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Drawing on the concepts of emergent and appointed leadership, this article expands on the role of social networks in SoTL (Roxa and Martensson 2009, 2012; Williams et al. 2013) by examining the nature of these networks, relationships between these networks, and support for them, in order to theorize how institutions can foster cultural change to support SoTL.

This chapter outlines the historical growth of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in Canada leading up to the formation of SoTL Canada and the development of this volume.

In educational development, accountability is paramount, in particular for activities that take educational developers away from their institutional boundaries to local, national, and international venues. Educational developers must demonstrate the benefits of such work to the home institution and its constituents. We asked educational developers from around the world to comment on the nature and value of their external work. Their responses made clear that such work expands valuable social networks and, concomitantly, builds social capital. Using these observations, we explain how social network analysis can be used to assess and demonstrate the impact of external work.

This paper offers a guide for those seeking to integrate the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) into higher education institutions to improve the quality of student learning. The authors posit that weaving SoTL into institutional cultures requires the coordinated actions of individuals working in linked social networks rather than individuals acting in isolation. Analyzing both the barriers and potential pathways to integrating SoTL into institutional cultures, the authors provide a conceptual model along with examples of practical strategies for overcoming resistance to change within institutions. The paper provides examples from a variety of different international contexts to show how incentives and other non-coercive measures can motivate faculty and administrators to weave SoTL into institutional fabrics. Drawing on social network theory and the concept of communities of practice, the paper presents a model with attendant strategies for disseminating SoTL values and practices across all three levels of postsecondary institutions: the micro, the meso, and the macro. The authors argue that for SoTL to take root in organizational cultures, there must be 1) effective communication and dissemination of SoTL activity across all levels, 2) well established social networks and links between these levels (nodes), and 3) sustained support by senior administrationThe authors conclude by suggesting ways their model could be tested.

This study focuses on an examination of mentoring SoTL research from the 10‐year implementation of an 8‐month mixed‐mode international faculty certificate program on SoTL leadership at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Data suggest that faculty members, especially those unfamiliar with social science methodologies, experienced significant research challenges when investigating SoTL in complex institutional/curricula/classroom settings. Effective mentoring for SoTL, as part of a community of practice, influenced positive research outcomes. For example, through a community of practice, SoTL mentors performed professional, facilitation and agency roles to engage individual faculty members in SoTL research. A community of SoTL researchers helped to address key epistemological, methodological and ethical challenges faced by individual faculty members when conducting SoTL research in diverse disciplinary contexts. Cette etude porte sur le mentorat de la recherche SoTL debutant des la mise en œuvre, il...

Introduction to Teaching & Learning Inquiry, Volume 3, Issue 2.

An introduction to Teaching & learning Inquiry, Volume 3, Issue 1.

INTRODUCTION To help address physician shortages in the underserved community of Prince George, Canada, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and various partners created the Northern Medical Program (NMP), a regional distributed site of UBC's medical doctor undergraduate program. Early research on the impacts of the NMP revealed a high degree of social connectedness. The objective of the present study was to explore the role of social capital in supporting the regional training site and the benefits accrued to a broad range of stakeholders and network partners. METHODS In this qualitative study, 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted with community leaders in 2007. A descriptive content analysis based on analytic induction technique was employed. Carpiano's Bourdieu-based framework of 'neighbourhood' social capital was adapted to empirically describe how social capital was produced and mobilized within and among networks during the planning and implementation of the NMP. RESULTS Results from this study reveal that the operation of social capital and the related concept of social cohesion are multifaceted, and that benefits extend in many directions, resulting in somewhat unanticipated benefits for other key stakeholders and network partners of this medical education program. Participants described four aspects of social capital: (i) social cohesion; (ii) social capital resources; (iii) access to social capital; and (iv) outcomes of social capital. CONCLUSIONS The findings of this study suggest that the partnerships and networks formed in the NMP planning and implementation phases were the foundation for social capital mobilization. The use of Carpiano's spatially-bounded model of social capital was useful in this context because it permitted the characterization of relations and networks of a tight-knit community body. The students, faculty and administrators of the NMP have benefitted greatly from access to the social capital mobilized to make the NMP operational. Taking account of the dynamic and multifaceted operation of social capital helps one move beyond a view of geographic communities as simply containers or sinks of capital investment, and to appreciate the degree to which they may act as a platform for productive network formation and expansion.

How well do we know our students? We might justifiably pride ourselves in being student-oriented, and we may be skilled at building rapport with our students, but this isn’t necessarily tantamount to really knowing them. What is it like to truly grapple with the work we ask them to do? It all might seem quite reasonable to us, but the students’ experiences could be quite different. These questions and considerations have been brought front and center for us as we read the papers that constitute this issue of Teaching & Learning Inquiry. Many of these papers, each in its own way, attempts to better understand the lived experiences of our students. Nathan Webb and Laura Obrycki Barrett take a detailed look at just how we get to know students who are learning English as a sec ond language. The key processes they identify—in clud ing such behaviors as being uncommonly attentive, establishing common grounding, and forming connections—can be applied to all teaching. Mary Goldschmidt explores students’ lived experiences as disciplinary learners of both content and process, which includes learning to write the genres and conventions of their chosen fields. She foregrounds the rich descriptions of a few seniors who’ve developed “their own ‘place within the disciplinary enterprise’” (p. 27). Jonathan Cisco has created a more effective way of teaching students how to write literature reviews based on his direct observations of the struggles they were going through with such assignments. Interviews indicated that students were at a loss regarding the best approach to writing a literature review—much less, what a good review accomplished. Yet such reviews are among the most common assignments we require. Shane Dawson and Harry Hubball use computer-based analytics to chart the actual paths students take as they navigate their way through academic programs. This analy sis yields very useful insights regarding students’ perceptions of relationships among courses, as well as challenges students face simply piecing together that which we require of them. Michael Drinkwater, Deanne Gannaway, Karen Sheppard, Matthew Davis, Margaret Wegener, Warwick Bowen, and Joel Corney take us inside the physics classroom to better understand that lived experience. We are moving well beyond the student-as-passivevessel model in large classes, challenging students to engage with problems and issues in these settings. This team from the University of Queensland has shown that the value of the time spent in such active classrooms is affected considerably by the degree of preparation students bring into them. They present a strategy that is manageable and yet ensures that students arrive prepared. Moreover, the approach gives the instructor impor

The first two issues of Teaching & Learning Inquiry consisted of responses to specific questions about SoTL (1.1) and essays by the International Collaborative Writing Groups exploring specific facets of SoTL (1.2). We in the field devote much time, space, and copy to evaluating and theorizing SoTL (in addition to reporting on the work itself ). We do this, not to belabor already exhausted topics or to suggest an immaturity of the field; instead, this metaSoTL chronicles and even celebrates its ongoing sense of becoming and its confluence of diverse and serious inquiries from specific contexts. This vibrancy is both a source and consequence of what Phipps and Barnett (2007) call “academic hospitality,” our “social bondedness” characterized by openness, responsibility, exploration, and neighborliness (p. 253). It’s necessary in a field populated largely by scholars—“hosts,” “guests,” “guides,” “tourists,” and scouts—traveling outside of their home disciplines, nations, methodologies, communities, and even languages. These features require diligence to our borders, our mores, our identities. At the same time, we value getting out into the field, so we also seek out and celebrate the travelogues and field reports from our colleagues—or the SoTL work itself, the origi nal research on teaching and learning. The current issue (2.1) now takes us out into the field by featuring seven essays reporting on SoTL projects straight from the classroom. Each, in its own way, invites us to reflect on our roles as teachers and the learning partnerships we strike up with our students. First, Jeff Bernstein and Earle Abrahamson provide thoughtful reviews of a new book that helps readers hone their skills and knowledge related to teaching and to the ways students approach their learning. We are thus reminded of this shared responsibility of teacher and student, the synergy between teacher and learner, rather than just one or the other. Lane Glisson, Shane McConnell, Mahatapa Palit, Jason Schneiderman, Cynthia Wiseman, and Lyle Yorks started with a question about what they needed to get students to do in order to become better learners. They concluded that there were steps they themselves had to take first to help students get where they needed to go. Similarly, Daniel Bernstein and Andrea Follmer Greenhoot implemented an extensive project in which they created learning tasks so that students became better criti cal thinkers and analysts. Dana Lynn Driscoll documents a student attitude toward general education we’ve resisted and complained about, but rather than simply rehashing these typical conversations and blaming the students, she first shows us what it looks like in the students’ own words: it’s not as simple as we may assume. Then, as a result of listening directly to the students, she offers three specific “metaeducation” strategies faculty and staff may take to help students

Considering Canada's Tri-Council statement on the ethical conduct for research involving human subjects, we discuss some of the ethical challenges of doing research on teaching and learning in which one's own students and teaching act as the context of such scholarly activity. We advocate establishing basic principles based in the complex relationships in teaching and learning, making reference to the such issues as the potential social consequences for students of choosing not to participate in SoTL research. We propose some principles for those new to teaching and learning research to consider as part of their own ethical considerations.En ce qui concerne l'Énoncé de politique des trois Conseils : Éthique de la recherche avec des êtres humains, nous présentons les difficultés déontologiques de la recherche sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage au cours de laquelle nos propres étudiants et notre enseignement constituent le contexte de cette activité savante. Nous prônons l’établissement de principes fondamentaux basés sur les relations complexes entre l’enseignement et l’apprentissage et faisons référence à des enjeux comme les conséquences sociales potentielles du choix des étudiants de ne pas participer à la recherche sur l’ACEA. Nous proposons des principes que les chercheurs novices pourraient intégrer à leurs propres considérations déontologiques.

Community service-learning (CSL) has been proposed as one way to enrich medical and dental students' sense of social responsibility toward people who are marginalized in society.We developed and implemented a new CSL option in the integrated medical/dental curriculum and assessed its educational impact.Focus groups, individual open-ended interviews, and a survey were used to assess dental students', faculty tutors' and community partners' experiences with CSL.CSL enabled a deeper appreciation for the vulnerabilities that people who are marginalized experience; students gained a greater insight into the social determinants of health and the related importance of community engagement; and they developed useful skills in health promotion project planning, implementation and evaluation. Community partners and faculty tutors indicated that equal partnership, greater collaboration, and a participatory approach to course development are essential to sustainability in CSL.CSL can play an important role in nurturing a purposeful sense of social responsibility among future practitioners. Our study enabled the implementation of an innovative longitudinal course (professionalism and community service) in all 4 years of the dental curriculum.

The continual improvement of post-secondary education (PSE) in Canada requires at least three important elements: (1) an understanding of the forms that good teaching takes, with a focus on how these forms differ from one academic discipline to the next; (2) the use of well-collected data to inform decisions regarding constructive change, and (3) ready access to the collective body of knowledge about post-secondary teaching and learning produced across disciplines and institutions. Here, we examine these three elements, first by applying the notion of “signature pedagogies” to help understand the ways teaching differs among disciplines. Then, from institutional and national perspectives, we explore ways in which the benefit of research on the effectiveness of these pedagogies can be maximized.

Introduction to Volume 1, Number 2.