Zhou Ziqian Jan is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for English Language Communication I received an MA (Philosophy and Politics) from the University of Edinburgh, an MPhil (Philosophy) and a PhD (Philosophy) from University College London. I serve on the General Education Committee (Provost’s Office), CELC’s Faculty Teaching Excellence Committee (FTEC), the Faculty of Arts […]
Professional Development
Dialogue Session: The Faculty Development Committee
The Faculty Development Committee hosted a dialogue session on Wednesday, March 23rd from 12pm to 1.30pm. The session aimed to encourage discussion in key areas of SoTL. The following questions were brought up for the conversation: What makes SoTL different to scholarly teaching? What ethical issues have you encountered in your own practice as […]
SoTL Research in Higher Education: Q&A with Dr. John Canning and Dr. Rachel Masika
In this Q&A post, Dr. John Canning (The University of Brighton, UK) and Dr. Rachel Masika (Rachel Masika Consulting) respond to our questions which were formed based on the reading of their paper, “The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL): The thorn in the flesh of educational research”, published by Studies in Higher Education. In brief, their paper […]
Mentoring Partnership: The Three Cs of our Mentoring Partnership
by Fong Yoke Sim and Doreen Tan Introduction Our formal Mentor-on-Demand (MoD) partnership, starting from January 2020, was to have lasted only six months. But it ended officially in August after we had submitted the first draft of our joint article. Moreover, we (Yoke Sim, the MoD, hereafter “YS”, and Doreen, the Mentee, henceforth […]
SDC Features: Special Interest Groups – Setting It Up
Focused Collaboration: Setting up and Facilitating a Special Interest Group by Dara Richard What motivated you to initiate this SIG? I was originally motivated because I feel small groups of practitioners working collaboratively is effective professional development. I proposed in 2016 that the Staff Development Committee (SDC) supports a culture of scholarly teaching by […]
A Scholarly Community: SoTLing as an ELT community
by Lee Kooi Cheng, Jessie Teng, Happy Goh, & Wong Kah Wei Introduction In recent years, with an emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at CELC, a number of teaching and learning communities have been formed. There have been different terms used for these communities, specifically Communities of Practice (CoPs) and […]
New Directions in EAP: Reflections on Teaching a Systemic Functional Linguistics-themed EAP Course
by Chris Bedwell Introduction As English language teachers, it is important to be able to draw upon a range of approaches and ideas to assist learners in their programs of study. With a greater array of resources, we are then in a better position to respond to the various needs of our students. In […]
Is teacher professional reflection just a personal story of progress?: The Practice of Reflection
by Jonathan Tang Is teacher professional reflection just a personal story of progress? What do educators mean when they say they engage in reflective practice (as opposed to when they say they reflect)? We all reflect, but are all reflections reflective in equal measure? Above all, what makes a quality reflection and how might […]
Evidencing teaching: Lessons learned
by Lee Kooi Cheng, Lee Gek Ling, & Lee Kit Mun Introduction Since AY15/16, it’s been our privilege to serve on the Centre’s Faculty Teaching Excellence Committee (FTEC). Three questions have preoccupied us: What constitutes good teaching? What are the indicators of good teaching? How do we effectively evidence teaching? The answers to these […]
Teaching Basic English: Time for a Rethink?
by Jonathan Tang The problem that motivated this reflection came from an email from a student of mine in a course I was teaching for the first time. The course was a proficiency course in basic English with emphasis on grammar particularly as regards assessment. The student concerned was an undergraduate from the People’s […]