Skip to navigationSkip to Content
The University of New South Wales

What is SOTL?


Introduction to the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SOTL)

The idea of SOTL first emerged in the late 1980s through the work of the then president of the American Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Ernest Boyer (Scholarship Reconsidered, 1990). Boyer’s basic premise was that universities and academics should treat teaching as a scholarly activity in the same way they consider research. Since that time defintional debates have ebbed and flowed. The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in History has defined SOTL as such:

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is an effort to systematically increase our understanding of how students at the college level learn and what teaching strategies are most effective at promoting this learning.

At the core of this endeavor are two assumptions:

  • that the challenges faced in college classrooms can more easily surmounted if they are subjected to the same kinds of systematic and collective inquiry that has proven so effective in the realm of research.
  • that, since a great deal of the learning that occurs in colleges and university is shaped by the nature of knowledge in specific academic disciplines, professionals from across the curriculum, not only by those in schools of education, should be actively involved in this endeavor.

Operating within these assumptions, scholars of teaching and learning seek to produce work that is, in the words of Lee Shulman, “public, susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by other members of one’s scholarly community.”* It is hoped that this knowledge will allow academics to build on the work of others to create new and more effective strategies for increasing student learning.

Academics working in this new field often make a distinction between the scholarship of teaching and learning, which is research that fits the requirements of Shulman’s definition, and "scholarly teaching", which represents the efforts of academics to apply insights borrowed from the scholarship of teaching and learning in their own classrooms.

Another useful definition and introduction is provided by Georgia Southern University’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching. Follow this link.

* Lee Shulman, “Course Anatomy: The Dissection and Analysis of Knowledge Through Teaching” in Pat Hutchings, ed.,The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine Their Teaching to Advance Practice and Improve Student Learning (Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education, 1988), 5.

[top of page]

 

Opportunities for further study/examination of SOTL

UNSW has a number of opportunities for staff to further explore SOTL. These include:

[top of page]