a 2013 CSU system grant from the Institute of Teaching and Learning to establish a Faculty Learning Community (FLC).
This FLC will investigate pedagogies of civic learning that help students to develop knowledge, skills, and values that are essential for civic identity, democratic participation, and political engagement. In recent years many academic professional associations—in response to mounting evidence of a high degree of civic disengagement in the United States, especially among youth and college age students—have created programs and initiatives designed to promote civic learning on campuses. Civic learning is beginning to be included in curricula in all disciplines.
Service learning is perhaps the most well-known civic learning pedagogy, but there are many other teaching practices that can advance civic outcomes, such as:
- Creating opportunities for students to participate in intergroup and deliberative dialogue;
- Study circles that bring students and community members together in small groups to build relationships, deliberate about community issues and explore actions to effect change;
- Incorporating newspapers into course content/curricula
- Analysis of case studies
- Formulating responses to public issues
- Developing action plans
Civic learning within the disciplines
Civic learning is adaptable to your discipline.
Within the fields of media, business and philanthropy, the notion of civic professionalism has become a sought-after skill.
Within various allied-health professions there is agreement that a foundational principal of undergraduate health education should be to prepare students to “accept personal and social responsibility and demonstrate capacity to synthesize, integrate and apply their learning” (AACU/APTR).
The concept of civic science emphasizes “public participation in the production and use of scientific knowledge.” Science conceived in this way allows “citizens and the public” to be stakeholders in deliberations about science who are no longer excluded by “scientific experts and policy-makers” (Bäckstrand).
Criteria
Eligible applicants will be limited to eight (8) faculty. Per ITL guidelines preference for 4 of the 8 faculty will go to faculty in STEM disciplines. Qualified applicants will be open to new discovery in their own teaching and learning and willing to experiment and share new approaches effective practices with other motivated colleagues.
Stipends of $500 will be awarded to each FLC member and will be paid out at the closing retreat where deliverables will be presented to the community. Award of stipends is contingent on participation in all scheduled FLC activities. FLC facilitators will provide all reading and curricular materials.
Meeting dates
The FLC for civic learning meets from 10 am to Noon on nine (9) monthly meetings Fridays in 2013:
Friday, February 15, 2013 (Opening retreat)
March 15
April 19
May 17
June 7
September 13
October 18
November 29
December 8, 2013 (closing retreat)
Application Guidelines
- Complete an application by Monday, January 28, 2013. Hold all meeting dates in your calendar.
- Faculty applying must commit to nine (9) monthly meetings, excluding summer.
- The CETL will hold an opening retreat on Friday, February 15th, 2013. The closing retreat will be in December 8, 2013.
- FLC members will be notified by Monday February 4, 2013.
The FLC model
FLCs are made up of cross-disciplinary faculty who commit to a collaborative yearlong program. Faculty Learning Communities are about building community, and are not committee work. FLC members have a topic-specific curriculum and participate in facilitated scholarly activities (seminars, discussions) that provide enhanced teaching and learning experiences within the area of concern. The FLC provides a support structure and represents a sustained professional development opportunity.FLC faculty have one deliverable: they create an individual, well-defined project, completed within one year. Final projects may include revised syllabi or new assignments. These are related to teaching and learning, publishable, reflective of qualitative and quantitative inquiry, and anchored in existing research on scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).
Purpose of the FLC
For further information please contact Catherine Haras at charas@calstatela.edu
This FLC will engage faculty to explore and identify a civic learning practice that should improve student, civic learning outcomes in a specific course. Faculty who want to investigate new ways of teaching in a supportive environment are encouraged to apply.