SoTL: A mechanism for understanding and finding solutions to teaching and learning challenges

Abstract

The paper argues that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a necessary strategy for mitigating the many teaching and learning challenges in South African higher education that prevent a large proportion of students from achieving academic success. Research suggests that well-structured and coordinated educational practices that are valued and supported by institutions are crucial for student success. While there exists a very useful body of scholarship on teaching and learning in higher education in South Africa, the persistently high levels of student failure and dropout across the system points to the need for more research into teaching and learning dilemmas in diverse institutional, disciplinary and classroom contexts. I argue that if more academics are to conduct SoTL, it has to be valued and supported by institutions and academic leaders. Even though more SoTL is needed to contribute to solving the many pedagogic dilemmas South African academics encounter, it is counter-productive to expect all academics to conduct SoTL. Rigorous SoTL requires immersion in educational ideas, concepts, theories and research processes. Many academics may not have the time or inclination to work in the area of SoTL, but I suggest that all must be scholarly teachers of their disciplines.
 Keywords: Scholarly teaching, Domains of SoTL, Collaborative SoTL Participatory parity, CurriculumHow to cite this article:Vorster, J-A. 2020. SoTL: A mechanism for understanding and finding solutions to teaching and learning challenges. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 4(2): 6-21. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v4i2.149.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Situating Some Aspects of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in South African Higher Education Within Southern Theories

“…To address SoTL from a South African perspective, one needs to acknowledge that the context may be mired in meaning ambiguity (Pitso, 2013). In the view of Booth and Woollacott (2017), as cited in Vorster (2020), it is necessary to be explicit about the context when conceptualizing and writing about SoTL research. If one looks at the South African system of higher education, one notices some unique factors that have negative impacts on universities.…”

“You become academic royalty once you’ve published”: A social practice exploration of identity in academic writing

“…Instead of acting as an incentive and motivator, pressures to publish appears to engender responses of reticence and reluctance to participate in writing for publication. Vorster (2020) notes that some key characteristics of SOTL research is its consideration of context and the requirements to attend to practitioners' reflective accounts of their teaching and research practices. By centring the social and structural realities that frame and give shape to our identities in writing, while also reflecting on our roles through empirical research, the study and its findings display such attributes.…”

“…Extended curriculum programmes (ECP) have been a feature of the teaching and learning support agenda at most local universities for almost two decades, yet students and academics in this domain remain on the university periphery. Academics are frequently assigned marginal status due in part to low publication outputs in ECP as they tend to engage in other research dissemination practices, like conference and seminar presentations and their research takes a decidedly SOTL rather than disciplinary focus (Leibowitz & Bozalek, 2015;Leibowitz, 2017;Vorster, 2020). The book was an attempt to create a publication platform for ECP academics, support the shift from "scholarly teaching" to "scholarship" (Naidoo & Thesen, 2018:110-111) and strengthen the significance of academics' "teacherly identity…through the engagement with and in the scholarship of teaching and learning" (Vorster, 2020:10).…”