Scott Windham

SOTL

My SOTL research focuses on helping students develop the linguistic, cultural, and critical thinking skills necessary to think deeply about German culture and cultural products—literature, film, visual art, political discourse, and so on—so that they can participate meaningfully in German society.

My 2008 article in ADFL Bulletin (39.2) describes ways in which specific learning outcomes drive changes in course content, specifically the inclusion of culturally-rich material that invites critical discussions.

My 2017 article in Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German uses student survey data to show that cultural study in lower- and intermediate-level German courses increases student motivation, intellectual engagement, willingness to continue German, and awareness of connections between German and other academic and career pursuits—while also driving essential learning outcomes in intercultural competency.

My current project explores ways to use grammar instruction and testing as a means of improving students' capacity for critical thinking. Because grammar is the central meaning-making system of any language, good grammar instruction will focus less on "rules" and "getting things right" and more on expressive possibilities. This will help students write, speak, and think critically and in culturally-appropriate ways.

Post-45 representations of Germany and the Germans

My book chapter on Peter Weiss's Die Ermittlung (in Kluge & Williams, eds., Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature, 2009) points out that the debate over public complicity in the Holocaust is often framed in terms of how best to represent Holocaust perpetrators. It then argues that Weiss's documentary play creates a productive conflict between opposing portrayals of perpetrators, creating possibilities for multiple interpretations of the defendants and resulting in a more nuanced, because conflictual, portrayal of Holocaust perpetrators.

Enrollment retention

Since fall 2014, I have served as the primary investigator in a research project that uses surveys and focus groups to study students' reasons for continuing (or not continuing) their language study. The project involves students of German, Italian, French, Chinese, Latin, and Spanish.