The People We SoTL With: SoTL as Collaborative Process and Inclusive Trans-disciplinary Practice
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) affords practitioners from diverse disciplinary backgrounds a space to engage in inter- and multi-disciplinary exchange and co-creation about their teaching and research. In other words, SoTL embraces a wide variety of methodological expertise, and thus encourages crucial self-awareness of our epistemologies and worldview paradigms because it nurtures complex dialogical encounters that challenge us forward towards increasingly explicit and critical attention to our assumptions and lived experiences. We believe that offering opportunities for disciplinary and worldview paradigms self-awareness development is part of what makes SoTL a radically inclusive force able to foster transformative change in higher education. This session aims to explore SoTL’s intentional state of disruptive liminality and constant emergence as a transdisciplinary field informed and shaped by the intrinsic diversity of its participants. We will collaboratively ask how our epistemological perspectives (including who we are, our stories, and the people that shape our journeys) inform the way we understand Teaching and Learning. Finally, we will attempt to apply insights surfacing from this conversation to our contexts by envisioning how SoTL discourse can us help foster practices that expand individuals’ potential and value relational complexity in inquiry processes, thus enabling us to enact more equitable approaches within our spheres of influence.
