Book Review of "Teaching as Scholarship: Preparing Students for Professional Practice in Community Services"

Abstract

Gingras, J., Robinson, P., Waddell, J., & Cooper, L. D. (Eds.). (2016). Teaching as scholarship: Preparing students for professional practice in community services. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Pages: 195. Price: CDN$ 34.64 (Paperback)At Canada's first national symposium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at the University of Toronto in 2005, the Concept of SoTL was introduced to a large group of Canada's university and college administrators. Along with this introduction, there were discussions around its significance to higher education as well as exploring how best to support it. In the same year, Ryerson University, like many other Canadian universities, established a research center with a principal focus on SoTL. In Teaching as Scholarship, a number of members of the Faculty of Community Service (FCS) at Ryerson University provided narratives of their educational practices inspired by the principles of SoTL. The primary focus of Teaching as Scholarship is to (a) explore new ways of bringing research and practice to the community scale for students, and (b) search for new approaches towards teaching and learning that are responsive to community needs. The significance of the book's discussions is in taking the ongoing changes of communities' needs into account and making necessary changes in the education of students who are going to work as (care) professionals within communities, accordingly. Since the focus of this book is on the fields dealing with care and/or social service provision (e.g. health care, social work, early childhood, etc.), aspects of social transformation, critical reflection, and ethics of care are highlighted throughout.The book is responding to a call to provide concrete outcomes of incorporating scholarship of teaching and learning towards the creation of positive impacts in the communities. One of the strategies proposed by Gingras et al. is to cross the boundaries of commonly-accepted meanings of teacher and researcher. This is brought about by including stakeholders (e.g., students) as partners in the process of teaching and knowledge dissemination. Kennedy and Jancar, in chapter two, explain how involving and supporting writing teaching assistants (TAs) and incorporating a focus group component in their faculty-wide writing skills initiative have led to more student engagement as well as effective learning outcomes. Bailey et al., in chapter four, describe the implementation of a pedagogical approach, Intellectual Partnerships (IPs), through which teachers and students are partners and engage in the co-creation of knowledge through creative and intellectual discussions and activities.Reflexive critique, and innovative and creative teaching practices grounded in a learner-centered context were among the other strategies, mentioned within the book, for the development of teaching and learning scholarship. In chapter seven, Gingras and Rudolph privileged and acquired a student-centered learning approach, in the context of health education, through involving students in the teaching process with the purpose of creating a space for more equitable distribution of power in learning contexts. Schwind, in the eighth chapter, shifts the focus to reflective processes as they allow for developing personal knowing in future practitioners aiming for more respectful relationships with those for whom they provide care. In the following chapter, Wehbi, Preston and Moffatt explain their experience of using art (particularly photography and multimedia) as a pedagogical approach for teaching about community issues.The purpose of Teaching as Scholarship is to provide a for educating students as professional care/service-providers within communities. At the same time, this frame is used to help secure aims of social justice (e.g., by advocating for inclusion and equity in educational practices), and social transformation. In order to address these goals, in several chapters the contributing authors articulate undertaking an ethic of care. …