Pace Saam Sigler

IU’s Mack Center for Inquiry on Teaching and Learning has named two IU Kokomo faculty members and one IU Bloomington faculty member its 2005-2006 Mack Fellows.

Ellen Sigler, an IU Kokomo assistant professor of educational psychology, Julie Saam, an assistant professor of science education on the Kokomo campus, and David Pace, an IUB professor of history, have received the Mack Fellowships. The center has presented each a stipend to support their research this spring.

Both Saam and Sigler teach at the Kokomo campus’ Division of Education. They will research the potential benefits and limitations of constructivist teaching and learning, a line of inquiry that Sigler said they “have been following for a long time.”

In constructivist, or “discovery” learning, students discover knowledge through activities such as experiments or interactive sessions, Sigler said.

“They ‘construct’ their own meaning. In expository teaching, more commonly called ‘lecture,’ the teacher is the holder of knowledge and presents the knowledge to the students. For example, when teaching the judicial system with an expository strategy, the teacher would explain to the students how the judicial system operates. In a constructivist classroom, the teacher would allow the students the opportunity to discover the operations of the judicial system by conducting a mock trial,” Sigler said.

Proponents of constructivist learning maintain that it “promotes more meaningful learning,” Sigler said. However, “its critics feel that students might not be able to regulate their learning as well in this format, as they do in a more structured lecture environment.”

Sigler and Saam will attempt to evaluate the research subjects’ “metacognition,” that is, their ability to monitor, regulate and control their own learning processes within the two formats.

Educational psychology students at IU Kokomo will be team-taught by Saam and Sigler using both the constructivist and expository strategies. IU Kokomo students will then take an exam covering the material taught and judge their own learning of the material.

Pace will focus on three specific issues: helping students to learn to analyze primary sources; preparing students to take essay exams; and developing more effective qualitative assessments of specific types of learning in history courses. His focus illustrates new ways to introduce students to the ways of thinking required in different academic disciplines, presented in “Decoding the Disciplines: Helping Students Learn Disciplinary Ways of Thinking,” which was researched and authored by Joan Middendorf, a faculty member in the School of Education at IUB, and the Bloomington Faculty Learning Community.

The three Mack Fellows will be presenting information about their research at the IU Faculty Colloquium for Excellence in Teaching retreat in May.

The Mack Center fosters inquiry into the scholarship of teaching and learning, commonly referred to as SoTL. The center also recognizes, honors and increases the influence of that scholarly inquiry, with an underlying goal of promoting excellence in education.

http://www.facet.iupui.edu/activities/MackCenter.html