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Projects are funded through three structural streams -- Practice Grants, Lesson Study Grants, and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Grants.
Stream 1: Practice Grants
In Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, Stephen Brookfield (1995) claims, “Of all the methods available for changing how we teach, putting ourselves regularly in the role of learner has the greatest long-term effects” (50). Not only do we continue to grow as lifelong learners and develop even further as educators, but we also empathize more easily with the experiences of students. This stream of grants supports our pursuit of professional learning about research-informed teaching and learning, in order to inform our teaching practice and reflecting on the impact of this professional learning. (For example, an instructor wants to attend a specialized workshop, course, or training event to learn about a particular pedagogical issue, implement it in a course upon return, and reflect on its effects on her teaching and her students’ learning.) Practice Grants are one-year grants and can be individual or collaborative. Recipients will share their work with relevant campus audiences to benefit the practice and understanding of others.
| Stream | People | Duration | Funding Amount |
| Practice Grants | Individual | One year | Up to $7,500 |
See a sample Practice Grant project.
Stream 2: Lesson Study Grants
These grants support team-based studies of a single lesson, carefully developed and studied to promote a significant learning goal. The goal of these projects is to “put a lesson under the microscope, to carefully analyze how students learn from our teaching and then use that knowledge to improve future performance—ours and theirs” (Cerbin, 2011, 2).
The lesson study team is intensely collaborative, as its three to six members work closely together to create, implement, and study the lesson--typically a class period plus its preparatory and post-class homework, all designed to provide varied evidence of student thinking and learning. One team member teaches the lesson in her class, while the rest of the team observes and documents the students’ learning activities and behaviors during the lesson. Soon after this class session, the team debriefs and analyzes the collected evidence, focusing on what it reveals about the students’ learning—and how it affects the team’s learning about student learning. After revising the lesson (as relevant), the team then repeats the process (team observation, collection, and analysis of evidence) in another team member’s class—and again, in another’s, if they wish. (For more information about the lesson study project cycle, see the online guide from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse’s Lesson Study Project.)
The outcomes of a lesson study project are a) a clear, shareable set of activities carefully developed to support a significant learning goal and b) a deep, evidence-based, multi-perspective analysis of a thin slice of student learning. To benefit the practice and understanding of others, Lesson Study grant recipients will share their work with relevant campus audiences and are encouraged to disseminate their findings more broadly as well.
| Stream | People | Duration | Funding Amount |
| Lesson Study Grants | Team of three to six members | One or two years | Up to $7,500 per year, to a maximum of $15,000 for two years, for the entire team |
See a sample Lesson Study Grant project, and sign up for the Taylor Institute's workshop on Lesson Study Projects.
Stream 3: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grants
Over ten years ago, historian David Pace noted the increasing number of voices claiming “that there is scholarly research to be done on teaching and learning, that the systematic creation of rigorous knowledge about teaching and learning is a crucial prerequisite to responding to major challenges facing academia, that this knowledge must be shared publicly and should build cumulatively over time, and that the explorations of this area should be conducted by academics from all disciplines” (2004, 1174). This stream of grants supports such work, commonly known as the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). These projects are formal, evidence-based studies to better understand or improve student learning.
Recipients will draw on their discipline-based expertise to develop a research or inquiry project anchored by a meaningful question about student learning and the activities intended to facilitate that learning. The SoTL project, which can be individual or collaborative, is designed to answer that question by making relevant student learning visible and then systematically analyzing this evidence. These projects aim to improve student learning by strengthening the practice of teaching. To benefit the practice and understanding of others, SoTL grant recipients will share their work with relevant campus audiences and disseminate more broadly within relevant scholarly communities. (For more information on the scholarship of teaching and learning [what it is and how to do it], see the Taylor Institute’s online SoTL Guide.)
| Stream | People | Duration | Funding Amount |
| SoTL Grants | Individual or collaborative | One or two years |
Individual projects: Up to $10,000 per year, to a maximum of $20,000 for two years Collaborative projects: Up to $20,000 per year, to a maximum of $40,000 for two years |
See a sample SoTL Grant project.
Which stream is right for you? See our infographic.
For questions about the grants, please email tigrants@ucalgary.ca
