September Cordes Chair: Teaching for Conceptual Change

Photo Submitted

John Pijanowski, Professor of Educational Leadership

The September Cordes Chair, John Pijanowski, will lead an informal conversation about teaching from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14, at the Cordia Harrington Center for Excellence, CORD 349.

The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center no longer has space available for in-person attendance, but you are welcome to join by Zoom. Click here to join by Zoom.

Pijanowski is a professor of educational leadership and is beloved by both his students and fellow faculty members. Pijanowski developed and established the Cordes Chair during his tenure as a Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center co-director, so it is especially meaningful to honor him with this distinction.

In all academic disciplines, students make sense of new experiences and construct meaning by relating new concepts to what they already know or believe. This preexisting knowledge serves as the immediate context for interpreting new learning. Teaching for conceptual change is a pedagogical approach that helps students reveal what they think they know about a topic, discern the quality of that information and construct new understanding to serve as the foundation for future learning.

His work with IMPACT Arkansas, which he founded, is serving to address the principal shortage, high rates of turnover exacerbated by geographic isolation and financial disparities in rural, high-poverty communities. Entering its 10th year, the program has served over half of all high poverty districts in Arkansas.

Pijanowski has served as president of the Teaching Academy, co-director of the Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center, chair of the Campus Faculty and is currently in his second term as chair of the Faculty Senate. In 2018, he served abroad as a Fulbright Scholar conducting research and teaching in Kutaisi, Georgia. He currently serves in a four-year term as a Fulbright Specialist. In 2010 he was honored with the college's top faculty award for outstanding service, teaching, advising and research and in 2011, honored by the university with the Charles and Nadine Baum Faculty Teaching Award.

The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center invites six outstanding teaching faculty each academic year to serve as Wally Cordes Chairs. Faculty are selected as Cordes Chairs because they embody the student-centered teaching excellence that late University Professor Emeritus Wally Cordes exhibited throughout his 40-plus-year U of A career.