Document Type
Book Chapter
Scholarship Type
Faculty Scholarship
Publication Date
4-22-2024
Abstract
This inquiry began in 2019 as part of my own “threshold crossing” in returning to a prior institution in a new role. I was moving across institution types, departing a large, research-intensive land grant university to a small, private liberal arts & sciences institution, both located in the southern United States. I returned into a newly-crafted role and welcomed the blend of challenge and comfort “seeing a place again for the first time” – to borrow from T. S. Eliot – would bring in accepting the invitation. Although there were many “knowns” in the move, I was unknowingly stepping into my own liminal space.
In over 100+ hours of semi-structured conversations with former colleagues at my “new” institution, talk of teaching was virtually absent – a disorienting insight, given how much teaching talk – between colleagues across disciplines, even – had previously been the lifeblood of casual conversation. Department chairs located tenure and promotion decisions as a space where teaching conversations occurred, but also noted the lack of informal, interdisciplinary teaching conversation across programs and departments that had been more prevalent less than five years earlier. While departmental conversations about teaching are vital, interdisciplinary teaching explorations are key to decoding the disciplines and revealing, rather than reifying, the expert blind spots that can impede student learning.
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Recommended Citation
Boyd, Diane E., "Chapter 12 Embracing Liminality: Tools for Negotiating Identity Shift in New-to-SoTL Practitioners" (2024). Open Access Fund Publications. 33.
https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/oa-fund/33