Packing up the Big Tent
Que(e)rying and Decolonizing SoTL
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/isotl602Keywords:
decolonization, queer theory, Approaches to SoTL, Critical SoTLAbstract
Our reflection begins with our presentation at the 2013 Banff Symposium in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning where we undertook a critique of the “big tent” metaphor that had thus far characterised much of SoTL’s thinking about its inherent diversity. We acknowledged that as proposed by its originators— Huber & Hutchings (2005) —the “big tent” of SoTL was intended as a capacious space, with room for all who wished to enter. Reflecting on this presentation, we argue that the celebratory big tent with its focus on better teaching and learning may helped SoTL become a more respectable academic enterprise. However, this success has entailed ignoring approaches that often bring into view the challenges of teaching “difficult knowledge” as well as students’ desires to remain ignorant of such knowledge. Now, in Canada at least, we argue the Big Tent must be packed away in order to focus on the messier aspects of teaching and learning. We offer some thoughts on what a decolonizing SoTL might look like.
Downloads
References
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute.
Attas, R. (2019). Strategies for settler decolonization: Decolonial pedagogies in a popular music analysis course. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 49(1), 125–139. https://doi.org/10.7202/1060827ar
Attas, R., Lindstrom, G., Easton, L., & Yeo, M. (2021). Nitawahsin Nanni and disrupting journeys. Transformative Dialogues, 14(1), 81–104. https://journals.kpu.ca/index.php /td/article/view/1465
Barker, A. (2009). The contemporary reality of Canadian imperialism: Settler colonialism and the hybrid colonial state. American Indian Quarterly, 33(3), 325. https://doi.org/10/1353/aiq.0.0054
Batson, C. R., Malouin, H., Kelly, R., & Taylor, Z. (2018). Freak and queer: Towards a queer circus, queer hatchings, monsters in the cabinet, and queering circus sessions. Performance Matters, 4(1–2), 163–199.
Battiste, M. (2005). Discourses of difference: Cognitive imperialism, culturalism and diversity. [PowerPoint slides]. https://education.usask.ca/documents/profiles/battiste/diversity.pdf
Battiste, M. (2011). Cognitive imperialism and decolonizing research: Modes of transformation. In C. Reilly, V. Russell, L.K. Chehayl, & M. M. McDermott (Eds.), Surveying borders, boundaries, and contested spaces in curriculum and pedagogy. (xv–xxviii). Information Age Publishing.
Behari-Leak, K. (2020). Toward a borderless, decolonized, socially just, and inclusive Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 8(1), 4–23. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.1.2
Bennett, R., Hobson J., Jones A., Martin-Lynch P., Scutt C., Strehlow K., & Veitch S. (2016). Being chimaera: A monstrous identity for SoTL academics. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(2), 217–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2015.1087473
Britzman, D. (1998). Lost subjects, contested objects: Toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning. State University of New York Press.
Chick, N. L. (2014). Methodologically sound under the “big tent”: An ongoing conversation. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2014.080201
Chick, N. (2013). Difference, privilege, and power in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The value of humanities SoTL. In K. McKinney (Ed.), The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in and across the disciplines (pp. 15–33). Indiana University Press.
Chng, H. H., & Looker, P. (2013). On the margins of SoTL discourse: An Asian perspective. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 131–145. https://doi.org/10.20343 /teachlearninqu.1.1.131
Duggan, L. (2002). The new homonormativity: The sexual politics of neoliberalism. In R. Castronovo & D. D. Nelson (Eds.), Materializing democracy: Toward a revitalized cultural politics (pp. 175–194). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307 /j.ctv125jgrq.10
Easton, L., & Gannon, S. (2019). Governing sexualities: Interrogating settler sexualities in Canada. In J. E. Pulis and P. Angelini (Eds.), Rethinking who we are: Critical reflections on human diversity in Canada (pp. 2–49). Fernwood Books.
Easton, L., & Hewson, K. (2013). How, exactly, does the beaver bite back?: The case of Canadian students viewing Paul Haggis’s Crash. In G. Roberts & D. Stirrup (Eds.), Parallel encounters: Culture at the Canada-US border (pp. 91–108). Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Easton, L., & Hewson, K. (2021). Negotiating the nation through superheroes: Making the Canadian Shield visible. Imagining SoTL, 1(1), 41–57. https://mrujs.mtroyal.ca/index.php /is/article/view/530/393
Easton, L., Lexier, R., Lindstrom, G., & Yeo, M. (2019). Uncovering the complicit: The decoding interview as a decolonizing practice. In L. Quinn (Ed.), Reimagining curriculum: Spaces for disruption (pp. 149–77). African Sun Media.
Halberstam, J. (2011). The queer art of failure. Duke University Press.
Hewson, K., & Easton, L. (2013, November 9). From critical to radical: SoTL approaches and student voices. Presentation. 2013 Symposium on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Banff, Canada.
Huber, M. T., & Hutchings, P. (2005). The advancement of learning: Building the teaching commons. Jossey Bass.
Huber, M. T., & Morreale, S. P. (2002). Disciplinary styles in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Stylus.
Kauanui, J. K. (2016). “A structure, not an event”: Settler colonialism and enduring indigeneity. Lateral 5(1). https://doi.org/10.25158/L5.1.7
Manathunga, C. (2018). Decolonising the curriculum: Southern interrogations of time, place and knowledge. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, 2(1), 95–111. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v2i1.23
McKinney, K. (2006). Attitudinal and structural factors contributing to challenges in the work of the scholarship of teaching and learning. New Directions for Institutional Research 2006(129), 37–50. https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.170
McKinney, K. (2014, November 4). The “big tent”: Benefits and limitations. The SOTL Advocate. https://illinoisstateuniversitysotl.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/the-big-tent-benefits-and-limitations/
Miller-Young, J., & Yeo, M. (2015). Conceptualizing and communicating SoTL: A framework for the field. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 3(2), 37–53. https://doi.org/10.20343 /teachlearninqu.3.2.37
Morgensen, S. L. (2010). Settler homonationalism: Theorizing settler colonialism within queer modernities. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1–2), 105–131. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2009-015
Morgensen, S. L. (2011). The biopolitics of settler colonialism: Right here, right now. Settler Colonial Studies 1(1), 52–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2011.10648801
Ostroski, C. (2018). Building and enjoying the “big tent” together: A review of ISSOTL17. International Journal for Students as Partners, 2(2), 166–168. https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v2i2.3629
Pinar, W. F. (2003). Queer theory in education. Journal of Homosexuality, 45(2–4), 357–360. https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v45n02_21
Pitt, A., & Britzman, D. (2003). Speculations on qualities of difficult knowledge in teaching and learning: An experiment in psychoanalytic research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(6), 755–776. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839030001632135
Rasmussen, M. L., & Allen, L. (2014). What can a concept do? Rethinking education’s queer assemblage. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(3), 433–443. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014.888846
Simmons, N., Abrahamson, E., Deshler, J. M., Kensington-Miller, B., Manarin, K., Morón-García, S., Oliver, C., & Renc-Roe, J. (2013). Conflicts and configurations in a liminal space: SoTL scholars’ identity development. Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal, 1(2), 9–21. https://doi.org/10.1979/teachlearninqu.1.2.9
Simmons, N., & Marquis, E. (2017). Defining the scholarship of teaching and learning. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2017.2.2
Simon, R. I. (2011). A shock to thought: Curatorial judgment and the public exhibition of “difficult knowledge.” Memory Studies, 4(4), 432–449. https://doi.org/10.1177 /1750698011398170
Simpson, A. (2011). Settlement’s secret. Cultural Anthropology, 26(2), 205–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01095.x
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1), 1–40.
Vowel, C. (2020, February 28). Settling on a name: Names for non-Indigenous Canadians. https://apihtawikosisan.com/2020/02/settling-on-a-name-names-for-non-indigenous-canadians/
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240
Woolford, A., & Benvenuto, J. (2015). Canada and colonial genocide. Journal of Genocide Research, 7(4), 373–390.
Yeo, M. (n.d.). Case #20: Faculty learning community of Indigenizing the academy. https://teaching.utoronto.ca/sotl/scholarship-of-leading/indigenizing-the-academy/
Yeo, M., Haggarty, L., Ayoungman, K., Wida, W. (Snow, T.), Pearl, C., Stogre, T., & Waldie, A. (2019). Unsettling faculty minds: A faculty learning community on Indigenization. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, 2019(157), 27–41. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20328
Zembylas, M. (2014). Theorizing “difficult knowledge” in the aftermath of the “affective turn”: Implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(3), 390–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/curi.12051
Zinga, D., & Styres, S. (2011). Decolonizing curriculum: Student resistances to anti-oppressive pedagogy. Power and Education, 11(1), 30–50. https://doi.org/10.1177 /1757743818810565
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Kelly Hewson, Lee Easton
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
