How do educators discover “what works ”?

How do they find out what other teachers do successfully? And how do they adapt it for their own circumstances?

A Disciplinary Commons brings together educators from different institutions who are teaching the same course (Human-Computer Interaction, perhaps, or Introduction to Shakespeare).

We shall run three Commons in each of the next three years. A Commons seeks to provide community for teachers, and develop an appropriate documentation for teaching practice.

Details of previous Commons are available from: http://www.disciplinarycommons.org

What is an appropriate representation of teaching practice?

We shall create and evaluate different representations of practice from rich, complex documents such as course portfolios, through to more abstracted and sparse forms such as guidelines and patterns

As well as existing Commons portfolios, see some preliminary work at: http://patternlanguagenetwork.org/

How does educators’ practice changes over time?

We shall undertake a small-scale, longitudinal study to map change, paying especial regard to how educators seek, evaluate and incorporate new practices.

Once a year, we’re going to undertake a “day survey” of teaching activities, asking educators to keep a diary of their teaching on a given day. Inspired by Mass Observation we hope this extensive collection will add contrast to the more intense data from the longitudinal study.