The Morphology of the SoTL Article: New Possibilities for the Stories that SoTL Scholars Tell About Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The folklorist Vladímir Propp identified a curious phenomenon in his study of 100 Russian fairy tales: despite their tremendous surface variety, they followed a single narrative structure or morphology. This article argues that the same phenomenon applies to SoTL articles: despite the tremendous variety of content and methods that SoTL articles evince, they have come to tell the same kind of story. They tell, over and over, a story of redemption. I identify two problems with the story of redemption, the first having to do with ethos (the character that an author projects to their readers), and the second having to do with plausibility. I propose an array of narrative possibilities to enable SoTL authors to tell other kinds of stories — possibilities based on problematizing rather than easily solving. I argue that these possibilities better realize how some of the foundational thinkers in SoTL wanted the field to evolve. While benefiting all SoTL practitioners, such an expansion of narrative possibilities will make the field a more welcoming place to humanities scholars in particular, many of whom share a skepticism about the possibility of linear progress and perpetual self-improvement.

The Stories We Tell

“…In her conclusion, Halpern proposes four alternative morphologies: “What Can't Be”: a story about a problem in teaching and learning that might be intractable and an exploration of why that might be. “Trade‐offs”: a story that considered how solving one problem in teaching and learning results in others. “The Limits of Individual Agency”: a story that considers the limits of an instructor's agency in solving a problem because of larger societal or institutional forces at play. “Just What Is”: a story that stops at “what is.” It does not judge whether the problem it discovers is intractable or subject to solution … It just problematizes. (Halpern, 2023, p. 11) …”

“…Halpern (2023, p. 5) discovers that there is, indeed, a master narrative for SoTL scholarship, which she labels “the never‐ending cycle of the SoTL redemption story.” As she puts it: “The existing SoTL morphology generates a potentially endless cycle wherein problems beget solutions beget new problems beget new solutions — a cycle of linear progress and constant movement.” And, we might ask, as the author herself asks, what's wrong with that? Isn't this how we, in teaching and learning centers, draw faculty in to use our services?…”

“…But, as Halpern (2023, pp. 8–9) asks, “is it plausible, if we consider SoTL articles in the aggregate, that every problem that arises in the world of teaching and learning can be (easily) overcome?” (The SoTL narrative also “excludes important experiences in teaching.” Halpern goes on to look to Randy Bass (the founding director of the center where I currently work) to find a similar conclusion to the one she is drawing – the importance of “problematization” when it comes to thinking about teaching and learning.…”