What if the scholarship of teaching and learning isn’t just about methods—but about mindset? In this episode, we explore Nancy Chick’s five moves for practicing a SoTL mindset.
See our extended episode notes at https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/a-sotl-mindset/.
What does it mean to approach teaching and learning research with a true SoTL mindset—one grounded not in certainty, but in curiosity and humility? This episode features an article on five moves for thinking, doing, and being in SoTL. The essay appears in the inaugural issue of SoTL Africa, an open-access journal.
Chick, Nancy L. 2026. “A SoTL Mindset: Paying Attention to What We Don’t (Yet) Know.” SoTL Africa 1 (1). https://journal.ashesi.edu.gh/index.php/SA/article/view/123
This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by Jessie L. Moore, Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Professor of Professional Writing & Rhetoric.
60-Second SoTL is produced by the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University.
Music: “Cryptic” by AudioCoffee.
Image in episode art by vecstock on Magnific
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Jessie L. Moore:
What does it mean to approach teaching and learning research with a true SoTL mindset—one grounded not in certainty, but in curiosity and humility? That’s the focus of this week’s 60-second SoTL from Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning. I’m Jessie Moore.
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In “A SoTL Mindset: Paying Attention to What We Don’t (Yet) Know,” Nancy Chick reflects on decades of experience in the scholarship of teaching and learning and offers a powerful framing: SoTL is not just a set of methods—it’s a way of thinking, doing, and being. Her article appears in SoTL Africa, a new open-access journal.
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Drawing on her global engagement with SoTL, Chick amplifies an approach called “epistemic responsibility”—an ethical commitment to recognizing the limits of our own perspectives and intentionally learning from contexts beyond our own.
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Sharing her own approach to epistemic responsibility, Chick introduces and illustrates five key moves of thinking, doing, and being in SoTL.
First, contextualizing reminds us that teaching and learning never happen in a vacuum. Every SoTL project is shaped by disciplinary, institutional, geographic, and historical forces. SoTL asks us to name and examine those forces and to question universal claims.
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Second, pedagogical humility invites us to acknowledge what we don’t know. Even experienced educators can’t assume that teaching automatically leads to learning or that our experiences accurately reflect what our current and future students bring to and need from our learning contexts. Instead, SoTL begins with questions and an openness to being surprised by what we learn.
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Third, embracing complexity pushes back against simple explanations. Learning is shaped by identity, emotion, power, and much more. Rather than searching for quick fixes, SoTL encourages us to sit with that complexity and continue asking deeper questions.
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Fourth, multidisciplinary thinking highlights the value of interweaving disciplinary ways of knowing. While SoTL often begins in individual scholars’ home disciplines, it grows through dialogue across fields—generating new insights and more flexible approaches to studying teaching and learning. Of course, Chick also acknowledges that multidisciplinary thinking can be disorienting.
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And finally, collegiality underscores that SoTL is fundamentally relational. It’s not just about individual inquiry—it’s about learning with and from others, grounded in generosity, humility, and listening.
Together, Chick suggests, these moves form lenses for understanding and navigating the rich diversity of the scholarship of teaching in learning across geographic and disciplinary contexts.
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In her essay, Chick walks readers through how she applies these five moves to her own efforts to learn more about SoTL in the global south, with a focus on articles from SoTL in the South, another open-access journal.
Ultimately, Chick argues that SoTL is a practice of paying attention—to contexts that shape teaching and learning, to our emerging inquiry questions, and to the limits of our own knowledge.
To learn more about these five key moves for thinking, doing, and being in SoTL, visit our show notes for a link to the open access article.
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Jessie L. Moore:
Join us for our next episode of 60-second SoTL from Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning for another snapshot of recent scholarship of teaching and learning. Learn more about the Center at www.CenterForEngagedLearning.org.
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