Betsy Palmer

A Report on a Four-Year Longitudinal Study of Intellectual Development of Engineering Undergraduates

As part of an investigation into the effects of curricular reforms in the undergraduate program in the College of Engineering, a series of Perry-style interviews were conducted over a 4-year period. The study was undertaken in an attempt to assess the impact of collaborative design-based engineering courses that were being implemented. Students who completed the collaborative design course in their first year were higher on the Perry scale than their peers who did not. However, this effect was not sustained through the rest of the curriculum, as more traditional courses dominated. No statistically significant change in Perry position was observed for students in their 1st and 3rd years; however, a growth of approximately one Perry position was observed between the 3rd and 4th years. The relationship of current curricula to this pattern of intellectual development is discussed, and arguments for altering the curriculum to support intellectual development are made.

Individual Domain-Specific Epistemologies: Implications for Educational Practice

This chapter will examine the implications for educational practice at the tertiary level of a theory of domain-specific epistemological development at the individual level. Educational researchers and theorists have described how the epistemological belief systems of university-level students may support or impede student learning (Jonassen et al., 2004; Moore, 1994; Wineburg, 1991, Valanides & Angeli, 2005). In previous work, the authors of this chapter have explored how individual students describe discipline specific epistemologies and how these epistemologies may be incongruent from one knowledge domain to another (Marra & Palmer, 2005; Palmer & Marra, 2004). While these incongruities have a theoretical and conceptual significance in terms of prior understandings of domain-specific epistemologies, they also offer educators a unique opportunity to challenge students’ epistemological stances. We explore how university educators may specifically target the imbalance of the individual student’s domain epistemologies as a “teachable moment” through inter and cross disciplinary pedagogies that leverage domain-specific epistemologies. We also discuss via empirical data, the ways in which students describe the teaching processes used in the classroom as a potential constriction on the development of more complex epistemological perspectives. We conclude with a synthesis of how individual epistemologies and instruction are intertwined and apply these concepts to university education globally.

Faculty Knowledge of Influences on Student Learning

This article comprises findings from a research project investigating faculty pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The research took place at a private university in the southern United States that had been involved in a campuswide project to improve teaching. Drawing on qualitative methods, we describe several significant aspects of faculty PCK. We suggest an iterative process by which faculty can blend their knowledge of teaching and learning to enhance student learning outcomes.