8th Annual IAMSE Meeting - Session Abstracts
| WORKSHOP SESSION TITLE: | How to Do Educational Research. Educational Scholarship:
Discovery, Integration, Application, and Teaching & Learning |
| SESSION LEADER(S): | David J. Steele, PhD, Assistant Dean for
Curriculum and Evaluation/Director, Office of Medical Education, Florida State
University College of Medicine |
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HANDOUTS or SLIDES |
The primary purpose of this focus session was to expand participants’ perspectives on educational research by employing Boyer’s (1990)* conceptualization of educational scholarship in the domains of discovery, integration and synthesis, application, and teaching and learning. After defining each of these domains and providing published examples of educational scholarship in each, participants were led through a series of "work book" exercises designed to enable them to identify and prioritize questions or "puzzles" related to their work as educators. Participants were then challenged to further refine their question by writing a brief "compelling argument" for why the question selected was worthy of their attention and what difference answering the question would make to our understanding of the educational process (the scholarship of discovery or of synthesis/integration), educational practice (the scholarship of application) or educational outcomes (the scholarship of teaching and learning). After completing these individual exercises, participants were then asked to form pairs and describe for each other the question and why they had selected it and to offer one another feedback on the question and how it was being formulated.
After identifying, discussing, and refining the question for educational scholarship, the participants were led through another series of exercises designed to help them make decisions about the methods that would be most appropriate for collecting the information needed to answer the question based on the ultimate purpose of the scholarly activity. The scholarly methods described during this stage of the focus session included qualitative methods, survey designs, and experimental interventions.
The conclusion of this focus session, each participant had identified a question that could form the bases of scholarly activity and had identified the kinds of methods that might be most appropriate for pursuing that line of scholarship.
Boyer, EL. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.