Abstract
This essay works toward two goals: 1) to provide an explanation of how the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning may work within all four of Boyer’s “scholarships” of discovery, integration, application, and teaching and 2) to clarify the distinctions between quality teaching and scholarship of teaching and learning research. To do that, we posit four quadrants of teaching practices based on two continuum: public/private and systematic/unsystematic. The four quadrants: teaching practice, shared teaching, scholarly teaching and, finally, scholarship of teaching and learning, provide academics with a conceptual model to distinguish various approaches to the teaching process from research into that process.
Highlights
In this essay, we explore definitions and taxonomies of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and present a model of the Dimensions of Activities Related to Teaching (DART) which provides a context for scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) along two dimensions: public/private and systematic/informal
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered (1990), in which he called for a broader definition of the work of faculty members to include the scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching
Since Boyer’s original call for the recognition of the scholarship of teaching, the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) movement has blossomed with the involvement of the Carnegie Foundation, the founding of several multidisciplinary journals devoted to the scholarship of teaching and learning, and increased interest on the part of many discipline-based professional organizations
Summary
Conceptualizations of SoTL have varied over the past 25 years; several authors have confirmed that a lack of consensus persists (e.g., Chalmers, 2011; Potter & Kustra, 2011; Boshier, 2009). McKinney (2007) observed, that while differences will likely continue, “. . . there is some agreement by those most involved in the SoTL movement...” that “... the differences that do exist are mostly a matter of degree” (p. 12). Hutchings and Shulman (1999) drew the distinction between excellent (very effective) teaching and SoTL by indicating that SoTL requires that the “faculty member must systematically investigate questions related to student learning...with an eye to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it” This view implies at least three important attributes of SoTL versus excellent teaching: that the inquiry must be systematic or methodical to gain credible results, be shared in order to advance the goal of improving practice outside one’s own classroom and that the ultimate goal be the students’ learning that results from the faculty member’s teaching. What forms of work fall under the umbrella of SoTL? How are these forms to be valued? What is SoTL’s future role in academia?
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