Principles of good practice in SoTL

SoTL can be compared in many ways to academic research, but making it feasible for regular academic teachers who have research interests of their own means we need to accept a broader range of ambition in SoTL work and the variation that brings to the products of SoTL. It is important, however, to maintain a set of fundamental principles to which SoTL work should adhere, so that it can be considered credible.

Peter Felten (2013) argues that good practice in SoTL involves work that is:

    1. Inquiry focused on student learning
    2. Grounded in context
    3. Methodologically sound
    4. Conducted in partnership with students
    5. Appropriately public

 

 
Download doing SoTL slides for download.pdf

 

The video considers an example that considers how you would approach a SoTL project if one of your values in teaching is that students should be active in lectures. Here's how this might look in each of Felten's five principles:

1. Inquiry focused on student learning
One way to get students active in lectures is to use in-class discussions regularly. A suitable learning-focused question to ask could take the form of: "What do my students learn from in-class discussions?"

2. Grounded in context
First, consider your local teaching context. This includes considering the culture at your institution or division or program, as well as your students' prior experience with in-class discussions. These factors will be important for considering the foundation your work rests on and decisions you need to make about planning your teaching, giving your students instructions, and offering them opportunities to practice discussing in class.

There is also a pedagogical context. Perhaps you are interested in using in-class discussions to help students tackle threshold concepts (Meyer and Land, 2003)). A threshold concept is one that can be troublesome, counterintuitive, difficult to learn, but that transforms a student’s understanding or perspective once she learns it. It’s a sort of portal that students pass through, involving not only a change in their perception of the subject, but often also a change in their perception of themselves as they relate to the subject. Here, discussions would require students to negotiate their understanding of a concept, rather than accepting a single explanation from you, the teacher who is already an expert in the topic.

3. Methodologically sound
The sort of approach you take to gathering and analyzing evidence should be credible and reasonable. It would not be suitable to look at final exam results, for example, since the final exam is too far removed from in-class discussions, even if the discussions do help students learn concepts that are important for a final exam. Instead, you might use classroom assessment techniques (Cross and Angelo, 1993) like in-class polls and minute papers to collect more immediate information about what happens during and after in-class discussions. 

When analyzing your evidence in this example, it is not very likely you will be able to make a credible quantitative claim from a single class or even a whole course, unless you designed your study carefully and specifically to generate some sort of reliable quantitative data. It is a good idea to let your actual results and your own competence guide your analysis.

4. Conducted in partnership with students
The idea here is to integrate student voices into your study. You could start by looking at or soliciting student feedback about in-class discussions in general. You might contact previous students to identify concepts you might focus on using in-class discussions. You could also enlist some previous students to help you analyze and interpret your material. 

5. Appropriately public
It might not be relevant for you to try to publish your results in a peer-reviewed journal. Instead, you might organize a seminar for your closest teaching colleagues, where you can use your findings to start a conversation about making better use of in-class discussions. It is possible that some colleagues would be interested in starting a larger project about the topic, which you could use to strengthen your program more broadly. Perhaps this work would end up being suitable for a presentation at a pedagogical conference or publication in a peer-reviewed journal. But it could also stay within the borders of your own teaching context and focus specifically on building a stronger and more effective local culture of teaching and learning.

 

Further reading:

Cross, K.P. and Angelo, T.A. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for Faculty (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Open access: Scanned PDF of first edition available here: https://eric.ed.gov/?q=classroom+assessment+techniques&ft=on&ff1=autCross%2c+K.+Patricia&id=ED317097 Links to an external site.

Fanghanel, J. (2013). Going public with pedagogical inquiries: SoTL as a methodology for faculty professional development. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 59–70.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.59 Links to an external site.

Felten, P. (2013). Principles of Good Practice in SoTL. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 121–125.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.121 Links to an external site.

Meyer, J. and Land, R. (2003). Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. In C. Rust (Ed.), Improving Student Learning: Theory and Practice - Ten Years On. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043790902987410 Links to an external site.