Multidisciplinary Faculty Learning Communities for SoTL: Rethinking “Rigor”
Abstract
The author revisits the rigor vs. relevance debate in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) by applying theories of reflective professional practice to the dynamics of a faculty learning community. Cases from two disciplinary perspectives illustrate how frameworks for setting and solving ill-structured problems can foster effective classroom research by eliciting from faculty the same meta-cognitive adeptness that they desire from their students. Qualitative evidence derived from 13 annual learning-community groups suggests that such work is facilitated by multi-disciplinary cohorts, which enable both disruption of and liberation from ingrained habits of mind through engagement of diverse epistemologies and analogic thinking.
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