Introduction to Volume 12 of&nbsp;Teaching &amp; Learning Inquiry

Mårtensson, Katarina

Schrum, Kelly

English

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CC-BY-NC License 4.0     This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons – Attribution License 4.0 International which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed. Katarina Mårtensson, LUND UNIVERSITY, katarina.martensson@ahu.lu.se Kelly Schrum, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, kschrum@gmu.edu   EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Between Saga and Enterprise: Anchoring Backwards and Striving Forwards    The two founding co-editors of Teaching & Learning Inquiry, Nancy Chick and Gary Poole, established the journal as ISSOTL’s venue for publishing scholarly work. They shaped the journal’s content, guidelines, visual representation, and ethos. That ethos in particular embraced and welcomed the diversity of disciplines, questions, methods, and contexts in the published SoTL-work. Furthermore, the ethos firmly relied on a developmental mindset for all reviews and thoughtful editorial feedback to authors, while at the same time safeguarding and securing the high quality of work that was ultimately published in TLI. This is a big part of the saga of TLI. The saga, according to Burton R. Clark (1972), is the members’ memories of previous events within an organization. The saga, inspired originally by medieval Icelandic and Nordic accounts, describes “a collective understanding of a unique accomplishment based on historical exploits of a formal organization, offering strong normative bonds within and outside the organization” (178). It can also be understood as “[T]he founders of the organisation or events considered significant for the organisation’s existence and uniqueness – its raison d’être” (Roxå and Mårtensson 2016, 11). In other words, the saga captures the stories we share about our past as well as the memories and people we cherish in understanding who we are today. We salute the saga of TLI. However, to avoid only lingering in the past, any organization also needs to look forward. Context changes, new knowledge is created, new values are negotiated, and new norms develop over time. These changes sometimes occur incrementally and sometimes rapidly, such as during the global pandemic that impacted humans around the world.  Etienne Wenger introduces the concept of “joint enterprise” (Wenger 1998) as a signifying feature of a community of practice when members engage together to scrutinize and continuously develop that practice. In our view as editors, therefore, the enterprise of TLI is to continue to publish SoTL-work in its widest sense: the result of individual and collaborative SoTL-inquiry in various disciplinary, institutional, and geographical contexts, SoTL-conceptualisations, debates and critique of the current state of SoTL, and meta-perspectives. Looking forward, we want to remind the SoTL community and TLI readers, authors, and reviewers of what Ernest Boyer (1990) wrote in the seminal work, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate:   The aim of education is not only to prepare students for productive careers but also to enable them to live lives of dignity and purpose; not only to generate new knowledge but also to channel that knowledge to humane ends; not merely to study government but to help shape a citizenry that can promote the public good. Thus, higher education’s vision must be widened if the [world] is to be rescued from problems that threaten to diminish permanently the quality of life. (119) Mårtensson, Schrum Mårtensson, Katarina, and Kelly Schrum. 2024. “Between Saga and Enterprise: Anchoring Backwards and Striving Forwards.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 12. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.12.1 2   This rings as true today as it did in 1990. As TLI has grown—while holding onto its saga and developing its enterprise—we as editors want to call for more SoTL-work, from all parts of the world, that embraces big questions as complex and messy as they may be. It is time to continue our rigorous and productive debate about the ways in which SoTL engages with and contributes to a global and inclusive understanding of higher education. In the year ahead, we will continue the changes we have implemented, such as the shift to rolling publication, publishing ISSOTL blog posts for each article, and featuring article images. We will also expand our engagement with new forms of scholarly communication, such as publishing website reviews, podcast reviews, peer-reviewed ISSOTL conference posters, and shorter pieces focused on SoTL in Process.  We will bid farewell to Editorial Team and Editorial Board members who are completing their terms with sincere appreciation for their contributions. At the same time, we welcome the incoming members.  Co-Editor Earle Abrahamson is professor in SoTL at the University of Hertfordshire (UK). Born in South Africa, he has worked across cultural, institutional, and international contexts to inspire learning. Throughout his career, he has championed the student voice and advocated for student-centred learning partnerships that move beyond the curriculum to develop students holistically.   Associate Editors Helga Dorner is associate professor and director at the Institute of Research on Adult Education and Knowledge Management at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary). She is an enthusiast for teaching and mentoring in higher education and enjoys facilitating discussion-based classes in the field of higher and adult education, organizational learning, knowledge, and change management.  Kris Knorr is an educational developer on the Scholarly Teaching Team at the MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation & Excellence in Teaching at McMaster University (Canada). He has worked in educational and faculty development as well as instructional design and is the recipient of the Educational Developer Caucus Leadership Award. His scholarly work focuses on peer mentorship, students as partners, and advancing SoTL.  Jill McSweeney is assistant director at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and an assistant professor of wellness at Elon University (US). She is an active scholar in the field of SoTL and the scholarship of educational development. Her research interests include supporting multi-disciplinary SoTL, the ethics of teaching and learning research, the use of space in learning, and modeling equity-minded practice in educational development.  Editorial Board (2024–2027) Dan Bernstein, University of Kansas (US) is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Kansas and former director of its Center for Teaching Excellence. He is past president of ISSOTL and of the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. BETWEEN SAGA AND ENTERPRISE Mårtensson, Katarina, and Kelly Schrum. 2024. “Between Saga and Enterprise: Anchoring Backwards and Striving Forwards.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 12. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.12.1 3  Nancy Chick, Rollins College (US) is director of the Endeavor Foundation Center for Faculty Development at Rollins College, past president of ISSOTL, and founding co-editor of Teaching & Learning Inquiry.  Johan Geertsema, National University of Singapore (Singapore) is associate professor in NUS College, National University of Singapore and co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development.  Oscar Jerez (Chile) is an academic in Health Sciences Education and director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile. He has served as an advisor for government and higher education entities in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa.   Angela Owusu-Ansah (Ghana) is provost at Ashesi University in Ghana and brings more than thirty years of experience in education in Africa and the United States. Her research interest is in impact evaluation and change in Africa's higher education.  Gary Poole (Canada) is professor emeritus at University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health, past president of ISSOTL, and founding co-editor of Teaching & Learning Inquiry.  Karin Watson (Australia) is director of education for the UNSW Sydney Pro-Vice Chancellor office, a Scientia Education Academy fellow, and senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture. She is also director of the UNSW Education Focussed Program and a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK).  Visit the TLI website to learn more!  Our goal as co-editors has been to build capacity for future growth and new leadership, and we look forward to continuing this work in the year ahead.  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES Katarina Mårtensson is former ISSOTL co-president, professor of higher education, and academic developer at the Division for Higher Education Development at Lund University (SWE) whose work focuses on collegiality, SoTL as a change strategy, and academic leadership.   Kelly Schrum is a professor of higher education at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia (USA) whose work focuses on SoTL, teaching and learning with technology, and digital humanities.  REFERENCES Boyer, Ernest. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation. Clark, Burton R. 1998. The Organizational Saga in Higher Education. Administrative Science Quarterly 17 (2): (178–84). https://doi.org/10.2307/2393952. Mårtensson, Schrum Mårtensson, Katarina, and Kelly Schrum. 2024. “Between Saga and Enterprise: Anchoring Backwards and Striving Forwards.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 12. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.12.1 4 Roxå, Torgny, and Katarina Mårtensson. (2011) 2013. “Understanding Strong Academic Microcultures – An Exploratory Study.” Report. Lund University. Available at: https://portal.research.lu.se/sv/publications/understanding-strong-academic-microcultures-an-exploratory-study. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.    Copyright for the content of articles published in Teaching & Learning Inquiry resides with the authors, and copyright for the publication layout resides with the journal. These copyright holders have agreed that this article should be available on open access under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited, and to cite Teaching & Learning Inquiry as the original place of publication. Readers are free to share these materials—as long as appropriate credit is given, a link to the license is provided, and any changes are indicated.     

Between Saga and Enterprise: Anchoring Backwards and Striving Forwards

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Between Saga and Enterprise: Anchoring Backwards and Striving Forwards

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