Institutional Cultures and SoTL Leadership
In the previous section, we explored how networks and communities provide the relational foundations for SoTL leadership. These connections enable collaboration, shared inquiry, and the development of scholarly identity. At the same time, such relationships are always situated within broader institutional contexts that shape what can be sustained, recognised, and extended.
This section builds on that insight by focusing on institutional cultures and their role in shaping SoTL leadership. If earlier sections addressed questions of identity and relationships—“Who am I becoming?” and “With whom do I work?”—this section asks: “Within what structures and conditions does this work take place, and how do these influence what is possible?”
Across the chapters, institutional context is presented not as a fixed backdrop, but as something that is interpreted, navigated, and, at times, reshaped through practice. Contributors examine how policies, reward structures, leadership priorities, and organisational norms influence the visibility, value, and sustainability of SoTL. At the same time, they show how individuals and groups create space for SoTL within these conditions, often working across formal and informal boundaries.
The chapters approach this theme from complementary perspectives. Some focus on the challenges that arise in institutional environments, including issues of recognition, competing priorities, and tensions between disciplinary and educational priorities. Others highlight strategies for working productively within these contexts, such as aligning SoTL with institutional goals, building alliances, and developing structures that support scholarly teaching and learning over time.
While these contributions share a concern with institutional conditions, they differ in how they position leadership within them. Some emphasise navigation, illustrating how SoTL leaders sustain and advance their work within existing systems. Others focus on influence and change, showing how individuals and groups can shape institutional priorities, cultures, and practices over time. Together, these perspectives highlight that institutional context is not only something that constrains SoTL leadership, but also a space in which leadership can be enacted in strategic and transformative ways.
Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that SoTL leadership at the institutional level requires both sensitivity to context and the capacity to act within it. It involves recognising opportunities, building coalitions, and working across boundaries to align individual, collective, and organisational goals. In this way, the relational work highlighted in the previous section is extended into organisational contexts, where leadership involves not only participating in institutional cultures, but also contributing to their ongoing development.
This section invites you to reflect on your own institutional context: the structures, expectations, and cultures that shape your work, and the possibilities they offer. It also encourages you to consider how you might engage with these conditions—not only by navigating them, but by contributing to change within them as part of your SoTL leadership practice.
