Cycle of Participation in Plant Sciences
The Teaching for Learning Network (TfLN) grew out of pedagogical development activities funded by the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI), a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). TfLN was established in order to extend and expand these activities.
Both the University of Cambridge and MIT have distinctive educational characters. Part of the goal for TfLN was to determine what specific practices and approaches to teaching and learning contribute to these – while at the same time seeking to identify areas of commonality across the two institutions and higher education as a whole.
TfLN provided support for faculties, departments and other groups in undertaking research and development projects with a specific focus of improving teaching and learning. The project generated and shared theoretical and practical knowledge about pedagogical practices and the conditions that promote their use in support of students’ learning.
The project produced a series of papers and briefings, and an online research methods toolkit for others to use. The Plant Sciences project within TFLN was awarded the BERA/SAGE award for the most outstanding ‘Research into Practice’ project in post-compulsory education in 2007. With the recruitment of several members of the Plant Sciences team to work at CARET, the framed award certificate, too, has come to CARET and would be hung on the wall in the Evaluation Group’s working area, except that the walls are too hard to bang nails in.
