Call for Group Members for 2022 International Collaborative Writing Groups

Applications are due March 1, 2022.

The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) invites applications for group members for the inaugural cohort of its public SoTL track of its International Collaborative Writing Group (ICWG) initiative.

ISSOTL is now taking up the challenge to make SoTL more public, go beyond traditional forms of sharing SoTL, and extend current SoTL audiences by exploring new and non-traditional outlets and media. Public SoTL is about reaching, engaging, and making SoTL-generated knowledge more accessible to a broader audience beyond the academy. Through inaugural ICWGs-Public we will help ISSOTL exemplify, leverage, and build capacity around sharing SoTL-based knowledge in public conversations. Read more about this track on ISSOTL’s website. 
 
We Public ICWG Co-Leaders are happy to invite applications for Group Members for the four groups based on the projects and facilitators we’ve selected. Below are brief descriptions of each of the four projects, and you can read the full proposals on this ISSOTL blog post. 
 
1. Translating what We Know about Teaching & Learning to Support Social Justice 
Co-Facilitated by Nancy Chick & Jennifer Friberg
This ICWG will leverage group members’ interest in and knowledge of topics central to social justice: inclusive pedagogy, racial identity development, equity-minded education, resistance to learning, and more. Together, group members will translate a manageable slice of this knowledge to support various social justice movements — first by listening to what’s happening in contemporary social justice movements (including by and for whom), then by identifying specific issues at play that are, at the root, related to teaching and learning (e.g., how people think about race/difference, how this thinking develops, why it can stall or regress, how thinking can be changed, how thinking informs action), and finally by selecting the genre(s) and venue(s) to reach its intended public audience. Most of this ICWG’s work will be translational: using classroom-based research in thinking about broader contexts, and then re-articulating key findings for the intended audiences.
 
2.  Podcasting Learning Through Stories
Co-facilitated by Michell Eady, Corinne Green and Ina Machura
Do you have a favourite podcast? Do you love SoTL? This ICWG Public Scholarship group will develop and produce a SoTL podcast with the intention to provide accessible and engaging content, where the voices of SoTL practitioners, partners, and students will be heard. We are looking for enthusiastic participants who will work together to bring an understanding of SoTL to the public through stories and narratives that have yet to be acknowledged and shared outside the SoTL community, highlighting how SoTL projects respond to local exigencies and connect to global questions of SoTL.
 
3.Making Critical Race Theory Scholarship Accessible for Education Outside the Academy
Co-Facilitated by Catherine Ford and Sharon Ultsch
National and international racist systems exist in educational institutions. This public SoTL writing group will work collegially to expand our understanding of  how to conduct a “whitening analysis” of educational institutions from a global perspective. We will “translate” for non-academic audiences our shared understanding of Critical Race theory (CRT) into a media suite to disseminate to those who are grappling with CRT in their daily lives and in public education spaces within their local communities and particular contexts. The specific deliverables of the media suite and its dissemination will be shaped in collaboration with the writing group and informed by the local contexts of the collaborative group members.
 
4. Augmenting Public Literacy of Health and Social Care Graduates
Facilitated by Kerry Wilbur
Health and social care training programs lack effective and ritualized means to communicate to members of society how these programs ensure graduates are equipped to deliver promised safe and quality care. This ICWG will augment public literacy and understanding of how health and social care professionals are trained, highlighting the field’s evidence-based approach to teaching and learning. Such outreach is especially important since these graduates are increasingly held socially accountable, and their training and expertise may be undermined by inaccuracies perpetuated by conventional and social media sources. Potential audiences of this ICWG’s work will include individuals and patients in spaces where they receive care, but group participants will jointly determine the specific choice/s and project output/s.
 
If any of these exciting projects sound interesting to you, please click here to apply to be a member of one of these groups. You will be asked to pick your top three projects, and members will be selected based on interest and an effort to create strong diverse teams. 
 
Similar to the previous cohorts, these ICWGs will convene for a face-to-face/in-person working session on October 30-November 1, immediately prior to the ISSOTL22 conference in Kelowna, Canada (November 2-5, 2022). Before and after the conference, the groups will work together online to ultimately produce a public SoTL artifact no later than October 2023. All ICWG leaders, group facilitators, and participants are expected to attend the pre-conference working session in person, to register for and attend the conference, and to be (or become) ISSOTL members.