2026 SoTL Symposium

The theme of the 2026 SoTL Symposium is Brave Scholarship: SoTL as Practice, Intervention, and Influence. At a moment when higher education - and the world at large - are experiencing profound uncertainty and transformation, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning offers a powerful space for courageous inquiry and collective action. Across higher education, scholars of teaching and learning are increasingly called upon to work with courage—asking difficult questions, experimenting with new pedagogies, and challenging assumptions about how learning happens. Our 2026 Symposium theme recognizes SoTL as a space where inquiry, reflection, and community come together to support meaningful change in teaching and learning.

This theme encourages participants to explore how SoTL can function as a powerful act of intentional practice, intervention, and influence. Through systematic inquiry into teaching and learning, SoTL scholars examine how educational environments shape what is possible for students and educators alike. The 2026 SoTL Symposium invites us to consider how SoTL can act as both an intellectual response to turbulent times and a form of scholarly resistance and reform—generating knowledge that challenges assumptions, opening new possibilities for learning, and strengthening the role of higher education as a space for curiosity, creativity, and critical thought.

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What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)?

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is the developing field of original research & scholarship about teaching and learning practice specifically in the context of higher education. It is conducted by scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, who are interested in understanding student learning, innovations in teaching practice, and transformation of higher education.

The Gift of Our Name

The Mokakiiks Centre for SoTL was previously the Institute for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. In 2020, we were incredibly honoured to have been gifted a Blackfoot name, Mokakiiks. This name, gifted by Miiksika’am, Elder Clarence Wolfleg, means a lodge for wisdom. In the virtual naming ceremony, Elder Miiksika’am explained how to think about this lodge as not a static place for the accumulation of knowledge, but rather a gathering place of wise people, who get together to continue learning and then share their wisdom with future generations. We cannot think of a better aspiration for SoTL.