Moving from “Good” to “Great” SoTL: The Importance of Describing your Research Epistemological and Ontological Traditions in your SoTL Scholarship

By Melanie Hamilton and Brett McCollum

We started this conversation sitting in comfy chairs at the Banff Park Lodge during Mount Royal University’s 2022 Symposium for SoTL. For some reason over a cup of coffee, we were reflecting on how individuals explain their approach to research. More specifically, do they identify their research lenses in their publications or conference presentations? Mel was wondering how to explain to early-career SoTL researchers why it was important to situate the approach to your research at the beginning stages of your research project. Brett was contributing to the conversation in his role as the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CJSoTL).

Both of us agreed that many individuals may not consider this an important step in planning, carrying out the research, and then disseminating the findings. We agreed that people tend to read research the way they would carry out the research as if it were their own. Brett shared that he had observed conflict emerging in the peer review process due to misunderstandings between authors and reviewers on what constitutes truth, evidence, and systematic inquiry. With good humour, we reflected on instances where we gained new insight into a peer’s scholarship when we shifted our reader’s vantage from our own SoTL lens to that of the author. 

The article is more than just a continuation of that engaging conversation. It is an invitation for you to make explicit your implicit ways of thinking and knowing. We hope that this article will give you some insight into how we were trained to think and spark some reflection on our own ways of knowing.

Read the TLI article here.