presentation and workshop on the scholarship of teaching and learning at the University of Johannesburg, education faculty, on 25 May 2016

1. The Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning – Taking your teaching to
the next level
Workshop at UH Faculty of Education
facilitated by Brenda Leibowitz

2. The workshop
Purpose
• Value of researching your
teaching
• Some of the challenges and
opportunities
• Thinking your way into a
proposal
Outcome
• Conceptions of SOTL
(via a drawing)
• A research plan
(via a poster)

3. 1 Research on teaching is a form of
enlightenment

4. The benefits of educational research – on
teaching
• Taking more informed actions
• Developing rationales for practices
• Avoiding self-blame when teaching goes awry
• Grounding us in the reality of classrooms
(Brookfield, 1995, cited in Savory et al)
• Allows us to develop and learn to articulate the
values that lie at the heart of our work, and provide
us with a sense of agency and autonomy (Rowland,
2000)
• Develop educational values (Rowland, 2000)

5. Why we do educational research
“The inquiry process keeps me intellectually engaged
in constant refinement of my course” (Dana Fritz)
“Along with showing me how to self-evaluate my
classroom, my inquiry project has also helped to link
my teaching with my disciplinary research” (D’Andra
Orey)
“As a result of my increased awareness of my
students’ learning, I have made the leap to a 100%
student-centred pedagogy” (Kevin Lee)
From: Savory et al, 2007)

6. Further benefits
• Professional satisfaction
• Ability to convince and influence others
• Opportunity to reflect on disciplinary research
methods
• Able to imagine alternatives
• Provide us with credibility in departments

7. Disciplinary research remains important –
even for good teaching
See that you have a research trajectory in your field … and do active research
in it. Try to recruit postgraduate students, go to conferences, talk at
conferences, hear what others say about your subject. I feel that if you do
that, then you will be a better lecturer at first-year level. The deeper you get
into mathematics, the better you would, as they say, see the wood for the
trees.

8. Educational research benefits
disciplinary research
• Sheds light on aspects of the disciplinary
knowledge – how students, as users, see it
• Ignites interest of students and oneself in the
discipline
• Can help to ‘decolonise’ the knowledge
• And to contextualise it in one’s own context

9. Bridge the divide between local and
formal knowledge systems
We, the little ones at primary and secondary school, were
transported through poems, novels, films, comic books,
to worlds thousands of years away. In time, the more our
imagination recreated those distant world into
compelling reality, the less real our own immediate world
became. As we progressively disengaged from it
emotionally and imaginatively, it became less authentic,
less accommodative, less attractive,
unfulfilling and often hostile, as we lived
in it. We lived in it without the
concomitant learned habit of thinking it.
Our affective imaginations progressively
got anchored elsewhere.
(Ndebele, 2016)

10. SOTL and Transformation

11. SOTL promotes reflection
“The moment that you become conscious that it is a
good idea to reflect, and you involve your class, it
unleashed new energy for me, to ask the class how it
works, … not only my teaching style, but in the end it
has an effect on your method, your whole approach.”
(Andrianetta, in Leibowitz et al, 2009)

12. 2 What is SOTL?

13. A quick definition
• “where academics frame questions that
they systematically investigate in relation to
their teaching and their students’ learning”
(Brew, 2007)

14. Thinking about teaching as a
researcher
‘It requires a kind of ‘going meta’ in which
faculty frame and systematically investigate
questions related to student learning – the
conditions under which it occurs, what it looks
like, how to deepen it, and so forth – and to do
so with an eye not only to improving their own
classroom but to advancing practice beyond it.’
(Hutchings and Shulman, 1999:13, quoted in
Huber, 2003)

15. ‘The problem’ in research v. teaching
‘Ask a colleague about a problem in his or her
research is an invitation; asking about a problem in
one’s teaching would probably seem like an
accusation. Changing the status of the problem in
teaching from terminal remediation to ongoing
investigation is precisely what the movement for a
scholarship of teaching is all about. How might we
make the problematization of teaching a matter of
regular communal discourse? How might we think of
teaching practice, and the evidence of student
learning, as problems to be investigated, analysed,
represented, debated?’ (Bass, 1999, in Huber, 2003)

16. 2: History and Importance of the SOTL

17. Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning
• What we urgently need today is a
more inclusive view of what it
means to be a scholar--a
recognition that knowledge is
acquired through research, through
synthesis, through practice, and
through teaching. We acknowledge
that these four categories--the
scholarship of discovery, of
integration, of application, and of
teaching divide intellectual
functions that are tied in- separably
to each other (Boyer, 1990)

18. Before ‘SOTL’

19. Other significant teaching researchers

20. Journals

21. A SOTL Society

22. SOTL Conferences

24. SOTL in South Africa

25. SOTL in the South
University of Johannesburg
24 – 26 July
2017

26. 3: From scholarly teaching to scholars
of teaching

27. From reflection to research to scholarship
“Oh I can tell you I am very critical about my own
work and I’m very aware of all my gaps. ... But for
the first time when I started to read what [the
student] wrote about me, it gave me a better
understanding of what she is getting from me, or let
me rather put it, what I have helped her to start to
see. ... I looked through that booklet that we got
after the award ceremony, it can be quite
interesting to go and analyse what were the things,
what are the common threads in the students’
comments.” (Cyril)

28. The scholarly teacher and SOTL
Scholarly teacher
• Remains current in their
disciplinary or content
knowledge area
• Learns about different teaching
styles and approaches
• Improves student learning within
their own classroom by
investigating the impact of their
teaching on their students
• Improves student learning within
their local community
(department, college, school)
through collecting, sharing, and
communicating the results of
their work on teaching and
learning.
A Scholar of T+L
• Knows and cites the literature on
teaching and learning
• Relates the literature on teaching
and learning to discipline specific
questions and issues
• Publishes and shares their work to
disciplinary or teaching
community audiences to expand
discussions on teaching and
student learning.
Glassick et al, in Savory, et al
(2007)

29. Criteria for Scholarship
• It should be public
• It should be susceptible to critical review and
evaluation
• It should be accessible for exchange and use by other
members of one’s scholarly community

30. Why might we publish?

32. Professional Motivation
Do you want to undertake educational research to
improve your own practice?
Or
Do you want to make a career of educational research?

33. There is room for both within a
department

34. 4: Some challenges and opportunities

35. The problem
• Scholarly teacher v. Scholar of teaching and
learning
• Need to have a critical mass of scholars of
teaching and learning in all faculties/departments
But: the challenges are:
• The educational discourse
• Lack of recognition
• Lack of a community of
practice

36. Voices from Western Cape
Academics

40. 5: Beating the challenges

41. The benefits of either
Working alone Working in groups

42. My own experience

43. 6: More challenges: ethics and
validity concerns

44. Validity
• Construct validity (have correct operational
measures been been established for the
concepts being studied?)
• Internal validity (are causal relationships
indeed “infer-able”?)
• External validity (can it be replicated for
another case)
• Reliability (can the same study be replicated)

45. Or, according to Patti Lather (1986)
• Triangulation (multiple sources)
• Face validity (member checks)
• Construct validity (systematised
reflexivity which gives indication of how a
priori theory has been changed in the light of
the data)
• Catalytic validity (so that participants gain self-
understanding in order to transform
themselves)

46. Ethics as relational
• Confidentiality
• Causing harm (Bran-Barnett,
Gristy)
• Power relations
• Exploitation
• Dignity
• Relational v procedural
ethics (Lanas and Rautio)

47. Responsibility
What responsibilities arise from the
privileges I have as a result of my social
position? How can I use my knowledge
and skills to challenge, for example, the
forms of oppression disabled people
experience? Does my writing and
speaking reproduce a system of
domination or challenge that system?
(Len Barton, in context of
disability research, quoted
in Gristy, 2014.)

48. The outcome
“It’s been a wonderful life, and when I die, I
think I hope to have the satisfaction of knowing
that perhaps a lot of young people have enjoyed
my subject. What more can I ask for?” (Percival)

49. Let the light shine in
• Education research can lead to enhanced student learning and
lecturer satisfaction
• It depends on the quality and process of the research
• An ethical approach (in broad and narrow terms) should be
adopted at all times

50. References
• Adendorff, H. 2001. Strangers in a Strange Land: On becoming scholars of
teaching. London Review of Education
• Brew, A. and Sachs, J. 2007. Transforming a University: The scholarship of
teaching and learning in practice. Sydney University Press.
• Cousin, G. 2009. Researching Learning in Higher Education: An introduction to
contemporary methods and approaches. Routledge.
• Huber, M. 2003. Disciplines and the development of a schoarship of teaching
and learning. In: R. Blackwell and P. Blackmore (eds) Towards strategic staff
development in higher education. Maidenhead: SRHE and OUP
• Kreber, C. 2013. Authenticity In and Through Teaching in Higher Education: the
transformative potential of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Routledge.
• Leibowitz, B., Ndebele, C. and Winberg, C. (2013) The role of academic identity
in collaborative research. Studies in Higher Education.
DOI:10.1080/03075079.2013.801424
• Maree, K. (Ed) 2007. First Steps in Research. Van Schaik.
• Murray, Rowena (Ed) 2008. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education. SRHE and OUP.
• Savory, P., Burnett, A.and Goodburn, A. (2007). Inquiry into the College
Classroom; A journey toward scholarly teaching. Bolton: Anker.
• White, S. and Corbett, M. (Eds) 2014. Doing Educational Research in Rural
Settings. Methodological issues, international perspectives and practical
solutions. London: Routledge

51. Doing SOTL
“where academics frame questions that they systematically investigate
in relation to their teaching and their student learning” (Brew, 2007).
• Draw a ‘sotallist’ in an environment t close to
your professional setting.
• What research question would s/he ask
• What does s/he do that makes it SOTL?
• What attributes or characteristics does s/he
have or require?
• What might the benefits of his/her
sotallism have on teaching and
learning?
(discuss your drawings in groups)

52. Further questions about your sotallist
• What are the constraints s/he faces?
• What are the disciplinary and research
conventions s/he has to contend with?
• What resources in the environment can s/he
draw on?
(discuss in your groups)

53. Questions towards a research plan
1. what is a good teaching research question?
2. what is an appropriate research strategy?
3. timelines
4. what support will I need (and where to find it)
5. should I collaborate with others on this research
(or not)?
6. ethical considerations.
Write this up into a poster

54. What is a good teaching research
question
• It interests you
• It is based on a research problem
• (v. real world ‘problem’)
• The ‘answers’, ‘solution’ or explanation can be
found
• The answer is not overly predictable
• (Nor too broad)
• The answers will be interesting to others