SoTL: the party that no one really wants to go to

9 Comments

Exactly! Also, some lack the understanding of the value of SoTL . Many older timers have never taken an opportunity to even assess their course objectives and learning outcomes (a great introduction I think). I have been shocked at the relative number of faculty who assume that if it is in your syllabus and you have ‘taught’ it students have ‘learned’ it!
A culture of SoTL takes a long time to build. Add the lack of valuing/understanding the stuff to the intensity of a teaching load, with no flexibility to trade out a portion of teaching for scholarship time, and all you are left with are the devotees who can’t stop themselves from assessing everything’ they can get their hands on!
We are a dedicated small group. What would help are some rolling models​ of flex time where a member of a department could apply for a 1/3 course reduction for, say, 2 years to pursue grants and or just begin research in TL. Some of that could include a bit to travel to a meeting and present some institutional initiative, networking, getting the name out into the community of practitioner. Unfortunately, without these sorts of changes, the life of a Professor at a teaching focused College, more so as they are more financially strapped, is one that only the craziest of the bunch, or those looking to promote themselves into something in SoTL:) , would work that much harder for no gain in time or money.

Great questions!

Faculty lament student engagement, educational developers lament faculty engagement.

I wonder if there is a connection…. pride and ego?

Engagement in either a course or in SoTL would likely require the participant to behave in a way that would demonstrate acceptance with ‘not knowing’. That’s risky!, especially if you are being paid a lot of money to do the thing about which you are admitting not knowing.

During a study that I conducted on the effectiveness of a teaching intervention, a student once commented: I find it strange that Dr Jacobs is doing research on this. She should already know how to teach.

Should I? And by doing research on my teaching practice, am I admitting that I don’t know?
Engagement is risky for both students and faculty.

One of the challenges in trying to convince faculty to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning is that many of them recognize that they are not in fact trained to do so. Much of SoTL quite understandably draws on fields, like psychology, that require a particular methodological skill-set that many faculty don’t have. To survey credibly, you need certain skills; to interpret data you need others; to conduct legitimate interviews you need still more. Scholars who take research methods seriously in their own fields will often, again quite understandably, consider themselves to be lacking the necessary expertise to investigate the SoTL questions that might well interest them. Others will improvise, and the results (as I’ve seen too often as a peer reviewer for SoTL projects) will too often fail to meet the justifiably rigorous standards of peer review.

A lot of good work has been done on the SoTL, and we know much more about effective teaching than we did 20 years ago. Nevertheless, as a faculty member at a research-intensive, primarily undergraduate institution, I have always been somewhat mystified at the idea that I might become a scholar of teaching.

As mentioned in this article, there are of course issues of time and priorities: I am expected to teach, yes, but I am also expected to compete successfully for NSERC grants against my peers at other universities, so much as I try to be creative and engaging in the classroom, my time to innovate there – let alone study what I do as a research topic – is limited.

But more fundamentally, the whole idea that I, a biochemist, am somehow qualified to carry out research on teaching and learning strikes me as dismissive of departments of education, educational psychologists, and all of the actual scholars of teaching and learning out there. Are we suggesting that there is not actually any scholarship in SoTL? That simply by having stood in front of numerous classrooms of students and “taught” I am somehow qualified to carry out research in this area?

On top of that, SoTL (at my institution anyway) often seems to be pushed on colleagues whose own research is not going well, again suggesting that teaching and learning research is somehow easier or less serious than other kinds of research. Can we imagine that someone struggling with their research in Education would be advised to carry out biochemical research on the side?

When I throw an SoB (scholarship of biochemistry) party, I am happy for anyone to attend, but I would be surprised to see them there if they didn’t have some serious disciplinary dance moves.

Perhaps SoTL practitioners are at other parties: feminist studies, post colonial studies, Indigenous studies, and the several disciplines.

I agree with Adam and Stephen: one of my reasons for not publishing SoTL is that I feel that I lack certain methodological abilities that appear to be at the heart of a lot of the SoTL with which I’m familiar. A second issue for me is that I am often unsure what issues would be useful to investigate. As a journal editor in my own discipline, I do not want case studies alone; I want articles that push the discipline forward by offering new insights. But as a teacher with a fairly rudimentary knowledge of SoTL and other forms of educational literature, I don’t know what I could offer the field beyond a case study. And I figure (rightly or wrongly) that the issues I’m interested in have either been researched before, or would be more competently researched by someone else. One time when I submitted a paper for publication in a teaching conference proceedings, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the number of issues and questions flagged by a peer reviewer; I did respond and publish the paper, but I’ve been wary of trying to publish anything else. It was clear that I really did not have a solid grasp of the field and relevant literature. Finally, we cannot publish SoTL if we don’t see it for ourselves — and issues of time, money, and my passion for my own discipline means that I tend to go to disciplinary conferences, read disciplinary research, and publish in disciplinary journals. One potential solution to this is to encourage more integration of SoTL into disciplinary conferences and journals. I am currently proposing a professional development workshop to a disciplinary conference that will be organized around developing short teaching-related articles for an open-access, peer-reviewed teaching journal in my discipline. I don’t know if this is a good solution, and we’ll see what happens. Another solution is to encourage faculty to take on lower-stakes activities as an entry point and as a way to build confidence and knowledge, such as writing a blog post about teaching.

Excellent contribution to an important discussion, and one that is increasingly urgent as teaching-stream roles are created in research universities and SoTL is defined as a factor in hiring and promotion, even while there is little institutional or administrative support.

I found working on a study of peer review practices among my students almost overwhelmingly challenging. The ethics approval process was protracted; the financial support was miniscule; and I had no release time from a 4/4 teaching load plus heavy service and administrative duties. In this context, research becomes a desired add-on that, as Brenna Clarke Gray has written about in the college system, is completed off the side of a faculty member’s desk: appreciated and even lauded by the institution, but unsustainable.

I took up SoTL twenty years ago as a professor in a NZ university that prioritises research and teaching. It’s not been my main focus, but it has been an enjoyable and rewarding part of a wider research portfolio. Why? Two reasons. First, it’s been possible to work with different groups of colleagues on campus, but especially nationally and internationally. Second, our then Vice chancellor made it clear that this was something he valued that he wanted to see people engage with. So a lead from above is critical in my view: we value SoTL therefore let’s do it.

I’m late to the conversation here, but the points raised resonate with me. The issue that is keeping people from getting to the SoTL party is time, energy and support. As the author and many comments indicate, faculty are already overworked whether they work at a teaching or research intensive post-secondary institution. Until there is a serious rebalancing of workload that truly equates teaching and research, SoTL will always be difficult for those whose institutions prioritize disciplinary research at the expense of teaching and those that prioritize teaching at the expense of research. Institutional support in the form of SoTL grants, teaching, research or service release, and SoTL scholars available and willing to guide others’ SoTL efforts is necessary. One comment here that I think is particularly useful was the advice to start small. Start with a blog post. Volunteer your class as a subject for someone else’s SoTL project. Be opportunistic about SoTL conferences. Plan a teaching/SoTL session at your disciplinary conference. One of the things I have found is that once you poke your head around the door into the SoTL party, those already there are incredibly welcoming and only too willing to find you a dance partner.