Re-positioning SoTL toward the T-shaped Community

Abstract

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.

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

“…It is our contention that as stated by many SoTL researchers, such as Boyer (1990), Eady et al (2021), Hoon and Looker (2013), Huber and Morreale (2002), Kwo (2007), Looker (2018), andReano et al (2019), there cannot be one overarching definition of SoTL. One of the drawbacks of providing a definition for a concept such as SoTL is the risk of being too prescriptive or too broad, or of getting bogged down in definitional contours in pursuit of definitional precision.…”

Academic's perceptions of work-integrated learning in non-vocational disciplines

“…However, as previous research suggests (Whelan, 2017), where WIL hasn't been typically present, academics may not have seen the benefits of WIL for developing the student as a whole and providing important links to their career development learning. A new lens to observe WIL is through the T-shaped student model where the focus of universities is not just about acquiring discipline specific knowledge, but also about fostering the development of skills that support the learner as a whole person (Eady et al, 2021). In this way, students gain a depth of knowledge of their discipline in their vertical axis of the "T," with an equally important emphasis placed on a range of holistic skills including communication, teamwork, attitudes and employability in the horizontal axis of the "T" through cross-domain skills and attitudes.…”

“…However, as previous research suggests (Whelan, 2017), where WIL hasn't been typically present, academics may not have seen the benefits of WIL for developing the student as a whole and providing important links to their career development learning. A new lens to observe WIL is through the T-shaped student model where the focus of universities is not just about acquiring discipline specific knowledge, but also about fostering the development of skills that support the learner as a whole person (Eady et al. , 2021).…”