Phenomenology of Surprise in a SoTL Scholars' Program

Faculty members participating in a year-long Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) development program experienced various surprises as transformational events. This study is a phenomenological exploration of these surprises. We use Dastur’s (2000) understanding of surprise as a phenomenological event that allows for changed perception and the possibility of a different future through an altered state of being in the world. Four different categories of surprise are explored: surprise that doing SoTL changed teaching, surprises about students, surprises about SoTL and the research process, and finally, surprises about communities and disciplines.