Re-positioning SoTL toward the T-shaped Community
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.9.1.18Keywords:
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), student connections, learner centeredness, T-shaped graduateAbstract
Amongst a range of changes that have taken place within tertiary education, perhaps the most revolutionary has been a shift to student-centred approaches focused on life-long learning. Accompanying this approach to holistic higher education (HE) has been a growing interest in, and understanding of, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). SoTL has, at its core, a deep concern with student learning and is therefore well-aligned with higher education’s renewed focus on its students. In this conceptual paper, we examine the impact of the T-shaped person which many tertiary institutions are operationalizing to inform and connect the development of students’ deep disciplinary knowledge with non-academic and employment readiness skills (such as communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and critical thinking). Importantly, we argue for a re-positioning of SoTL to complement and support this model, with SoTL as both the fulcrum and the fluid, multiple threads of discourse that are intricately entwined around the structure of the T-shaped model. We encourage our colleagues to strive to be T-shaped practitioners and we cast a vision of a T-shaped community. Here, all stakeholders within HE connect both their academic knowledge and holistic skills in collaborative ways to produce learners who flourish in modern society. The SoTL community plays a pivotal role in achieving this vision and is well-positioned to expand the current notion of SoTL toward a more holistic, interconnected, central role in HE.
Metrics
References
Allen, I. Elaine, Jeff Seaman, Russell Roulin, and Terri T. Staut. 2016. Online Report Card: Tracking Online Education in the United States. Babson Survey Research Group and Quahog Research Group. http://onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/onlinereportcard.pdf.
Altmann, Andreas, and Bernd Ebersberger, eds. 2013. Universities in Change: Managing Higher Education Institutions in the Age of Globalization. Springer.
Aoun, Joseph E. 2017. Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. MIT Press.
Baik, Chi, Wendy Larcome, Abi Brooker, Johanna Wyn, Lee Allen, Matthew Brett, Rachael Field, and Richard James. 2017. “A Framework for Promoting Student Mental Wellbeing in Universities.” Enhancing Student Wellbeing. https://melbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/2302603/MCSHE-Student-Wellbeing-Framework_FINAL.pdf.
Baik, Chi, Wendy Larcombe, and Abi Brooker. 2019. “How Universities Can Enhance Student Mental Wellbeing: The Student Perspective.” Higher Education Research & Development 38, no. 4: 674–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1576596.
Bass, Randy. 1999. “The Scholarship of Teaching: What's the Problem?” Creative Thinking about Learning and Teaching 1, no. 1: 1–10.
Baxter Magolda, Marcia B. 2009. “The Activity of Meaning Making: A Holistic Perspective on College Student Development.” Journal of College Student Development, 621–39. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.0.0106.
Behari-Leak, Kasturi. 2020. “Toward a Borderless, Decolonized, Socially Just, and Inclusive Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 8, no. 1: 4–23. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.1.2.
Bell, David, Marina D. Giusta, and Antonio Fernandez. 2015. “Why We Need New Measures of Student Well-Being, The World University Rankings.” Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/why-we-need-new-measures-of-student-well-being.
Blair, Erik. 2013. “The Challenge of Contextualizing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 1, no. 1: 127–30. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.127.
Booth, Shirley, and L. C. Woollacott. 2018. “On the Constitution of SoTL: Its Domains and Contexts.” Higher Education 75, no. 2: 537–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0156-7.
Boyer, Ernest L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. John Wiley & Sons.
Cantini, Daniele, ed. 2016. Rethinking Private Higher Education: Ethnographic Perspectives. Vol. 101. Brill.
Center for Engaged Learning. 2014, January 2. “Future Vision for SoTL as Cultural Norm of Higher Education Institutions.” Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7NzykwC2l0.
Chick, Nancy 2013. “Difference, Privilege, and Power in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The Value of Humanities SoTL.” In The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in and across the Disciplines, edited by Kathleen McKinney, 15–33. Indiana University Press.
Chick, Nancy, Lorelli Nowell, and Bartlomiej Lenart. 2019. “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Scoping Review Protocol.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 7, no. 2: 186–97. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.7.2.12.
Chng, Huang Hoon, and Katarina Mårtensson. 2020. “Leading Change from Different Shores: The Challenges of Contextualizing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 8, no. 1: 24–41. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.1.3.
Cochrane, Thomas, and Vickel Narayan. 2018. “The Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning: Reimagining SoTL for the Social Network Age.” In EdMedia+ Innovate Learning, 594–603.
Conley, Sharon N., Rider W. Foley, Michael E. Forman, Jessica Denham, and Kevin Coleman. 2017. “Acquisition of T-shaped Expertise: An Exploratory Study.” Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy 31, no. 2: 165–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2016.1249435.
Cook-Sather, Alison, and Sophia Abbot. 2016. “Translating Partnerships: How Faculty-Student Collaboration in Explorations of Teaching and Learning Can Transform Perceptions, Terms, and Selves.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 4, no. 2: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.4.2.5.
Cook, Emily. 2016. Australian Universities Make Health and Wellbeing a Priority. University of Sydney. https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2016/03/15/australian- universities-make-health-and-wellbeing-a-priority.html.
Coughlan, Tim, and Jenny Goff. 2019. “Creating Open Online Courses with Learner Representative Partners to Widen Participation in Higher Education.” Journal of Learning for Development 6, no. 2: 143–59.
Chronicle of Higher Education. 2020. Online 2.0: How to Lead a Large-Scale Transformation of Virtual Learning. Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.
D'Andrea, Vaneeta, and David Gosling. 2005. Improving Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: A Whole Institution Approach. McGraw-Hill Education.
David, Miriam, and Rajani Naidoo. 2018. The Sociology of Higher Education: Reproduction, Transformation and Change in a Global Era. Routledge.
Dweck, Carol S. 2006. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
Fanghanel, Joëlle, Jane Pritchard, Jacqueline Potter, and Gina Wisker. 2016. Defining and Supporting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): A Sector-Wide Study. Higher Education Academy.
Felten, Peter. 2013. “Principles of Good Practice in SoTL.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 1, no. 1: 121–25. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.121.
Felten, Peter, Julianne Bagg, Michael Bumbry, Jennifer Hill, Karen Hornsby, Maria Pratt, and Saranne Weller. 2013. “A Call for Expanding Inclusive Student Engagement in SoTL.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 1, no. 2: 63–74. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.2.63.
Finkelstein, Martin J., and Glen A. Jones, eds. 2019. Professorial Pathways: Higher Education Systems and Academic Careers in Comparative Perspective. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Goldstein, Matthew, and George Otte, eds. 2016. Change We Must: Deciding the future of Higher Education. Rosetta Books.
Guest, David. 1991. “The Hunt is On for the Renaissance Man of Computing.” The Independent, September 17, 1991.
Healey, Mick, Abbi Flint, and Kathy Harrington. 2014. Engagement through Partnership: Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Higher Education Academy.
Hogan, Robert, Tomas Chamorro‐Premuzic, and Robert B. Kaiser. 2013. “Employability and Career Success: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Reality.” Industrial and Organizational Psychology 6, no. 1: 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/iops.12001.
Hubball, Harry, Marion L. Pearson, and Anthony Clarke. 2013. “SoTL Inquiry in Broader Curricular and Institutional Contexts: Theoretical Underpinnings and Emerging Trends.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 1, no. 1: 41–57. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.41.
Hutchings, Pat, Paola Borin, Linda Keesing-Styles, Lynn Martin, Renee Michael, Lauren Scharff, Scott Simkins, and Ahmed Ismail. 2013. “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in an Age of Accountability: Building Bridges.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 1, no. 2: 35–47. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.2.35.
Hutchings, Pat, and Lee S. Shulman. 1999. “The Scholarship of Teaching: New Elaborations, New Developments.” Change 31, no. 5: 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091389909604218.
Jackson, Cecile J. 2006. “Feminism Spoken Here: Epistemologies for Interdisciplinary Development Research.” Development and Change 37, no. 3: 525–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0012-155X.2006.00489.x.
Jaschik, Scott, and Doug Lederman. 2018. 2018 Survey of College and University Presidents. Inside Higher Ed.
Jayawickreme, Eranda, and Sara E. Dahill-Brown. 2016. “Developing Well-Being and Capabilities as a Goal of Higher Education: A Thought-Piece on Educating the Whole Student.” In Handbook of Eudaimonic Well-Being, 473–84. Springer, Cham.
Joos, Philip P. M., and Lex Meijdam. 2019. Innovation in Higher Education: Needed and Feasible. Tilburg University.
Keeling, Richard P. 2004. Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience. Student Affairs Adminstrators in Higher Education.
Kemp, Ian J., and Liz Seagraves. 1995. “Transferable Skills—Can Higher Education Deliver?” Studies in Higher Education 20, no. 3: 315–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079512331381585.
Kreber, Carolin. 2013. “The Transformative Potential of the Scholarship of Teaching.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 1, no. 1: 5–18. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.5.
Kuh, George D. 2008. High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter. Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Lane, Jane E., ed. 2015. Higher Education Reconsidered: Executing Change to Drive Collective Impact. State University of New York Press.
Lehtomäki, Elina, Josephine Moate, and Hanna Posti-Ahokas. 2016. “Global Connectedness in Higher Education: Student Voices on the value of Cross-Cultural Learning Dialogue.” Studies in Higher Education 41, no. 11: 2011-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1007943.
Marquis, Elizabeth, Rachel Guitman, Christine Black, Mick Healey, Kelly E. Matthews, and Lucie S. Dvorakova. 2019. “Growing Partnership Communities: What Experiences of an International Institute Suggest About Developing Student-Staff Partnership in Higher Education.” Innovations in Education and Teaching International 56, no. 2: 184–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2018.1424012.
Mathers, Bryan M. [@BryanMMathers]. 2015. The T-shaped Student. licenced under CC-BY-ND.
Mayes, Cliford, Ramona M. Cutri, Neil Goslin, and Fidel Montero. 2016. Understanding the Whole Student: Holistic Multicultural Education. Rowman & Littlefield.
Meeuwse, Kristi, and Diane Mason. 2017. Personalized Professional Learning for Educators: Emerging Research and Opportunities. IGI Global.
Mercer-Mapstone, Lucy D., and Louise J. Kuchel. 2016. Integrating Communication Skills into Undergraduate Science Degrees: A Practical and Evidence-Based Approach.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 4, no. 2: 105–118. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.4.2.11.
Mercer-Mapstone, Lucy D., and Kelly E. Matthews. 2017. “Student Perceptions of Communication Skills in Undergraduate Science at an Australian Research-Intensive University.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 42, no. 1: 98–114. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1084492.
Mountford-Zimdars, Anna, and Neil Harrison, eds. 2017. Access to Higher Education: Theoretical Perspectives and Contemporary Challenges. Society for Research into Higher Education and Routledge.
Muller, Kristyn, Kathleen Gradel, Susan Deane, Michele Forte, Ryan McCabe, Alexandra M. Pickett, Rob Piorkowski, Kim Scalzo, and Rachel Sullivan. 2019. Assessing Student Learning in the Online Modality. University of Illinois, Indiana University, and the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.
Norman, Zoncita. 2018. “Understanding the Effect of Service-Learning Experiences on Students' Cultural Competence in Higher Education.” Understanding the Effect of Service-Learning Experiences on Students' Cultural Competence in Higher Education.
OECD. 2015. “Franscati Manual: Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and Experimental Development.” http://uis.unesco.org/en/glossary-term/research-and-experimental-development-rd.
Oliver, Beverly, and Trina J. S. Jorre. 2019. “Graduate Attributes for 2020 and Beyond: Recommendations for Australian Higher Education Providers.” Higher Education Research & Development 37, no. 4: 821–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1446415.
O’Meara, KerryAnn, Aimee L. Terosky, and Anna Neumann. 2011. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Professional Growth, and Faculty Development. In Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered: Institutional Integration and Impact, edited by Pat Hutchings, Mary T. Huber, and Anthony Ciccone, 45–68. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Poole, Gary. 2013. “Square One: What is Research?” In The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in and across the Disciplines, edited by Kathleen McKinney, 135–51. Indiana University Press.
Potter, Michael K., and Brad Wuetherick. 2015. “Who Is Represented in the Teaching Commons?: SoTL through the Lenses of the Arts and Humanities.” Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 6, no. 2: 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2015.2.2.
Ren, Shuang, Ying Zhu, and Malcolm Warner. 2017. “Dilemmas Concerning the Employment of University Graduates in China.” Studies in Higher Education 42: 551–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1059803.
Robinson, Jennifer M., Melissa Gresalfi, April K. Sievert, Katherine D. Kearns, Tyler B. Christensen, and Miriam E. Zolan. 2013. “Talking across the Disciplines: Building Communicative Competence in a Cultidisciplinary Graduate-Student Seminar on Inquiry in Teaching and Learning. In The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in and across the Disciplines, edited by Kathleen McKinney, 186–99. Indiana University Press.
Saviano, Marialuisa, Francesco Polese, Francesco Caputo, and Leonard Walletzký. 2017. “The Contribution of Systems and Service Research to Rethinking Higher Education Programs: A T-shaped Model.” Sinergie Italian Journal of Management 35, no. 104: 51–70. https://doi.org/10.7433/s104.2017.03.
Schulz, Bernd. 2008. “The Importance of Soft Skills: Education Beyond Academic Knowledge.” Nawa Journal of Communication 2, no. 1: 146–54.
Smale, Bryan, and Margo Hilbrecht. 2016. Mapping the Canadian Index of Wellbeing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Canadian Index of Wellbeing and University of Waterloo.
Støren, Liv A., and Per O. Aamodt. 2010. “The Quality of Higher Education and Employability of Graduates.” Quality in Higher Education 16, no. 3: 297–313.
Swan, Karen. 2005. “A Constructivist Model for Thinking about Learning Online.” In Elements of Quality Online Education: Engaging Ccommunities, edited by John Bourne and Janet C. Moore, 13–30. Sloan Center.
Tang, Keow N. 2019. “Beyond Employability: Embedding Soft Skills in Higher Education.” Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology-TOJET 18, no. 2: 1–9.
Taylor, L. and Dawson T. 2006. In Evers, Frederick, and Shirley Hall with Judy Britnell, Bettina Brockerhoff-Macdonald, Lorraine Carter, Debra Dawson, Donald Kerr, Joy Mighty, Gillian Siddall, and Peter Wolf. 2009. “Faculty Engagement in Teaching Development Activities – Phase 1: Literature Review. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.” Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.3722&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
Trigwell, Keith. 2013. “Evidence of the Impact of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Purposes. Teaching and Learning Inquiry 1, no. 1: 95–105. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.95.
Trigwell, Keith, Elaine Martin, Joan Benjamin, and Michael Prosser. 2000. “Scholarship of Teaching: A Model. Higher Education Research & Development 19, no. 2: 155–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/072943600445628.
Trigwell, Keith, and Suzanne Shale. 2004. “Student Learning and the Scholarship of University Teaching.” Studies in Higher Education 29, no. 4: 523–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/0307507042000236407.
Trolian, Teniell L., Gwendolyn C. Archibald, and Elizabeth A. Jach. 2020. “Well-being and Student-Faculty Interactions in Higher Education.” Higher Education Research & Development, 1–15.
University of Wollongong (UOW). 2019. Compass. https://documents.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@dvce/documents/doc/uow261027.pdf.
Vailes, Fabienne. 2017. The Flourishing Student: Every Tutor’s Guide to Promoting Mental Health, Well-Being and Resilience in Higher Education. Practical Inspiration Publishing.
Van der Zwaan, Bert. 2017. Higher Education in 2040: A Global Approach. Amsterdam University Press.
Westover, Jonathan H. 2017. Globalization and Higher Education. Common Ground Publishing.
Wooley, Sarah E. 2013. “Constantly Connected: The Impact of Social Media and the Advancement in Technology on the Study Abroad Experience.” Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 4, no. 2.
Zaida, Joseph, and Val Rust, eds. 2016. Globalization and Higher Education Reforms. Springer.
Zou, Tracy. 2017, November 22. “Is Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) an Interdisciplinary Undertaking? Teaching and Learning Connections.” https://www.cetl.hku.hk/teaching-learning-cop/is-scholarship-of-teaching-and-learning-sotl-an-interdisciplinary-undertaking/.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Michelle J. Eady, Earle Abrahamson, Corinne Green, Mayi Arcellana-Panlilio, Lisa Hatfield, Nina Namaste
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
