SoTL in the States

by Maria Gallardo-Williams

Over the past few weeks, and particularly after attending the 2026 SoTL Commons Conference, I’ve found myself reflecting on the shifting landscape of our field. In my ongoing conversations about the future of SoTL in the States with colleagues, a central question has emerged that is keeping me up at night:

How do we make sense of the disruptions to our established ways of working, and how might this friction actually be a necessary step toward a stronger, more resilient community?

To explore this, I think it might be helpful to view our current realities through the lens of Bruce Tuckman’s (1965) classic stages of group development. To build a high-performing team, or, in our case, a thriving academic community, groups must necessarily evolve through forming, storming, norming, and performing.

For years, the SoTL community in the States and abroad was comfortably forming. We established a shared set of conventions, methodologies, and priorities that guided our inquiry and brought us together over time. However, the landscape has rapidly shifted, and we are now undeniably in a period of storming. Recent anti-DEI legislation and subsequent limitations on how we study specific student populations have introduced significant conflict and disruption for those of us in the United States.

But as Tuckman reminds us, storming is a necessary evolution. Through this friction, we are actively norming: building a new kind of established cohesion, creating new rules of engagement, earning how to navigate our changing institutions. Ultimately, this hard work is what will allow us to reach performing, a stage characterized by peak productivity, deeper collaboration, and innovative problem-solving.

While the current legislative climate is far from ideal, being forced to pivot our focus in SoTL studies might not be a bad thing. This disruption is pushing us out of our comfort zones and opening up unexpected opportunities for the field. Rather than seeing this strictly as a limitation, we can try reframing our research questions to examine student learning through new, creative lenses. As Chick and Friberg (2026) suggest, focusing on conditions, structures, and outcomes, as well as using neutral, context-sensitive language might allow us to study meaningful differences in learning without the risk of relying on identity-based or politicized language. We might end up finding innovative, context-responsive study conditions that we might have not considered otherwise.

My hope is that by acknowledging the storm, we can collectively chart a path toward a new chapter for SoTL in the States. I see this evolution as part of a longer story: one of resilience, stewardship, and adaptability. May we reinvigorate our commitment to student success by adapting our inquiry to the immediate realities of our local environments.

References
Chick, Nancy L., and Jennifer C. Friberg-Fort. 2026. “Studying and Supporting Understudied Students When Words Are Dangerous.” Workshop presented at the SoTL Commons Conference, Savannah, GA, February 2026. 

Tuckman, Bruce W. (1965). “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.” Psychological Bulletin, 63, 384-399.