Abstract

Keywords: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), Liminality, Big Tent, Academic promotion and incentives

Introduction

In this reflective essay, I explore the explosion of “scholarship” in higher education and think about the reasons why this may not yield the results we hoped it might have.

I was introduced to the concept of SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) in 2007, when I joined a faculty learning community (FLC) (Cox, 2004) in my institution. At the time, I was teaching biology to a large first year undergraduate class. My colleagues and I had recently been transferred to a teaching and scholarship (T&S) academic contract, and we were part of a wider cohort of T&S academics who wanted to know more about “scholarship”. We spent a year, guided by Jane MacKenzie, an advocate of SoTL who had spent time with the Carnegie Scholars, learning about what SoTL meant and the impact it could have on us, our careers, and our students. Although I have changed jobs, I still keep in touch with members of that group. We had two shared outcomes from the FLC; an early paper which outlined our aspirations for the group (Bell et al., 2006) and a paper written at the end of the FLC where we explored what we had learned about SoTL (MacKenzie et al., 2010). Despite our enthusiasm for SoTL, we acknowledged that many of the concepts presented were still “fuzzy” after a year of exploration.

“I certainly have a slightly clearer notion of what scholarship is, it is still quite fuzzy and grey, but…I think coming to the Learning Community and finding out that it’s fuzzy and grey for everybody else…is better [group laughs]…A shared fuzziness.” (MacKenzie et al., 2010, p. 279)

This quote hints at liminality and some of the conceptual challenges of understanding SoTL. It was a few years later, at ISSOTL in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that I attended a presentation by Niamh Kelly titled “From STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) to SoTL” (Kelly et al., 2011) that I started to understand this perspective of how complex SoTL was, the many barriers to understanding that there were, and the length of time it takes to grapple with the liminality of it. The paper that followed that conference presentation, “A Difficult Journey: Transitioning from STEM to SoTL” (Kelly et al., 2012) remains one of my go-to papers when I introduce with new (and experienced) academics to SoTL. As a former STEM educator myself, I understand the challenges to understanding SoTL, and I think it’s important for colleagues to understand that it’s part of the process to be confused and uncertain.

I begin with this introduction, as it illustrates the notion that SoTL is not easy. In terms of threshold concepts, there are many that can be identified. For example, I have looked at the threshold concepts inherent in the dimensions of Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin & Prosser’s Model of Scholarship (2000), identifying threshold concepts in all four dimensions of the model (Tierney, 2017). However, I’d like to take a look at what has happened in the development of “scholarship”, primarily in UK universities, as that is my workplace, but extending the experience to the English-speaking higher education sector.

Persistent myths in SoTL

I’d like to start this section of by stating that SoTL and scholarship are not the same thing, and I believe this conflation of terms is the root cause of a lot of the trouble we are now facing in higher education. As academics, we could use scholarship as a shorthand for SoTL, providing we had a common understanding of what SoTL is. However, we (academics in the widest sense) do not have a shared knowledge of SoTL. It’s not taught in any undergraduate curriculum, and if we are introduced to it at all, it’s quite late on in our educational journey. There are a number of myths that persist around SoTL, and they may be traced to the conflation of SoTL and scholarship. I will examine them one by one.

“Scholarship is the same as SoTL”

In the arena of unintended consequences sits the conflation of “Scholarship” and “SoTL”. The idea of the “Big Tent” (Huber & Hutchings, 2005; McKinney, 2014) has sensible origins. SoTL is not a field which is taught in the way other fields or disciplines are taught. For most academics, their first encounter with SoTL is in their first academic role, although this may have changed with the advent of Students as Partners (Cook-Sather et al., 2014) which seeks to include students in the process. Nevertheless, encountering SoTL as a student is an ad hoc occurrence. Novice academics often encounter SoTL in their PGCert course which is taken as CPD during their probation. For some this may be the only meaningful contact they have with SoTL in their careers. For others it may be the start of an intellectual transformation, for example that experienced by Niamh Kelly and Susan Nesbit (Kelly et al., 2012) who document a ten-year transformation from disciplinary researcher to SoTL practitioner. This wide range of engagement is where the concept of the “Big Tent” originated, as an attempt to include practitioners of different levels in a concerted attempt to improve student learning experience. However, that came at a price. As I explored in earlier sections, the assertion that there is no definition of scholarship and the call for an expanded definition of “scholarship” has resulted in the situation where “scholarship” at a superficial or undeveloped stage is lauded and rewarded in an attempt to be inclusive. While that is not a bad thing in itself, as novice scholars should be encouraged, it means that there is no incentive to develop intellectually, meaning that The Big Tent has actually been detrimental in the development of SoTL as a field.

“There is no definition of ‘scholarship’”

I have heard this line repeated for two decades. I first started hearing it on moving to a teaching and scholarship contract in the early 2000s. Going back to the quote earlier in this paper, the definition of “scholarship” can feel “fuzzy” and confusing, pointing at liminality and uncertainty in understanding. However, we can reframe this by asking “is there a definition of SoTL?” and the answer is an unequivocal yes. The literature provides us with a developing definition of SoTL which has evolved over time. We start with with Boyer’s (1990) proposition that teachers in higher education should be familiar with, and use theories of teaching in their practice. Almost a decade later, Glassick, Huber and Maeroff (1997) outline what makes a SoTL project; how we carry out the steps to evaluate our teaching, make improvements, test them, and then disseminate the outcomes to benefit our colleagues and their students. Keith Trigwell (2000) and colleagues propose a model of scholarship in which they propose that scholarship (SoTL) is composed of four dimensions which cover literature, communication reflection and conception of learning. This model proposes levels of activity within each dimension which include novice to expert understanding of SoTL, so there is an expectation of development of expertise within the model. Carolin Kreber (2002) continues with that expectation of development in her paper where she proposes that teachers go through the stages of teaching excellence, teaching expertise, culminating in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

It is of note that these examples of papers outlining the definition of SoTL are relatively old, appearing within a decade or so of Boyer’s (1990) proposal. There are other, later papers, such as Antman and Olsson’s (2007) theory/practice model and the third book in the Carnegie Scholars’ trilogy of SoTL (Hutchings et al., 2011). However, at the same time there is also a strand of publication which asserts the lack of a definition of scholarship , and we start to see papers which claim an unclear/disputed definition of scholarship, or attempts to reclassify it. Papers invite us to “redefine scholarship” (Milner et al., 2023) or “expand the view of scholarship” (Beattie & Scholarship, 2000). This is distinct from the idea of the “Big Tent” (Chick, 2014), a viewpoint long espoused by organisations such as ISSOTL. As time has progressed, the voices claiming that there is no definition of scholarship  have become louder, drowning out those who have demonstrated that there is. I have questions for those in positions of power who claim that there is no definition of scholarship – if that is true, then why are you asking individuals to do it? And why do you have promotion criteria which include it?

“SoTL is bad educational research”

While I have categorised this as a myth of SoTL, there is actually some truth in the claim. We should examine this more closely and try to understand it. Over time there has been a failure to develop SoTL into a meaningful field in its own right, for reasons which I will explore in following sections. However, when thinking about SoTL as “bad educational research” there have been warnings in the literature. Pat Hutchings (2007) was particularly interested in the lack of theory in SoTL, naming it the “elephant in the room”.  Two years later, Boshier (2009) summed up the criticisms of SoTL. Boshier identifies five areas where SoTL can be criticised:

“First, scholarship of teaching is used as a synonym for other activities. Second, Boyer’s (1990) definition was conceptually confused. Third, it is difficult to operationalize. Fourth, much discourse concerning SoTL is anti‐intellectual. Fifth, there is an over‐reliance on peer review.” (p. 2)

Boshier’s (2009) criticisms serve as a warning to scholars of what pitfalls to avoid when setting out on a SoTL journey. However, as a sector we have fallen into the trap of these pitfalls, and it seems increasingly difficult to get out of them. Canning and Masika (2022) describe SoTL as a “thorn in the flesh of serious scholarship into learning and teaching in higher education”. They put much of the blame of this on the expanded definition of scholarship which has muddied the waters of what SoTL is. As in the previous section, we see the consequences of the rejection of a definition of SoTL and the pursuit of an expanded version of “scholarship”, which leaves SoTL open to criticism. In the next section, as I explore another SoTL myth, I look at why this matters.

“We value teaching and learning” and “You must teach better”

I will address these two myths together, as they are related to one another, as well as being linked to the previous myths. Firstly, institutions announce that they value teaching and learning, while the evidence states that it is more difficult to get an academic promotion for teaching and learning than it is to get it for disciplinary research (Freestone, 2018). For those scholars who are serious about improving the student learning experience, they are often caught between a rock and a hard place – while their evidence-based, scholarly interventions improve student learning, any increase in grades is met with an accusation of grade inflation (Bachan, 2017). While grade inflation is may be a phenomenon,  driven by neoliberal education policies and student fees, or a conflation of understanding norm- and criterion referenced assessments serious scholars of SoTL work to improve student learning, which should result in higher grades and/or degree classification. It follows therefore that there is no incentive to “teach better” either from the point of view of career progression or improving student learning.

Not drowning but waving

There are a number of things which could and should be done to change the current state of SoTL. However, they are not easy to change as they have become embedded in the psyche of higher education. However, I believe they are necessary if we are to move forward. And this is where Threshold Concepts (Meyer & Land, 2003) comes in, as I believe that we have to address these myths and misconceptions for what they are, and refuse to amplify and support them any longer. Only then can we start to address SoTL in a meaningful and transformative way:

• Use the term “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” in preference to “scholarship”. Understanding the fundamental differences between SoTL and “scholarship” is fundamentally transformative to understanding how we can make meaningful, sustainable change to teaching and learning in higher education. It opens doorways to building on previous knowledge (integrative), and once learned, becomes a permanent part of our toolkit (irreversible). However, we know that this change is troublesome as the expanded definition of scholarship has taken hold within the sector.

• Acknowledge the length of time it takes to become expert in SoTL and the stages of development individuals have to go through in order to become expert. This is transformative for SoTL practitioners and troublesome for institutions, who often want “quick fixes” for teaching and learning problems. By taking a long-term career development view of SoTL, a clearer career path can be forged, and individuals can develop real, sustainable expertise.
• Reward those whose achievements in SoTL reflect achievements in any other field or disciplinary research. By viewing SoTL as a field of research like any other field, reward and recognition can go to those who have developed expertise. This speaks to Canning and Masika’s (2022) assertion that SoTL has currently failed, and returns it to a research-based paradigm. This is transformative and troublesome, as it seeks to overturn the status quo. However, to make meaningful change it needs to happen.
• Address genuine improvements to student learning compared to grade inflation.

There is already an abundance of published evidence of improvements to student learning done  by scholars who take a systematic approach to designing interventions that are designed to do just that. Threshold Concepts themselves are a gateway to identifying and addressing areas in the curriculum where students get stuck (Meyer & Land, 2005). By demonstrating where improvements have been made there is a counterclaim to accusations of grade inflation.

The Future is Bright – it’s the headlights of the oncoming train

I may have painted a less-than-bright picture of the current state of SoTL, and I do believe that to a large extent we are responsible for the current state of the landscape. We have been too forgiving in our eagerness to be inclusive in the Big Tent (Huber & Hutchings, 2005; McKinney, 2014) and, while we should be welcoming, we should also be demonstrating and encouraging the idea of development. Trigwell et al’s (2000) model of scholarship offers an easy way for individuals to assess their position in SoTL – I ask my colleagues to (a) position themselves on the model with respect to their disciplinary research, and (b) to their “scholarship”. Then we explore how and why they need to develop in the four dimensions Trigwell et al (2000) describes. I believe we need to address the issue of the SoTL/scholarship divide, and place SoTL back in the place it deserves (Canning & Masika, 2022). And I’ll leave you with another thought, which should  be the subject of another paper – we need to get rid of teaching and scholarship career paths.

One final thought. Here’s a threshold concept for you. The next time you go to a teaching and learning conference, count the number of presentations that don’t refer to any literature… (once seen, it’s irreversible).

References

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