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The policy governing research ethics in Canada is contained in the Tri-Council Policy Statement on the Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS 2). All research conducted involving human participants must undergo an ethics review. Mount Royal University’s Human Research Ethics Board (HREB) conducts all such reviews.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has a special relationship to human research ethics, in the sense that SoTL is usually done within the context of a teacher-student relationship. This relationship is defined by the TCPS 2 as a “dual-role” relationship. Protections must be put into place to prevent students feeling unduly obligated to participate in the SoTL research of their instructors, and to prevent any perceived repercussions of participation (or non-participation).
Dual role of researchers and their associated obligations (e.g., acting as both a researcher and a therapist, health care provider, caregiver, teacher, advisor, consultant, supervisor, student, or employer) may create conflicts, undue influences, power imbalances, or coercion that could affect relationships with others and affect decision-making
At the Institute for SoTL, we take this responsibility very seriously. The following resources are provided to help you design your SoTL study with rigorous attention to the ethical dimension. If you need further advice, please contact the Academic Director of the SoTL institute for general insight into how to design an ethically appropriate SoTL study. For particular advice related to the HREB review process, contact the Research Compliance Officer at hreb@mtroyal.ca.
To view the Tri-Council Policy Statement, or to take the online ethics tutorial:
HREB forms (filled out using the ROMEO system):
https://www.mtroyal.ca/Research/FacultyResearchScholarship/ConductYourResearch/index.htm
Resource created by Lisa Fedoruk at the Taylor Institute at the University of Calgary:
https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/ethics-scholarship-teaching-and-learning
Resource created by the Research Ethics Board at Dalhousie University
https://sites.google.com/view/
Becoming a SoTL scholar involves reckoning with one’s academic identity since SoTL occupies a kind of “borderland” or liminal space outside of traditional disciplines. For faculty members who become interested in SoTL, this new space is typically disorienting at first, as the scholar grows from these initial moments to ultimately finding a place in the SoTL community. This book explores what happens after that phase after one has come to embrace the identity of a SoTL scholar.
A comprehensive guide for conducting SoTL research, this book illustrates a broad array of contexts and a spectrum of research methodologies to expand, enrich, and support both novice and experienced SoTL practitioners and researchers in answering the contexts and questions at the heart of teaching and learning.
Through its impact on students in their lives in and beyond college, and recognizing the porous boundary between the classroom and the "real world," SoTL can offer insights into broader societal issues, offer evidence of activities that facilitate everyday learning, promote intrinsic motivation, better support people from underrepresented communities, or uncover the ripple effects of changing educational environments. It has the potential to deliver messages of broad public interest. This book extends the field-building work of Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered and Hutchings, Huber, and Ciccone's The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered by taking a new look at SoTL's ubiquitous call to "go public."
SoTL in action: illuminating critical moments of practice
By unpacking SoTL processes through rich narratives that illustrate what they look like, this collection offers inspiration to anyone at any stage of engagement with SoTL. Nancy Chick has selected contributions that compellingly illuminate why their authors focused on a particular critical moment, the questions they asked as they refined their approaches, and the theoretical and observational tools they employed to conduct their research. Each introduces a specific critical moment in doing SoTL, taking the reader through the author’s reflections, concerns, and choices in doing meaningful SoTL work."
The scholarship of teaching and learning in and across the disciplines
The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) began primarily as a discipline-based movement, committed to exploring the signature pedagogical and learning styles of each discipline within higher education, with little exchange across disciplines. As the field has developed, new questions have arisen concerning cross-disciplinary comparison and learning in multidisciplinary settings This volume by a stellar group of experts provides a state-of-the-field review of recent SoTL scholarship within a range of disciplines and offers a stimulating discussion of critical issues related to interdisciplinarity in teaching, learning, and SoTL research.