Key ideas

Description of how SoTL is bound in the disciplines, and the “trading zone” where researchers met and exchange ideas, tools, and vocabulary

This language, which we are choosing to call a discipline's “style,” comprises, at its core, what Joseph Schwab so elegantly distin­guished as substantive and syntactic structures: the “conceptions that guide inquiry” and the “pathways of enquiry [scholars] use, what they mean by verified knowledge and how they go about this verification” (1964: 25, 21).

Scholars build on the tools and analytics frameworks of their disciplines to research teaching

• it is what they have available, how they think
• it's a way of gaining legitimacy for the research within the field
• it's a way of communicating more effectively with others in the same field
• it's (sometimes) the most appropriate methods to investigate teaching in that specific field

The challenge is communicating across disciplines, sharing findings, etc.

There is a gap between educational researchers who want to understand basic issues, such as the nature of mathematical thinking, and the interests of teaching faculty, who want to know what works.

This story is, of course, about the strength of disciplinary styles in shaping the scholarship of teaching and learning. But it is also a story about the emergence of a “trading zone” among the disciplines, where scholars are busy simplifying, translating, telling, and persuading “foreigners” to hear their stories and try their wares.

In this zone, one finds scholars of teaching and learn­ing seeking advice, collaborations, references, methods, and col­leagues to fill in whatever their own disciplinary communities can­ not or will not provide. Their goals are to do better by their stu­dents, and they are willing (within limits) to enter the trading zone and buy, beg, borrow, or steal the tools they need to do the job.