“It’s hard to be wise. Let’s talk about it”: Embracing stories of struggle in teaching and learning

Dr. Faye Halpern, PhD, wants to talk about failure. Through her award-winning article, she asks educators to share their experiences of failure, continued struggle, and insurmountable systemic barriers. In doing so, she wants to diversify the stories we tell about teaching and learning.

“I want to see articles and talks about people experiencing failure in the classroom or things that they continue to struggle with. I don’t think teaching is just a matter of one triumph after another.”

Halpern, an associate professor in the Department of English, recognized a theme of redemption in the stories told within the Scholarship of Teaching Learning (SoTL) discipline. Focusing specifically on SoTL articles, Halpern explains that the trend towards redemption asks educators to always arrive at a solution to the teaching and learning issue discussed. 

“I was attending talks on pedagogy and realized that while the details of the story were different, they always had a similar shape that didn’t necessarily ring true to my own experience teaching.”

Halpern says that this focus on solutions has the unintended effect of leaving out discussions of problems that can’t be addressed by individual intervention. Her response is the award-winning article, “The Morphology of the SoTL Article: New Possibilities for the Stories that SoTL Scholars Tell About Teaching and Learning.” The article received the 2024 Nancy Chick Article of the Year Award from the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). Through her piece, Halpern calls for those in the SoTL discipline to make space for ongoing discovery and problems without solutions. She wants to acknowledge that failure is a valid part of teaching and learning.

“There’s a real contrast between this redemption narrative that you see in scholarly literature and talks, and the kinds of conversations you have in the hallway over coffee where instructors talk about the real problems that we continue to struggle with and that we don’t have an answer to.”

Halpern was first introduced to the SoTL field through a faculty reading group facilitated at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning that read and discussed SoTL theories and praxis. Having read and written her own SoTL articles, Halpern doesn’t want to minimize the positive impact that existing SoTL literature has on her approach as an educator.

“The scholarship that’s existed is wonderful, productive, and has helped so many of us in so many ways. Yet there is more to explore, there are other ways to write and think about teaching. In naming these other possibilities I hope it makes it easier to tell these different kinds of story.”

This introduction to SoTL was instrumental to rethinking her role from someone who teaches, to someone who facilitates student learning. The latter, she explains, asks professors to consider their student’s experience of learning, the barriers they face, and the motivations that drive them forward. Halpern now takes her learnings from SoTL to facilitate ARTS 601, Theory and Practice of Teaching and Learning, a course in which UCalgary graduate students can discuss and learn from their first experiences as educators through a SoTL lens.

Through her article and her work in the classroom, Halpern invites us to humanize the stories we tell about teaching and learning.

“My words of wisdom?” says Halpern. “It’s hard to be wise. Let’s talk about it.”