Festival of Learning 2018

In this session we will examine the way in which the learning, teaching and research model (LTRM) enables Royal Roads University (RRU) to foster a climate of care, enact its vision and values, and model a way of seeing and being in the physical and virtual environments that are its context.

Grounded in the RRU purpose of “transformation for positive social change”, the learning and teaching model at RRU has been the subject of an ongoing action research project incorporating design thinking in order to meet the faculty and staff call for revision and renewal of the model and the changing landscape of post-secondary education.

The LTRM is RRU‘s signature pedagogy, which Shulman (2005) defined as the distinctive teaching and learning practices characteristic to the education of future practitioners in a given field. Signature pedagogies do more than teach knowledge and skills to future practitioners; they also foster a particular way of seeing the world, that includes “professional attitudes, values and dispositions” distinct to the profession (p. 55). In so doing, they also shape future practice, and set the direction for the future of the profession.

Central to the RRU LTRM is the concept of care, with empathy, relationships, and systems thinking underpinning the why, what and the how of the model. In this interactive discussion we will share the ways in which the LTRM is currently informing the processes and practices of care at RRU, and the areas in which there is room to grow. We will examine how care is being taken up in the ways in which the model is being enacted and discuss how the attributes of the model are applied to learning, teaching and research across RRU to foster caregiving/taking in all of our stakeholders.