Advancing the Next Generation of Higher Education Scholars: An Examination of One Doctoral Classroom
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: Course content in graduate school is especially important in terms of helping students make progress toward a doctorate. However, content is merely one aspect of developing successful students. This article highlights the value of creating an affirming learning environment by discussing one graduate class on Qualitative Policy Research. The majority of student participants were graduate students of color. The authors discuss the pedagogical approaches guiding this course and outline ways in which the instructor served to create safe spaces that invited as well as validated diverse perspectives and made the research process transparent. These efforts resulted in the production of high quality research used as pilot studies for successful dissertation defenses, accepted presentations at scholarly conferences, and published articles in peer-reviewed journals. Throughout this article, suggestions for replicating a similar course environment are discussed. The university has always taught values, in one way or another... Intentional or not, teaching values occurs in the classroom every day – In the material I ask students to read, in the dialogue that ensues... [v]alues are implicit in everything I say, write, and do. And so it should be. We teach values by having them... [she argues that the university must] take seriously and rigorously its role as guardian of wider civic freedoms, as interrogator of more and more complex ethical problems, as servant and preserver
Authors: Caroline Turner, J. Luke Wood, Yvonne J. Montoya, Idara R. Essien-Wood, R.A. Neal, Gabriel Escontrías, Aaron D. Coe
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W222098407