Rewarding Educational Research symposium to take place on March 22

On March 22, during the 41st Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR), held in conjunction with the 36th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research, a symposium titled "Rewarding Educational Research: the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" will take place to assist dental administrators, educators and members of appointment, promotion and tenure committees in understanding the role and potential of educational research and develop strategies to facilitate scholarly inquiry into student learning to advance the practice of teaching.

Achieving promotion and tenure in dental institutions has slowly been changing to recognize educational research and innovative contributions made by dental educators. Increasingly, contributions based on educational research are providing credible evidence that the scholarship of teaching and learning more than meet the requirements of the promotion process. This scholarship is based on the systematic application of a family of methods employed to provide data about educational issues and topics. Educational research assists faculty and curriculum committees in answering the questions of the effectiveness and efficiency of what is taught, how it is taught and how students learn.

During this symposium, researchers J.W. Killip, T. Dolan, C. Shuler and L. Johnson will discuss best practices to support the use of educational research in the promotion and tenure process. Audience participation will be encouraged with point-counterpoint discussions that interweave topics of scientific discovery, educational research and teaching based on scientific inquiry. This is a joint presentation offered by the AADR Education Research Group and the American Dental Education Association Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) SIG to strengthen ties between the two groups and facilitate the transition of educational research findings into dental curricula.