Building Sustainable SoTL Cultures: Applying a Practice, Use and Growth Framework

By Kerry Dobbins, University of Warwick, Kerry.Dobbins@warwick.ac.uk

At the heart of SoTL Grand Challenge Five (GC5) is the building of cultures where SoTL can grow and flourish through its practice and use. As a central SoTL lead within our institution, I have been asked to lead various sessions on building scholarship cultures at local (e.g., departmental, centre, unit) levels. It is in this work that I have found GC5 incredibly helpful. Its focus on the practice, use and growth of SoTL offers us a framework and a language for thinking about sustainable SoTL cultures and the elements that are key to the cultivation and embedding of such cultures.

The Practice of SoTL

There can be an understandable desire when wanting to build SoTL cultures to move straight to the doing of a SoTL project. However, doing does not necessarily mean building a sustaining and sustainable practice of SoTL. The language of GC5 is very helpful here. The practice of SoTL focuses attention on the foundations to our collective scholarly endeavours, our doing of SoTL. And the beginnings of our SoTL journeys often start with the inquiry or evaluative mindsets that we bring to our practices. So, as I emphasise in my work with colleagues, an important part of building SoTL cultures is cultivating the practice of SoTL through the embedding of evaluative approaches.

Similarly, a SoTL culture is cultivated through our practice of engaging in broad, varied and diverse scholarly conversations. Here I find Glassick et al’s (1997, p.27) statement incredibly helpful that “[s]cholarship is, in essence, a conversation in which one participates and contributes by knowing what is being discussed and what others have said on the subject”. Thinking about SoTL practice in this way allows colleagues within a community to consider the range of conversations they are currently engaged in and those they’d like to engage in more.  Examples of different types of scholarly conversations we may be engaging in include those with pedagogic scholarship, communities of practice, existing institutional data and evidence from formal or informal pedagogic investigations.

The Use of SoTL

The excitement of moving immediately to the doing of a SoTL project also means that we might not be cultivating a practice of using and questioning the data already being captured through various quality and enhancement processes. A flourishing SoTL culture means not just generating new data, but using data already gathered to help inform our understandings of the issues we want to explore and the questions we need to ask of our students’ learning and their educational experiences. It also means growing a community that is knowledgeable about finding, interrogating, analysing, etc., these varied existing sources of evidence; a community that is comfortable in asking itself: how are we using the varied types of evidence already gathered to consider practices; how are we examining patterns or trends across this data?

Some of these existing datasets and evidence sources might include student feedback, assessment data, retention and progression data, module/unit/programme evaluation, etc.

The Growth of SoTL

Ultimately, sustainable SoTL cultures can only grow and flourish through embedding the practice and use of SoTL as part of our day-to-day individual and collective practices. However, practicing and using SoTL in these ways can only be embedded when there is time and space for communities to connect, think, reflect and share together. Viewing SoTL cultures through the practice, use and growth framework allows us to see the interconnected nature of each element. We cannot grow SoTL cultures without thinking about how we are supporting a sustainable practice of SoTL. Similarly, an embedded practice of SoTL within a community requires time for colleagues to connect and interrogate together the range of data relating to their students that is already being captured.

Overall, the language of GC5 has been an invaluable source in my work with colleagues tasked with or advocating for the promotion of SoTL in their local areas. The table below captures how I have been using the GC5 framework to support conversations about building the foundations to sustainable SoTL cultures. I’d love to hear more about your work in building SoTL cultures and how you may be using GC5 in this way. 

Practice of SoTL

Bringing evaluative mindset into practices. Seeking out and engaging in varied scholarly conversations.

Use of SoTL

Bringing evidence-informed approaches into day-to-day practices. Gathering and examining already existing/collected data.

Growth of SoTL

Creating/protecting time and space to think and reflect. Opportunities for sharing and connecting.

Reference:

Glassick, C., Huber, M., & Maeroff, G. (1997). Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.