Michal Temkin Martinez, professor of linguistics in the English department, presented at the meeting of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning with her long time collaborator, Dr. Kazuko Hiramatsu (U. of Michigan-Flint) last month. Their presentation introduced audience members to their NSF-Sponsored work on capacity building for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in linguistics (SoTL).
Over the past 3 years, Temkin Martinez and Hiramatsu have been facilitating a discipline-specific inter-institutional Faculty Learning Community of linguists from across the United States. This approach builds on the more traditional model for learning communities where faculty from across disciplines may come together at their institution to learn about a pedagogy-related topic. In their presentation, Temkin Martinez and Hiramatsu discussed the advantages of participants’ shared disciplinary background in discussions about pedagogical issues.
Using this model for capacity building at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic also proved productive in other ways. With the shift to remote teaching and learning in spring 2020, community members created and disseminated a survey on teaching/learning needs and gaps in their field. This led to the creation of resources on scholarly teaching, and an organized session at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, which provided a public and publicized space for conversation about scholarly teaching and SoTL.