The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is not simply good teaching and it goes beyond scholarly teaching. It involves the systematic study of teaching and/or learning and the public sharing and review of such work through presentations, publications, or performances. SoTL then shares established criteria of scholarship in general, such that it is made public, can be reviewed critically by members of the community, and can be built upon by others to advance the field. SoTL is a research agenda. The use of classroom assessment techniques for example, is important but is not sufficient for the scholarship of teaching and learning.
It is not sufficient to try a new technique in the classroom, talk about the fact that students enjoyed the exercise, for it to be called the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The Focus of SoTL is on the creation of a product regardless of your discipline. It is about carefully designing ways to ask questions, collecting data, examining and interpreting the results and ultimately sharing one’s findings, thereby contributing to the scholarly community of the field. SoTL is research.
Some feel that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is not real research. I believe these perceptions exist in part because of confusion in definition of terms and the association of SoTL with Scholarly Teaching. Scholarly teaching is taking a scholarly approach to teaching. Teaching is an area in which to develop expertise. Scholarly teachers will do things such as reflect on their teaching, use classroom assessment techniques, discuss teaching issues with colleagues, try new things. Scholarly teaching is closely related to reflective practices. This conception of scholarly teaching is related to what Boyer (1990) identified as scholarship of teaching. However, scholarly teaching is NOT the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, because it is not research. It is very important, but it’s not research.
A faculty member who participates in a networking group and discusses ways to become a better teacher is engaging in scholarly teaching. In that networking group, it is very likely that new teaching techniques, which have been shown to enhance engagement in the classroom, will be discussed. Using those teaching techniques in the classroom would still be considered scholarly teaching and would NOT qualify as research or SoTL. Improving yourself as an educator is engaging in scholarly teaching and it is very important. However, it is not SoTL. Conducting research on different teaching techniques is SoTL; examining the properties of various teaching techniques and how they relate to student learning and success is SoTL; it follows a process of scientific inquiry which leads to the creation of a product, and that is research.
