Gary Creasey; Psychology; Patricia Jarvis, Psychology; Denise Faigao, Psychology; Kellen Vail, Psychology
Despite the considerable success of research related to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at this university and beyond, there are somewhat surprising tensions related to this kind of research that are not limited to this institution. For instance, although there are highly reputable outlets for SoTL work in the form of high-impact journals (discipline- and SoTL-based) and books backed by major publishers (e.g., Anchor Press; Erlbaum; Jossey-Bass), some remain skeptical of SoTL research, claiming some of this work is methodologically weak. Grudgingly, the panel agrees with the skeptics that there is considerable work in this domain that could be strengthened. In an effort to determine how this might be accomplished, they contacted more than 70 editors who work for discipline-based pedagogical journals or cross-disciplinary topical pedagogical periodicals and asked them to provide feedback on the most common mistakes or pitfalls that they have witnessed in SoTL studies. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the common themes of these interviews and discuss strategies that could alleviate these problems before even initiating SoTL research.
