Scholarship of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership (SoTL/SoEL)

SoEL focuses on engaging networked improvement communities that are grounded in systematic rigorous educational inquiry and dissemination in peer-reviewed fora.

The Scholarship for Education and Learning stands as an invaluable resource for institutions like NYUAD. Engaging in this community has not only laid a robust foundation for my research but has also fostered my personal development in gaining a deeper understanding of the university. I firmly believe that this program is crucial, relevant, and timely. As our institution progresses, such programs not only play a role in establishing best practice for our students but it also aids us, both as individuals and as a community, in taking responsibility for excellence in educational leadership.

The opportunity to participate in this in-depth professional development program in collaboration with the NYU Abu Dhabi Hillary Ballon Center for Teaching and Learning (HBCTL) was truly transformative for me. The curriculum afforded me guidance in the development of a project from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning perspective. However, the program was so much more than that. It provided a very structured and rigorous course with weekly lectures and access to a very rich and thorough library of information on different themes in the SoTL discipline. It was essentially a crash course on SoTL and the Scholarship of Educational Leadership (SoEL). The course leader, Dr. Harry Hubball, provided tremendous support and insight and guided my research question development. In addition to writing a research proposal and creating a presentation of said proposal, we also wrote reflection pieces on the didactic materials and even had an opportunity to create an educational dossier. All of these materials have received formative and summative reviews with detailed feedback and will receive an upcoming external review by individuals outside of this course.  This experience exceeded my imagination in its depth and quality. I’m forever grateful for this opportunity and cherish the memories of my experience at NYUAD.

When I reflect on the SoEL program, the very essence of differentiating between the three phrases: Scholarly approaches to teaching and learning, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and Scholarship of Educational Leadership (SoEL), was the first fascinating enlightenment. Being an experimentalist, an engineer and a scientist, most of the methods of inquiry we follow in our disciplines are very different from what I learnt in the SoEL Inquiry, Methodology, and Methods. While the research design, analysis and dissemination are quite common to various fields within academia, the methodology and methods are very different. Starting with the two jargons, ontology and epistemology – I then went on to understand the different paradigms such as the postpositivist, constructivist, critical theorist, and pragmatic paradigm. While it was a little difficult at first, I started to reflect deeply on these paradigms. The theme on pedagogical leadership was very practical and when considered in diverse university contexts, it was deeply thought provoking. Overall, this program benefited me greatly in opening my eyes to pedagogical research. I am eager to explore how I can implement the knowledge I gained into the STEM curriculum, education and leadership in the coming years.