In the spirit of social learning spaces, we present a special issue of the Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching that showcases both the process and the product of the case clinic. In Communities of Practice within and across Organizations: A guidebook, Wenger-Trayner et al (2023) describe a case clinic as, “A member brings a real-life challenge to the community and members struggle with it together. Because it is triggered by a need emerging from practice, the case clinic is the quintessential social learning activity” (145).  These articles based on case clinics document the collaborative process of this method of exploring the complexity of problems that groups are engaged in solving.

This special issue presents personal narratives about instructors’ lived experiences as they adapt their teaching to foster a sense of inclusion and belonging for a wide variety of students.  In these personal narratives, they explain what they did previously, how teaching the course changed for them as they thought specifically about inclusion and intersectionality, and what they will do moving forward. 

Drawing on theories and insights informing practitioner inquiry, self-study research methodology, and culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, the articles gathered in this special issue of the Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching offer readers a mix of narrative styles, varied genres, and alternate approaches for examining the meaning and potential impacts of our instructional practices as teacher educators.

The COVID-19 pandemic and heightened social awareness of 2020-2021 changed how we conducted our teaching. It was more than just a technology shift; it was a confrontation of sometimes unquestioned assumptions about what it was to teach and learn.  As we move into fall 2021, this issue of the journal asks, of all the changes and challenges we faced as educators, what new approaches that we were forced to try will we keep as we recreate our classrooms, in whatever format, as we emerge from the exigencies of the past year? What will stick? 

In this issue, instructors describe their process of discovering, implementing, and sustaining innovations in their teaching. 

Editorial: The Academy of Fellows for Teaching and Learning in 2017

Articles on teaching practice, program implementation, and curriculum design. 

This special issue of the Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching is devoted to case studies of eportfolio implementation in a decentralized context.