Research Paradigms Underpinning Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Papers

Abstract

In this second edition of this chapter, the authors re-examine the question of paradigms underpinning contemporary Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoTL) research. Focusing on the same journals from the original sample, the authors applied the same methodological tools to the new sample which comprised randomly selected articles published in 2018. The authors identified the paradigm underpinning each article by looking at the stated or implied intent of the article's authors, the drivers of their research (axiology), the nature of the knowledge/understanding developed from their research (epistemology), the literature and methods used, and the outcomes of their work. Using the classification of research paradigms employed in this book, the neo-positivist, inductive mode emerged as the dominant paradigm in both journals, accounting for over half of the papers in both the individual and combined samples. The findings are discussed in terms of their application to future SoTL research.