Faculty Perceptions of SoTL at a Research Institution: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Boyer (1990) and others have challenged the traditional boundaries of scholarship, calling for a broader view that includes the scholarship of integration, application, and teaching. The discipline of psychology has been productively involved in the debate, resulting in both contributions to the literature and changes in reward policies in some departments (e.g., Mathie et al., 2004). I examined psychology faculty's perceptions of how their department evaluates the scholarship of pedagogy and what they believe are the true boundaries of scholarship in psychology. I found a significant gap in what is “counted” as scholarship and what faculty believe should be counted.