Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

• Barr, Robert B. and John Tagg. "From Teaching to Learning--A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education." Change 27, no. 6 (Nov 1995): 12-25.
  • A landmark article published in 1995 that had significant effect on perspectives of higher education. Still referenced and cited frequently.

• Bjork, E. L. and R. A. Bjork. "Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning." In M. A. Gernsbacher and J. Pomerantz (eds.), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society, 2nd edition (New York: Worth, 2014), 59-68.
  • Book chapter made available by the authors via https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/robert-a-bjork-publications/.
  • See also the Bjork Lab overview "Applying Cognitive Psychology to Enhance Educational Practice" at their website.

• Dunlosky, John, Katherine A. Rawson, et al. "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology." Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14, no. 1, (2013): 4-58.
  • ABSTRACT: Many students are being left behind by an educational system that some people believe is in crisis. Improving educational outcomes will require efforts on many fronts, but a central premise of this monograph is that one part of a solution involves helping students to better regulate their learning through the use of effective learning techniques. Fortunately, cognitive and educational psychologists have been developing and evaluating easy-to-use learning techniques that could help students achieve their learning goals. In this monograph, we discuss 10 learning techniques in detail and offer recommendations about their relative utility. We selected techniques that were expected to be relatively easy to use and hence could be adopted by many students. Also, some techniques (e.g., highlighting and rereading) were selected because students report relying heavily on them, which makes it especially important to examine how well they work. The techniques include elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarization, highlighting (or underlining), the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. To offer recommendations about the relative utility of these techniques, we evaluated whether their benefits generalize across four categories of variables: learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks.

• Halpern, Diane F. and Milton D. Hakel. "Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond: Teaching for Long-Term Retention and Transfer." Change 35, no. 4 (2003): 36-41.

• Keeley, Jared W., Emad Ismail and William Buskist. "Excellent Teachers’ Perspectives on Excellent Teaching." Teaching of Psychology 43, no. 3 (2016): 175-9.
  • ABSTRACT: Studies of master teaching have investigated a set of qualities that define excellent teaching. However, few studies have investigated master teachers’ perspectives on excellent teaching and how it may differ from other faculty or students. The current study investigated award-winning teachers’ (N = 50) ratings of the 28 qualities on the teacher behavior checklist. There was substantial overlap in the importance placed upon various teaching qualities among award-winning teachers and other faculty. However, excellent teachers placed more value upon being prepared and forming rapport with students. Full professors placed more importance on several teaching qualities than associate and assistant professors. Teaching training programs should include broad definitions of excellent teaching that incorporate components that some faculty may otherwise overlook.