International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Volume 2, Number 2, July 2008
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to current issues pageInvited Essay
Excerpt
Changing Trains: The Story of SOTL in Eastern Europe and the
Former Soviet Union
This essay is a brief story of SOTL in Eastern Europe as developed
by the Curriculum Resource Center at Central European University (CEU)
in its selected outreach programs over the past four years (see also,
Renc-Roe, 2005). In accounting for the first steps towards SOTL, I would
like to point out some general and context-specific problems that remain
to be further studied. The story below is not so much a coherent narrative
of all relevant developments, but is meant to be a discussion of the
central points of tension and struggle for our own work in introducing
SOTL, supported by some selected voices from our participants. Central
to SOTL is one particular basic point of struggle; put simply, the tension
between teaching and learning, and between a corresponding primary focus
on reflection versus research (or scholarly teaching versus scholarship
of teaching). But this tension has particular and specific meaning in
this context and it is reflected well in our own institutional attempts
to develop SOTL programs.
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Full ArticleBio
Joanna Renc-Roe
Central European University
Budapest, Hungary
rencroej@ceuy.hu
I am a development manager at Central European University’s (CEU)
Curriculum Resource Center which is a specialized department charged
with providing professional development programs to academics from many
post-socialist countries. Currently, I provide methodological input
in our course development program that uses course portfolios and manage
a new SOTL program for a small group of scholars. I also run two semester-long
courses on teaching in higher education for our doctoral students and
coordinate our institution’s participation in the CASTL Institutional
Leadership Program. I am in the final stages of writing my doctoral
research
In the field of higher education policy and practice. I have previous
graduate level degrees in English and in Gender Studies. My current
academic focus is academic identity in the context of social transformation.
CEU website: http://web.ceu.hu/crc/