Call for Submissions: Reflections on Teaching and Learning at McMaster: 50 Years of Stories 

Call for Submissions to Edited Collection 

Reflections on Teaching and Learning at McMaster: 50 Years of Stories 

The Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching will mark its 50th anniversary in 2022, one of the first teaching centres in Canada to reach this milestone. Initially established in 1972 as the Shell Canada Centre for Science Teachers, the MacPherson Institute has also been formerly known as the Instructional Development Centre (IDC), Learning Technologies Resource Centre (LTRC), Centre for Leadership in Learning (CLL), and McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (MIIETL). 

To commemorate our anniversary, and in alignment with our mission to “collaborate to explore, enhance, support, and recognize teaching and learning experiences at McMaster”, we seek to celebrate 50 years of teaching and learning stories at McMaster by inviting contributions to an edited collection. This book will reflect on McMaster’s 50+ year history of teaching innovation, and imagine the future of teaching and learning on campus. In these ways, it will advance the MacPherson Institute’s vision: “Cultivating an environment where learning deeply matters and teaching is valued and recognized by the collective McMaster community”. 

We take inspiration from the reflections written by McGill faculty, in 1999, on the 30-year history of their teaching and learning centre (McAlpine & Cowan, 2000), the anthology that York University’s Centre for the Support of Teaching produced with their students, staff, and faculty (Newton et al., 2001), and the independently published collection celebrating 3M teaching fellows (Lerch, 2005). Like these collections, we seek to: 

• Collect, preserve, and share accounts of teaching and learning history at McMaster; 
• Identify important milestones, trends, developments, and achievements in teaching and learning at McMaster; 
• Celebrate teaching excellence, innovation, and scholarship and student, staff, and faculty efforts to support and enhance teaching and learning; and 
• Grapple with historical and ongoing challenges and opportunities in teaching and learning. 
  

The intended audience includes former, current, and future McMaster students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community partners, as well as colleagues at other postsecondary institutions seeking to understand and amplify their own local teaching and learning histories. 

Chapter proposals of 300 words or less are due February 1, 2021. 

What We’re Looking For

The “50 Years of Stories” collection will reflect on past, present, and future teaching and learning at McMaster. Key provocations include the following questions: 

• How has teaching and learning evolved and changed at McMaster University over the past 50-130 years (or any period of time therein)?  
• What have been key/defining (to the institution at large, Faculties, departments, or individual members) moments of teaching and learning development at McMaster?  
• What must we remember and learn from this history? 
• What critical challenges do we at McMaster (individually, collectively) face in teaching and learning today and into the future? How have these emerged at McMaster to appear as they do now? How might we address them?  
• What are our visions for teaching and learning at McMaster over the next 5-50 years?
  

We understand “teaching and learning” broadly to include: formal and informal curriculum, learning technologies, learning environments, and assessment of learning; teaching and learning that happens inside and/or outside of the classroom; flexibility in who is positioned as a teacher and/or a learner; and campus activities/supports/services that contribute to teaching, learning, and student experiences of their education; among other encompassing interpretations!  

Proposals will be reviewed for inclusion in the edited book collection and/or for promotion on the accompanying anniversary website.  

Format and Length 

• 1000-4000 words (plus any references) 
• Reflective or historical essays; opinion pieces/commentaries; interviews /dialogues; short research articles; case studies; photographs with associated stories; open to other textual or digital/visual formats.   
• Written by current or former McMaster students, staff, faculty, and other affiliates/colleagues.   
• We welcome single or co-authored accounts from individuals and on behalf of departments, programs, units, and Faculties. 
• In those cases where authors have submitted relevant reflective/retrospective/ historical accounts to other journals, we invite chapters that raise the profile of this work within the McMaster context (e.g. syntheses/stories that refer back to other publications).  
• We will be seeking McMaster Research Ethics Board review for the project as a whole so that any “research”-based chapters that require data collection with human participants to further existing knowledge can be submitted as amendments under our protocol. When submitting your proposal, please let us know if this might be the case for your proposed chapter (e.g. whether you anticipate conducting primary data collection with human participants for which previous ethics review has not already been obtained).  
• We encourage contributors to apply for Summer 2021 Student Partners Program funding to collaborate with student partners on their anthology submissions. 
  

Chapter Proposal Instructions 

Please include the following information in your proposal and submit as a Word document to Alise de Bie (dasa@mcmaster.ca) by February 1, 2021.  

• Working title 
• Proposal of 300 words or less 
  
• Indicate at least one of the following areas of focus:
  • Student experiences and engagement  
  • Educator development 
  • Teaching and learning scholarship 
  • Teaching enhancements and innovations  
  • Teaching with technology 
  • Equity 
  • Partnerships  
• Indicate estimated word length of the final chapter (between 1000-4000 words, not including references)  
• Short accompanying author bios of 100 words max (for each author, written in the third person) 
• Preliminary details about any intended primary data collection that may fall under our group MREB protocol (e.g. type of data collection, number and type of participants, any initial interview/focus group/survey questions) 
  

Deadlines

• Proposals due: February 1, 2021 
• Notification of proposal status/acceptance: March 1, 2021 
• Full submission due: November 1, 2021 
• Editorial feedback to authors: January 15, 2022 
• Resubmission due: April 1, 2022 
• Publication: Fall 2022
  

Editors

Alise de Bie, Sue Baptiste, Cathy Grisé, Sheila Sammon 

Contact

Alise de Bie (dasa@mcmaster.ca) with any questions.

References

Lerch, M. (Ed.). (2005). Making a difference: A celebration of the 3M teaching fellowship. Council of 3M Teaching Fellows & the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Distributed by the Centre for Leadership in Learning, McMaster University.

McAlpine, L., & Cowan, S. (Eds.) (2000). Reflections on teaching and learning: 30 years at McGill. McGill Journal of Education, April 2000.

Newton, J., et al. (Eds.). (2001). Voices from the classroom: Reflections on teaching and learning in higher education. Centre for the Support of Teaching, York University.

Other Examples

Butler, I. S. (2019). A brief history of distance education in Chemistry at McGill University in Canada. Chemistry Teacher International. DOI: 10.1515/cti-2018-0033.

Brown, S. E. (2008). Breaking barriers: The pioneering disability students services program at the University of Illinois, 1948–1960. In E. H. Tamura (Ed.), The history of discrimination in U.S. education: Marginality, agency, and power (165-192). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cuneo, C., Harnish, D., Roy, D., & Vajoczki, S. (2012). Lessons learned: The McMaster  inquiry story from innovation to institutionalization. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2012(129), 93-104.

Hanrahan, M. (2013). Indigenizing the academy: An institutional case study of one university.The Morning Watch, 40(3-4), 104-115. http://www.mun.ca/educ/faculty/mwatch/winter13.html.

Landeen, J., Fisher, K., Mujica, I., Carpio, B., Chen, R., Martin, L., … & Bird, M. (2020). Lessons learned from historical analysis of seven decades of educational scholarship at McMaster University School of Nursing. Quality Advancement in Nursing Education-Avancées en formation infirmière, 6(2), 4.

McMaster University. (2012). 125 years of teaching and learning at McMaster. https://youtu.be/CQaCGKayXIs

McMaster University. (2018). A history of teaching innovations. Teaching Excellence. https://teachingexcellence.mcmaster.ca/our-teaching-innovations/.

Neville, A., Norman, G., & White, R. (2019). McMaster at 50: Lessons learned from five decades of PBL. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 24(5), 853-863.

Papadelos, P., Michell, D., & Eate, P. (2014). ‘Bending and morphing’: The department of women’s studies at the University of Adelaide continues past its twenty year anniversary. Outskirts: Feminisms Along the Edge, 31.

Reiter, H. I., Rosenfeld, J., & Giordano, L. (2004). Selection of medical students at McMaster University: A quarter century later. McMaster University Med J, 2, 41-5.

Rentschler, C., Kent, A., & Vemuri, A. (2019). Historicizing student activism against rape culture on campus: A case study of McGill University. Canadian Symposium on Sexual Violence in Post-Secondary Education Institutions, 78-82.

Servant-Miklos, V. F. (2019). Fifty years on: A retrospective on the world’s first problem-based learning programme at McMaster University Medical School. Health Professions Education, 5(1), 3-12.

Other McMaster History

Alderson, H. J. (1976). Twenty-five years a-growing: The history of the School of Nursing, McMaster University. Hamilton: McMaster University. Accessible via https://archive.org/index.php.

Bayley, S. T. (2008). Biology at McMaster University: 1890 to 1990. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11375/14372.

Burghardt, A. F. (1992). A history of the geography department of McMaster University 1920-1992. Hamilton: McMaster University.

Greenlee, J. G. (2015). McMaster University, Volume 3: 1957-1987: A chance for greatness (Vol. 3). McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP.

Johnston, C. M. (1976). McMaster University, Volume 1: The Toronto years. University of Toronto Press.

Johnston, C. M. (1981). McMaster University, Volume 2: The early years in Hamilton, 1930-1957. University of Toronto Press.

McKay, A. G. (2000). Classics at McMaster, 1890-2000. Hamilton: Department of Classics, McMaster University.

McMaster University Alumni Association & Weaver, J. C. (1986). Student days: Student life at McMaster University from the 1890s to the 1980s. Hamilton: McMaster University. Alumni Association. Retrieved from https://digitalarchive.mcmaster.ca/islandora/object/macrepo%3A66737#page/1/mode/2up.

Penny, H. L. (1993). From dream to gleam: How professional social work came to McMaster University: In commemoration of the silver anniversary of the McMaster School of Social Work, a memoir. Hamilton: School of Social Work, McMaster University.

Spaulding, W. B., with Cochran, J. (1991). Revitalizing medical education: McMaster Medical School, the early years 1965-1974. BC Decker.