The transformative potential of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: evaluating its status as a threshold concept

"Thresholds are the places where we can learn, where we can change our mind, where we can step into new identities" (Meyer and Land, 2003).

The transformative potential of education is encapsulated through the lens of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Emerging as a pivotal area of inquiry in Higher Education (HE), SoTL systematically investigates teaching and learning to enhance educational practices (Huxham et al., 2015). Central to this discourse is the idea of threshold concepts, defined by Meyer and Land (2003) as transformative ideas that fundamentally alter a learner’s perception of a subject. This opinion piece critically examines whether SoTL qualifies as a threshold concept by exploring its defining characteristics and considering the implications of positionality, context, and inquiry within SoTL work. Furthermore, it engages with the SoTL grand challenges (Scharff et al., 2023), particularly that of identification with SoTL, to deepen understanding of its transformative potential.