The Scholarship of Teaching: Contributing Factors to Improved Teaching Performance Among University Faculty Members

This thesis brings a much-needed focus on the quality and scholarship of teaching as it pertains to educational and faculty development. The main purpose of this paper is to outline what more than 200 faculty members across a wide variety of disciplines have focused on over a three-year period to make significant (a 1.5 standard deviation increase or higher in online student ratings) and sustained improvements in their teaching. The top three factors of improvement include active/practical learning, teacher/student interactions, and clear expectations/learning outcomes. The researcher also discusses how institutions and faculty communities of practice, research, and faculty personality contribute to teaching performance. The findings of this research build upon the literature review on the scholarship of teaching. The researcher provides vignettes of faculty who have gone through a change process to improve their teaching, highlights important teaching areas for faculty to focus on in each college, provides practical application for change, and concludes by providing suggestions for future research. This thesis is full of hope and encouragement for all faculty and administrators, regardless of their personality, their current skill level at teaching, or the subject matter they teach.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Grantor dc:publisher

Brigham Young University - Provo

Author dc:creator

• Ransom, Whitney

• teaching
• improvement
• scholarship
• learning
• faculty
• active learning
• teacher/student interactions
• learning outcomes
• communiites of practice
• Brigham Young University
• effort
• qualitative inquiry
• contributing factors
• teaching performance
• Educational Psychology

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1357

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-2356