For the next four months, my blog will feature documentation for the independent learning portion of my sabbatical. I will be engaging in closed writing for publication, and open writing for learning about the Victorian era and the topics surrounding my research. If you want to read my closed posts, just email me at lisa@lisahistory.net for the password.
My sabbatical application and more about my project can be found at my Sabbatical page.
My research concerns distance education in the 19th century, and connections to H.G. Wells. But to fully understand my topic, I need to work on a broader vision of Victorian culture, adult education, the history of distance education, correspondence college practices, and more. I will need to begin with an exploration of the field of Victorian Studies, to determine whether my research fits into that field or is more properly situation in the historical discipline in general, the history of education, or something else. This is a shift in topic for me, since my original field of study was medieval technology.
Many sabbaticals, I realize, are more focused than this. But I work at a community college, and teach broader survey classes. My main purpose as an instructor is to have students practice historical skills, which at MiraCosta College we have made the basis of our Student Learning Outcomes. In other disciplines, the SLOs are often content oriented, but in my department they are skills-based across the various eras and regions. Thus I have an opportunity to consider the larger reading and writing of history, and model wide-ranging research and historical writing, full-time for one semester.
I would like to first thank MiraCosta College for this opportunity, and so I begin.
