Scholarship of Teaching as Transformative Learning

The ensuing rich exploration, discussion, and debate in the literature sparked by Boyer's (1990) seminal monograph Scholarship Reconsidered, has led to the generallyaccepted adoption of the term "Scholarship of Teaching" to describe systematic and structured inquiry into teaching issues using accepted standards of scholarship to understand and change current practice.It is an evidence-based process that enables faculty members to use a variety of research strategies to investigate the link between teaching and learning in their own practice (Cross & Steadman, 1996).An inquiry often starts with the fundamental issue, opportunity, or problem related to teaching practice that a faculty member will transform into a researchable question.One of the more subtle yet significant developments as been the addition of "and Learning" to the scholarship of teaching and learning to reinforce the foundational viewpoint that there are tight and profound linkages between teaching and learning that cannot be explored separately (Hutchings and Shulman, 1999; Shulman, 1999;Healey, 2000).Nevertheless, there is an equally compelling reason for the existence of the "L" in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL).It reminds us that one of the primary benefits of engaging in systematic, structured, and scholarly inquiry into teaching practices is the opportunity to enhance one's own professional learning through the process of experiencing significant shifts in perspectives, in relationships, and in professional practices.Writing an article for a journal named Transformative Dialogue provides me with a timely opportunity to reflect on the theory of transformative learning and how it provides both a lens and an explanatory framework for understanding these shifts.Transformative learning theory focuses on the inter-relationship between personal change and learning.It seeks to explain how people can experience deep, dramatic shifts in perspectives, feelings, behaviours or actions in the process of learning.As Clark (1993, p.47) indicates: "Transformational learning shapes people: they are different afterward, in ways both they and others can recognize".Mezirow (2000;1997) suggests that the process of transformative learning involves changing frames of reference, habits of mind, and established patterns of behaviour through critical reflection, using discourse to scrutinize beliefs, taking action based on reflective insight, and critically assessing the outcomes.Although conceptualizations of the theory of transformational learning have evolved over the last twenty-seven years (Cranton & King, 2003: Baumgartner, 2001), many of the core concepts persist.We come to understand ourselves by making meaning of our experiences.In everyday life, we habitually reinforce and extend this meaning through the exercise of our values, assumptions, beliefs, and practices.Sometimes, we experience circumstances that cause us to question these perspectives and beliefs.