“Is Anyone Listening?” Measuring Faculty Engagement With Published SoTL Scholarship in Political Science

Abstract

Of this there can be no doubt: More than ever before, political scientists have something to say about teaching and learning. The volume of published SoTL scholarship in the discipline has increased greatly in recent years and continues to grow. But, is anyone listening? Are faculty reading this scholarship? More importantly, are faculty using insights from the research to enhance teaching and promote student learning? Interestingly, this is something about which we currently know very little. This project represents a first effort to explore these questions. We invited more than 5,000 political science faculty to participate in an online survey. The goals were twofold: to determine whether faculty use SoTL scholarship to enhance their teaching effectiveness and to determine meaningful differences that exist between faculty who use SoTL scholarship and those who do not. Our key findings are four. First, we find that a substantial majority of the discipline is listening. Over two-thirds of faculty surveyed indicate that they have used SoTL scholarship to enhance their teaching effectiveness. Second, although the discipline as a whole is listening, women faculty are more likely to be listening than their male colleagues. Our third finding is that about one-third of faculty have never looked to SoTL scholarship as a resource to enhance their teaching. Finally, although the vast majority of faculty see the practical value of SoTL scholarship, including those who have never used it, a substantial minority appear unconvinced.

Keywords:

• SoTL
• engagement
• political science
• survey

Notes

1 The IPED database contains more than 1,600 citations for articles on teaching and learning in politics published across more than 100 peer-reviewed journals. The database can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/psatlg/Home/resources/journal-articles.

2 Referencing Kehl (2002), the authors begin their analysis with 1998 on the grounds that it “broadly captures the period of time in which SoTL work first appeared in political science” (Hamann et al. 2009, 731).

3 The authors include a fourth measure—number of authors—to examine whether collaboration is more typical of SoTL than non-SoTL research. We exclude it from our discussion as it does not bear directly on the current research.

4 The decision to privilege published scholarship in no way discounts the value of SoTL-focused research shared by other means, including conference panels and teaching workshops. We have no doubt that faculty find these useful sources of teaching-related information. Still, published scholarship has an elevated status in the discipline. It is for this reason we want to understand the extent to which faculty turn to scholarship of this nature.

5 States used include Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. States were selected not on the basis of any methodological prior, but on the basis of convenience and utility. The project began as a regional study (10 southern states) and was later expanded when additional resources became available. Non-southern states where chosen with a view to geographic distribution and state size (to expand as much as possible the pool of available respondents). That some states were examined and not others should have no bearing on the generalizability of the findings. There is no reason to expect that a faculty member in State X should be any more/less likely to actively engage SoTL scholarship than a faculty respondent in State Y.

6 See https://www.apsanet.org/RESOURCES/Data-on-the-Profession/Dashboards. It should be noted that APSA makes no claim that the data are representative of the profession.

7 We estimate the population of political science faculty in the United States is 11,000. For a population of that size, a sample size of 570 would be required to draw conclusions with 95% confidence and a +/−4% margin of error. Our respondent pool of 635 satisfies that standard comfortably. See Rea and Parker (2014). Sample size calculations were conducted using the SurveyMonkey Sample Size Calculator (https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/).

8 APSA defines age ranges as: <24 years, 25–34 years, 35–44 years, 45–54 years, and 55 years and older.

9 Not all surveys were completed it in their entirety. Approximately 91% of respondents (577 of 635) who answered the first question answered all remaining questions. All analysis was done on the basis of data available.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Doleys

Thomas Doleys is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Master of Science in International Policy Management program.