{"id":84,"date":"2026-04-10T15:10:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T19:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/routestochange\/?post_type=chapter&p=84"},"modified":"2026-06-02T00:42:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T04:42:49","slug":"milleryoung","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/routestochange\/chapter\/milleryoung\/","title":{"raw":"Working the Boundaries: Integration and Learning as Key Aspects of SoTL Leadership Practice","rendered":"Working the Boundaries: Integration and Learning as Key Aspects of SoTL Leadership Practice"},"content":{"raw":"

Abstract<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nThis chapter explores integration as a leadership practice for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), foregrounding the importance of boundary-crossing and learning across diverse communities. Framed by the Landscape of Practice model and complexity theory, I conceptualize SoTL not as a singular community but as a dynamic, adaptive landscape comprised of multiple disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and intercultural contexts. Within this landscape, leadership emerges less as a position and more as a process of integration. This process brings together people, ideas, and practices to foster understanding, generate new knowledge, and enable change. Drawing on literature and my own experiences, I outline prerequisites, practices, and signs of integration, emphasizing conditions such as shared vision, openness, purposefulness, humility, and long-term engagement across boundaries. I also examine how integrative leadership shapes identity, highlighting the opportunities in developing hyphenated, boundary-spanning roles. Ultimately, I argue that integrative leadership advances SoTL by cultivating collaboration and co-creation rather than hierarchy or authority, and by making visible the learning that occurs through navigating boundaries. I conclude by inviting continued dialogue on how scholars might extend, critique, and enact integrative leadership in order to strengthen SoTL as an inclusive and transformative field.\r\n\r\n
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\u201cIt is difficult for communities of practice to be deeply reflective unless they engage with the perspective of other practices<\/em>.\u201d (Wenger Trayner & Wenger Trayner 2014a; p. 19)<\/p>\r\nBeing invited to write a chapter on leadership was flattering and mildly alarming, not unlike being asked to teach a class on how to teach well. It immediately led me to reflect on the different ways I might be considered to be a leader\u2026 or not. Yes, I\u2019ve held formal leadership positions, but I\u2019ve always felt those titles don\u2019t capture what leadership means to me, at least not when it comes to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). For me, SoTL has always been about learning \u2013 <\/em>learning about new-to-me approaches to research, about my students, and from my colleagues. This has required me to cross many boundaries, such as those between different disciplines, institutions, cultures, and research paradigms.\r\n\r\nThis perspective also shapes how I see myself. I recently admitted in writing that I find it hard to identify with the term \u201cSoTL scholar\u201d (Chick & Miller-Young, 2024). Coming from a more high consensus field of engineering, I struggle to identify with a label that is so broad and carries so many contested meanings. I am also less comfortable with the label \u201cleader\u201d than with terms such as boundary crosser, convenor, collaborator, or enabler. Finally, I think of myself as an educator, mentor, learner, problem-solver, and scholar striving to make meaningful contributions in contexts that matter. The important question for me is not about leader identity, but how leadership can be practiced in ways that advance SoTL.\r\n\r\nThis perspective is rooted in my own experiences. When I became Director of the Institute for SoTL at Mount Royal University in 2013, SoTL was not well understood across the institution. That role gave me the opportunity to legitimize a form of scholarship I valued, to build community across disciplines, and to support people asking thoughtful questions about teaching and learning. Looking back, I realize that this was the kind of SoTL leadership that resonates most with me: advancing what one believes in, building bridges, and creating conditions for others to learn and contribute. That is the form of leadership I continue to practice no matter what role I\u2019m in, and the one I explore in this chapter.\r\n\r\nThis chapter unfolds in several layers. First, as an engineer by training, I feel it\u2019s important to spend some time defining the terms I use in this chapter. In particular, I take care to articulate what I mean by SoTL, a term with many definitions. I frame it as a topic of inquiry and as a complex and dynamic landscape of practice<\/em>, which guides the arguments that follow. From there, I explore what leadership might look like in this landscape, especially the kind of leadership that advances the field by fostering interdisciplinary and intercultural understanding. I argue that both types of understanding require integration, not just of knowledge, but of people, perspectives, and ways of knowing.\r\n\r\nThat brings us to the individuals who help make that integration happen. I explore what it means to take on a leadership role by facilitating those integrative processes, and I outline the conditions and practices that support them. I then consider how these practices might shape one\u2019s identity as a SoTL leader. Finally, I discuss the case studies presented in this section of the book through the lens of integrative SoTL leadership, showing how this type of leadership is rooted in collaboration and co-creation, rather than hierarchy or authority.\r\n

SoTL as a Complex, Adaptive, Landscape of Practice<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nIn my experience, before one can talk meaningfully about leadership in SoTL, one must first establish what they mean by 'SoTL'. There are many different activities and genres of dissemination which fall under this broad umbrella of scholarly activities (Poole & Chick, 2022; Miller-Young & Chick, 2024). In this section, I offer a conceptual framing of SoTL as both a topic of inquiry (Felten, 2013) and as a complex, adaptive landscape of practice<\/em>.\r\n\r\nMetaphors related to journeys, maps, boundaries, ecologies, and rhizomes are pervasive in SoTL and higher education. I find the landscape metaphor useful because it can integrate all these ideas, allowing for a more holistic view of a field that, to me, isn\u2019t a single community but rather a patchwork of disciplinary and multidisciplinary communities spread out across different contexts and terrains. Some of these communities are interconnected by bridges, while others remain separated by unexplored waters (Miller-Young, 2024). Some communities do SoTL work even if they don\u2019t use the label. What unites these diverse communities is not methodology or disciplinary background, but \u201ca duty and commitment to serve the important interests of students\u201d (Kreber, 2013). In my experience, the metaphor of a landscape also addresses a foundational need for SoTL practitioners: the need to locate oneself within, and make sense of, such a large, diverse, and complex field of practice as SoTL.\r\n\r\nImportant to this framing is the role of boundaries between communities as sites of learning, challenge, and transformation. The Landscape of Practice framework (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2014a) shifts the understanding of professional learning from a fairly linear journey (from peripheral participation to full involvement in a community of practice) toward a more complex model. The landscape metaphor highlights the possibility for cross-pollination that occurs through movement between communities and also gives everyone, whether located peripherally or centrally within a community of practice, the agency to create change. This is where systems convenors<\/em> come in (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2014b); they are people who intentionally bring others together across those boundaries, create space for shared sense-making, and build bridges between communities that don\u2019t naturally interact. In SoTL, I see this kind of convening as an important form of leadership.\r\n\r\nMy use of the term 'complex' is also intentional here. Complex social systems such as higher education are a web of interacting factors and variables, each influencing the others in unpredictable ways. Influencing change in complex systems requires strategies targeted at all levels of the system by those who work at each level (Hannah & Lester, 2009; Rox\u00e5, M\u00e5rtensson & Alveteg, 2011; Miller-Young & Poth, 2022). I want to focus on what I haven\u2019t seen talked about elsewhere - how a scholar can exert influence to advance the field itself.\r\n

Leadership in SoTL<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nLeadership is not a position but a process or practice that promotes change<\/em> (Mighty, 2013; Youngs, 2017).\r\n\r\nIn reviewing leadership literature in preparation for this chapter, I found that most leadership models didn\u2019t resonate with me. Many are grounded in managerial and hierarchical frameworks that don\u2019t reflect academic systems. My own philosophy aligns with more recent models of distributed, collective, relational, and ecological leadership which emphasize purpose, values, process, and relationships, and the importance of context, reflexivity, collaboration, adaptability, complexity, and social responsibility (e.g. Allen, 1999; Kezar, 2009; Raelin, 2016; Todnem By & Kuipers, 2023). As such, the term \u201cleader\u201d doesn't resonate with me as much as terms such as boundary crosser, convenor, and enabler (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2014a, 2021; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Partnership models also resonate with me, which position all collaborators involved in an inquiry as co-teachers, co-learners, and co-generators of knowledge and practice (Miller-Young et al., 2017a).\r\n\r\nIn our 2017 article in CJSoTL, a SoTL Canada collaborative writing group took the distributed leadership perspective that SoTL-active faculty can exert influence at multiple levels by \u201cleading up\u201d (Miller-Young et al., 2017b). Using a systems perspective by paying attention to their teaching micro-cultures and their institutional contexts, we identified many strategies that individuals could use to influence their peers (micro level), chairs and deans (meso level), those in formal, institutional leadership positions (macro level), and their disciplinary and SoTL communities beyond their institution (mega level). In short, we recommended ways a faculty member (academic staff member) could be mentors, enablers, advocates, and ambassadors in order to have an influence on their teaching micro-cultures and on institutional and disciplinary SoTL cultures. What seems to be missing in the literature is a focus on how a SoTL scholar can engage in leadership that actively advances SoTL itself as a field of inquiry<\/em>\u2014a form of leadership I have seen referred to in various other discourses as intellectual, lateral, or horizontal leadership. As a SoTL leader, you may recognise yourself in these forms of influence, even if you do not hold a formal leadership title.\r\n\r\nThere are a number of indicators that the field, or at least the multidisciplinary and international community that explicitly uses the term SoTL, could benefit from new perspectives. Humanities scholars have been warning us that SoTL has not been welcoming to them (Chick, 2013; Potter & Wuetherick, 2015; Potter & Raffoul, 2023). One recent review of the SoTL literature identified that most SoTL studies remain in the didactic domain, which \u201cpays attention to student learning and the processes and practices of teaching as they impact on student learning\u201d (Booth & Woollacott, 2018, p. 540) with less attention to moral\/ethical and societal domains related to issues such as social justice and equity. Another review found that SoTL literature tends to rely on student self-reports of learning rather than assessments of learning (Manarin et al., 2021). Others have called for SoTL to be more inclusive of global perspectives and respond to calls for social justice and decolonization (Kreber, 2013; Chng & Looker, 2013; Chng, M\u00e5rtensson & Leibowitz, 2020; Patel & Lynch, 2013; Chaka et al., 2022). On the other hand, some have questioned the ability of SoTL to be inclusive as well as rigorous (McSweeney & Schnurr, 2023).\r\n\r\nI share the view that SoTL as a field must remain inclusive-welcoming all disciplines, research paradigms, and cultural perspectives in higher education - while also developing markers of quality, progress, and contributions to knowledge (McSweeney & Schnurr, 2023). One way to do so may be for SoTL researchers to venture outward, horizontally, engaging in boundary-crossing collaborations that foster both individual and collective interdisciplinary and intercultural understandings.\r\n

Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Integration<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nBoth the Landscapes of Practice (LoP) model and complexity theory offer guidance for fostering understanding and promoting change across SoTL\u2019s diverse landscape. The LoP and Communities of Practice (CoP) literature emphasizes that learning at boundaries is essential for the evolution of communities (Wenger, 1998). Similarly, literature on complex adaptive systems underscores the potential for change when we disrupt entrenched feedback loops and foster collaboration across distinct parts of the system to establish new, cross-boundary feedback (Meadows, 2008). By drawing on these frameworks, collaborations in SoTL can not only bridge disciplinary and cultural divides but also create opportunities for innovative, integrated approaches that exceed what any single field might achieve alone. Integration refers to the process of constructively combining a wide range of perspectives with the aim of developing a more comprehensive understanding of complex problems and generating more promising solutions. It is recognized as a form of knowledge creation and scholarship (Boyer, 1990).\r\n\r\nHowever, integration does not occur automatically. For example, simply having multiple disciplines represented in a SoTL collaborative research project or in a SoTL community does not necessarily make it interdisciplinary. It requires intentional, proactive efforts to integrate the diverse perspectives and methods from multiple fields to create something new. In my own recent experience, I realized that a truly interdisciplinary collaboration required my long-time colleagues and me to engage with each others\u2019 disciplinary paradigms more deeply than we had in the past (Miller-Young et al., 2024; Miller-Young et al., 2025). Similarly, intercultural collaborations have the potential to help SoTL researchers engage with and integrate the diverse perspectives, values, and practices that shape teaching and learning across cultural contexts (Mato, 2011). In my Canadian context, intercultural learning holds particular significance as a pathway toward reconciliation and decolonization (e.g. Garson et al., 2021). One SoTL example I find particularly compelling is the Disrupting Interview (Lindstrom et al., 2022), developed by one Indigenous and three settler scholars.\u00a0 It is a collaborative, decolonization tool intended to help interview participants \u201cilluminate hidden assumptions and colonial practices and consider alternative ways of knowing\/doing\/being in their discipline\u201d (p. 3). However, as these scholars and many others remind us, learning across boundaries-particularly paradigmatic and cultural ones-is a challenging and often uncomfortable process. It involves more than simply crossing boundaries; it requires sustained 'boundary experiences' or journeys that actively challenge our assumptions, unsettling us, and ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of our own perspectives as well as those of others.\r\n\r\nThis raises an important question: how can one practice leadership that intentionally fosters these productive, integrative, and difficult boundary-crossing experiences to rework the boundaries of SoTL? Wenger identifies several strategies to enhance the flow of knowledge across community boundaries. One approach is the creation of boundary objects-artifacts, often texts in academic contexts, that crystallize shared knowledge from across communities. The creation of boundary objects is itself an act of integration. Another strategy involves leveraging the role of brokers: individuals who actively engage in multiple communities and serve as conduits for ideas and practices, transferring them across boundaries. Finally, systems convenors play a pivotal role in forging new, diverse partnerships which facilitate others\u2019 boundary crossing.\r\n\r\nAll these strategies hinge on what Wenger calls knowledgeability, a practitioner\u2019s deep competence in multiple areas of practice (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2014a, p. 23). Knowledgeability ensures credibility within multiple communities and enables those doing boundary crossing to navigate and bridge these different spaces effectively. These boundary crossers don\u2019t simply position themselves at the intersections of diverse practices in order to navigate and bridge different communities; they value others' differences as enriching. Thus they are uniquely equipped to do 'boundary work' i.e. challenging and extending the boundaries of one or more communities, and fostering spaces where innovative thinking and collaborative learning can flourish.\r\n\r\nDeveloping knowledgeability requires time, experience, and intentional effort, as well as the self-awareness and skill to negotiate multiple communities. However, these strategies can be enacted at different scales\u2014within teams, within communities, and across multiple communities\u2014allowing practitioners to gradually expand their sphere(s) of influence as they grow in experience and expertise. Whatever scale they are working at, integrative leaders seek to engage with and ultimately cultivate teams, partnerships, and networks with others who share their goals of integrating ideas to create change. This is what I refer to as the leadership practice of integration.\r\n\r\nInstead, it may be about doing high quality work, opening up new lines of inquiry, making connections across areas of knowledge, and creating conditions where others can explore, question, and contribute (Macfarlane, 2011; Ruan, 2024). In this chapter, I explore how such leadership takes shape through processes of integration: of people, of ideas, and of practices.\r\n

Prerequisites and Practices of Integration<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nThe prerequisites and practices of integration I outline here are synthesized from reflections on my own interdisciplinary and intercultural collaborative experiences and an extensive, though unsystematic, review of integration literature from fields such as education,\u00a0leadership, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies, intercultural learning, team science, and mixed methods (e.g. Bird & Osland, 2005; Akkerman, 2011; Klein, 2017; Mato, 2011; Holden et al., 2019; Pohl et al., 2019; MacGillivray, 2018; Salazar et al. 2019; Morss et al. 2021; Poth et al., 2024). Recognizing the difficulties inherent in collaborative, integrative work, I propose several foundational elements that are crucial for fostering success (see Table 1). For example, a shared vision serves as a guiding compass for the team, providing direction while also motivating collaborators to persevere through inevitable challenges. Experience in multidisciplinary and\/or multicultural settings is equally important, as it develops individuals\u2019 self-efficacy to navigate the diverse languages, epistemic practices, paradigmatic and cultural norms that shape different communities (Miller-Young, 2016; Lang, 2020). Finally, research across various contexts consistently highlights the importance of a learning orientation for effective integrative collaboration\u2014one that embraces openness, resourcefulness, transformation, and humility.\r\n\r\nWhile systems convening is undoubtedly a form of leadership (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2021), I argue that integration itself is also a form of leadership. In integrative collaborations, learning is both process and product as collaborators co-create their new understandings (Lattuca, 2002). Thus, integrative leadership is about the leading of learning<\/em> by cultivating the conditions for meaningful engagement and sustainable change. This means that leadership must involve listening and being attentive to one\u2019s context and social capital; it is less like charting a course and steamrolling towards it, but more like feeling one\u2019s way forward, taking opportunities to advance toward one\u2019s objective as they arise.\r\n\r\nTo support and enhance this challenging process, there are several key practices that integrative leaders should consciously engage with (see Table 1). Note that this work is neither easy nor ever fully complete; the emphasis on time, effort, mediators, and reflexivity highlights the ongoing, iterative nature of this work and the resilience it demands of those engaging in it. Table 1 also provides some useful markers to help scholars reflect as to whether integration has been achieved. Scholars can use these signs as tools to reflect on the degree of integration within their own collaborations or communities of practice.\r\n\r\nTable 1.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nPrerequisites, practices, and signs of integration<\/em> (Link to downloadable PDF of Table 1<\/a>)\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Enabling conditions<\/strong><\/td>\r\nIntegrative leadership practices<\/strong><\/td>\r\nSigns of integration within a team, CoP, or a field<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
INDIVIDUALS\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • Multidisciplinary\/cultural experience\r\n
      \r\n \t
    • Long term engagement and knowledgeability in more than one CoP<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n \t
    • Willingness to learn\r\n
        \r\n \t
      • A habit of challenging assumptions and inferences<\/li>\r\n \t
      • A willingness to take risks and embrace uncertainty<\/li>\r\n \t
      • Curiosity, openness and flexibility<\/li>\r\n \t
      • Distributed and collective perspectives on leadership.<\/li>\r\n \t
      • A view of conflicts and challenges as a learning opportunity<\/li>\r\n \t
      • Humility and a recognition of the limits of one\u2019s own knowledge<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nTEAM\r\n
          \r\n \t
        • Shared vision\r\n
            \r\n \t
          • A belief in the value of SoTL and of integration<\/li>\r\n \t
          • A desire to make a difference within and beyond one\u2019s context<\/li>\r\n \t
          • Trust and positive group atmosphere<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nSTRUCTURES\r\n
              \r\n \t
            • Time and resources<\/li>\r\n \t
            • Recognition and valuing of integrative research<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/td>\r\n
\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • Engaging purposefully with different areas of expertise through people with relevant knowledge, long term collaborative projects, and relevant literature<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Actively engaging in new-to-you research approaches rather than taking a \u201cdivide and conquer\u201d approach<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Investing time and effort in listening and learning about different perspectives and paradigms, and building and nurturing trust within collaborations<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Explicitly identifying and dialoguing about boundaries when they arise<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Paying attention to conversations that appear to be leading to new understandings<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Paying attention to power and who might be disadvantaged in a collaborative process<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Translating emerging integrative ideas into metaphors, shared language, conceptual frameworks, and visuals to provide mediators for integrative discussion and iteration.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Reflexively and collaboratively making sense of integrative processes and events<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Sharing lessons learned with others<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/td>\r\n
\r\n