Author Reflections on Belonging

As a group of multi-disciplinary scholars and ICWG collaborators, we wanted to reflect on our own stories of belonging as part of our research process. One of the great appeals of SoTL is the important place that reflection, as a scholarly process, holds within the field alongside more systematic studies. Indeed, SoTL’s self-reflexivity as a field that embraces criticality and continual reflection on its past, present, and future is supportive of a culture of belonging. We decided to pause our project planning and data collection at ISSOTL24, which included the distribution of our survey and engagement with interview participants, to reflect on our own journeys – how we came to SoTL, what values and experiences have shaped our trajectories, and how we’ve experienced (or struggled with) a sense of belonging in the field.

While working together during the pre-conference period, we set aside time to explore personal perspectives on experiences of belonging. We developed two questions that could guide our reflections:

These questions opened the door to honest, varied, and often deeply personal stories as we wrote individually over a one-hour period. Some of us found a strong sense of belonging early on, while others are still navigating where—and how—we fit within SoTL. What emerged was not one shared experience, but a collection of voices that reflect both the complexity and the potential of belonging within the SoTL and ISSOTL communities.

As we read through one another’s stories, we recognized the unique aspects of our experiences in SoTL and ISSOTL, the strands that represented our individual journeys. However, we also identified many common threads that united our journeys and, in many cases, also linked us more closely to the experiences of our participants. Here are the main themes that stood out.