The Rapidly Changing Teaching and Research Landscape: The Future of SoTL and the Teaching-Research Nexus

Abstract

AbstractThe scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) as a scholarly field of study has been rapidly developing since Ernest Boyer published Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate in 1990. In that Boyer drew the distinction between four scholarships—Discovery, Integration, Application, and Teaching & Learning (Boyer in Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990). In this chapter, we aim to introduce readers to SoTL by: briefly reviewing these four scholarships; illustrating how SoTL may be differentiated from the other forms of scholarship, and its relationship with the teaching-research nexus; commenting on the sorts of inquiry problems, questions and issues common to SoTL; and finally, commenting on the range of methodologies adopted in such inquiries. Fundamental to the discussion will be the idea that SoTL is a research informed, evidence based, critical yet collegial reflection on teaching and learning practice with the aim of improving practice within the aligned disciplines and professions. Most often SoTL-based research projects are conducted by discipline-based staff inquiring into and reflecting on their own practice to improve their teaching and students’ learning.Since Boyer’s publication, numerous scholarly societies, conferences, journals, and other forms of scholarly communication have evolved. A recent thematic review of the SoTL literature will be used as the basis for highlighting how the communication of SoTL inquiries, and their findings are being, and can be, fostered.