Practical Pedagogy is a graduate student colloquium that brings together teachers from the University of Washington community to discuss strategies for putting their pedagogical values into practice.The colloquium operates from the belief that teachers teach best in community: that all educators—from the novice to the expert—need space to talk through their own teaching experiences and to learn from the experiences of others.

History
In the fall of 2000, Lana Dalley and Stacy Grooters, both English graduate students, hosted the first Practical Pedagogy meeting in a back room of the College Inn Pub. Both new and experienced Teaching Assistants in the department attended that first meeting to talk about creating an informal forum where they could discuss the challenges of teaching at the college level. Since that first night, the colloquium has continued to meet and has grown to include teachers of varying levels of experience, both graduate students and faculty, from across the University of Washington campus.

The colloquium now holds two to three roundtable discussions each quarter which are facilitated by graduate students and faculty on topics related to college-level teaching. In order to stay true to the colloquium’s early focus on providing a forum for open discussion, roundtable facilitators try to limit the length of their own presentations and instead encourage contributions from all present.

In 2003, the colloquium organizers secured funding to initiate a speaker series that invited nationally-recognized scholars to lecture and lead workshops on topics of interest to the UW teaching community. The series has been supported by the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Graduate School Fund for Excellence and Innovation, and the Departments of English, Comparative Literature, and Women Studies.

From 2002 to 2004 the colloquium was coordinated by Stacy Grooters and Brooke Stafford, with Riki Thompson joining them in 2004. The colloquium continued to be coordinated by Riki Thompson, along with Shawna Shapiro, Kara McKinney, Cathryn Cabral, and Matthew Vechinski, all of whom joined in 2005. In that same year, the colloquium added a reading group, which is coordinated by Cathryn Cabral. In 2006 the colloqiuim welcomed the addition of Sarah Read to the steering committee.

Changes in the 2007-2008 academic year steering committee reflected a turning over of the generations with the retirement of Riki Thompson, Kara McKinney and Cathryn Cabral from the steering committee, as well as the new emphasis on the interdisciplinary reach of Practical Pedagogy. Sarah Read (English) and Shawna Shapiro (English) welcomed the additions of  Jenny Halpin (English), Mary Lynn Veden (Communiction) and Tim Wright (History) to the steering committee.

The 2007-2008 academic year also saw the launch of a new "arm" of Practical Pedagogy, PP Research. Practical Pedagogy research is a new forum in which members meet to share their research interests in topics related to teaching, as well as to support and collaborate on research projects of members. The conversation this year has focused around issues of teaching and technology.

Join the Listserv
To learn more about the colloquium and to get the latest news on the speaker series, register for the listserv at mailman.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/prac_ped

Contact Us
If you are interested in presenting a topic for the Practical Pedagogy Colloquium or have any questions, email Sarah Read.

Snail Mail Address:

Sarah Read
English Department, Box 354330
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Seattle, WA
98195-4330

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