Open Access13. Have You, My Little Serpents, a New Skin? Transforming English Studies and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Author(s) -
Lee Easton,
Kelly Hewson
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
collected essays on learning and teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2368-4526
DOI - 10.22329/celt.v5i0.3453
Subject(s) - scholarship of teaching and learning , scholarship , knight , sociology , pedagogy , tacit knowledge , reflection (computer programming) , mathematics education , critical reflection , teaching method , epistemology , psychology , teaching and learning center , philosophy , computer science , political science , physics , astronomy , law , programming language
King and Knight (2010) argue that English Studies' instructors must "articulate and develop their tacit assumptions [about English teaching] and create a discipline-grounded idiom for pedagogical research and reflection" (p. 323). We suggest that the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) invites English educators to reflect more deeply about the assumptions upon which our favoured methodologies are based. At the same time, SoTL's often uncritical reliance on students' umarked voices for many of its insights troubles us. We suggest that while the scholarship of teaching and learning can provide the necessary structure for systematic reflection about English Studies' pedagogies, SoTL would benefit from a more substantial engagement with what English Studies calls theory. In so doing, SoTL can add another critical question to its agenda: "For whom do these practices work?"