The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning (SoTL) is a dynamic approach where educators, sometimes in collaboration with their students, systematically investigate student learning. This inquiry is deeply rooted in existing academic research on teaching and learning and is distinguished by the public sharing of findings. As educational expert Pat Hutchings explains, SoTL involves educators applying their scholarly habits and abilities to their teaching practices. This encompasses posing relevant questions, rigorously gathering diverse evidence, formulating conclusions or identifying new areas for investigation, and ultimately using these insights to enhance student learning experiences.
Building upon these foundational ideas, Peter Felten (2013) proposes five core principles that define effective SoTL. He posits that SoTL is an inquiry process intensely focused on student learning, firmly anchored in both scholarly and local contexts, methodologically rigorous, often conducted in partnership with students, and crucially, committed to making its findings publicly accessible. Echoing these principles, Patricia Cross and Mimi Harris Steadman (1996) describe classroom research within SoTL as teacher-directed, acknowledging educators’ expertise in conducting meaningful and valid research on classroom learning. They emphasize its relevance to teachers’ direct classroom experiences and its iterative nature, where SoTL outcomes frequently inspire new pedagogical experiments and further inquiry.
Kathleen McKinney highlights the broad value of SoTL, noting its positive impacts at individual, course, program, institutional, and broader higher education levels (2007). SoTL empowers faculty, including those in training, to become more reflective and scholarly in their teaching approaches. It serves as a tangible demonstration of faculty dedication to teaching excellence and can also enrich faculty research portfolios. However, its most profound contribution lies in enabling educators to gain deeper insights into student learning within their specific classrooms and diverse educational settings.
Lee Shulman characterizes SoTL as a natural outcome of the “pedagogical imperative,” which compels educators to examine the effects of their interactions with students. This imperative, he argues, extends to individual faculty members, academic programs, institutions, and even entire disciplinary communities (2002). Shulman elaborates:
Scholars of teaching and learning are prepared to mess with the world even more boldly than their colleagues who are satisfied to teach well and leave it at that. They mess with their students’ minds and hearts as they instruct, and then they mess again as they examine the quality of those practices and ask how they could have been even more effective. Scholars of teaching and learning are prepared to confront the ethical as well as the intellectual and pedagogical challenges of their work. They are not prepared to be drive-by educators. They insist on stopping at the scene to see what more they can do.
Shulman 2002, p. viii
In essence, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning represents a powerful framework for educators to enhance their teaching effectiveness, deepen their understanding of student learning, and contribute to the wider academic community through the sharing of their scholarly inquiries into pedagogy.
References and Additional Resources
- Chick, Nancy. (n.d.). A scholarly approach to teaching. In Scholarship of teaching and learning: A guide from the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved from https://my.vanderbilt.edu/sotl/understanding-sotl/a-scholarly-approach-to-teaching/.
- Cross, K. Patricia, & Steadman, Mimi Harris. (1996). Classroom research: Implementing the scholarship of teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
- Felten, Peter. (2013). Principles of good practice in SoTL. Teachng & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal, 1(1), 121-125. Retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/TLI/article/view/57376/43149.
- McKinney, Kathleen. (2007). Enhancing learning through the scholarship of teaching and learning: The challenges and joys of juggling. San Francisco, CA: Anker Publishing.
- Shulman, Lee. (2002). Forward. In Pat Hutchings (Ed.), Ethics of inquiry: Issues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (pp. v-viii). Menlo Park, CA: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
