Principle 6. Disciplinary Excellence

Create and deliver a coherent course of study with activities and assessment strategies that are consonant with current best thinking in the discipline.

Design and deliver courses that encourage students to connect to the disciplinary material with a sense of expansiveness and rigor. At the core of the teaching enterprise is a commitment to discipline: to the questions that animate scholars and connect the discipline to the world. At Montclair State, faculty and departments retain a lifelong relationship to their disciplines, seeking ways to make relevant the disciplinary waves and shifts in emphasis and thinking to all students, from general education to graduate level. The challenge for instructors is to find the right pitch for students, advancing student thinking and knowledge as much as is possible, right to the edge of capacity. With an emphasis on curiosity, critical thinking, and capacity building, instructors seek to have students recognize courses as rigorous and impactful.

Courses designed with disciplinary excellence in mind allow students to make connections among themselves, their disciplines, and the systems that shape the world around them. They prepare students for rich lives, strong careers, and the ability to think innovatively about the future. Instructors maintain disciplinary excellence through ongoing engagement in their fields, including research and professional activities that support their teaching development.

Student reading a copy of the Sound and the Fury in a classroom

 

Resources for Disciplinary Excellence

Strategies Shortlist

  • Highlight new discoveries and research findings from the course’s disciplines.
  • Follow and integrate innovations from the disciplinary community’s pedagogical research and praxis in each course.
  • Make connections between course content and current disciplinary discoveries, happenings, debates, and questions.
  • Make the course compelling, linking course content and skills learned to important questions in the discipline and ideally the world.
  • Communicate high expectations and hold students close to the edge of their mastery to help all students reach their potential, creating a robust learning environment for all.
  • Model respect for intellectual property, hold high expectations for original content, and guide students in honest academic practices.