Anyone Here Familiar with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Field? (Let’s Explore!)
So, you’re at a conference, maybe lingering near the coffee station, or perhaps scrolling through an online faculty forum. You see a question pop up: “Anyone here familiar with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) field?”
Maybe your hand twitches slightly. Maybe you’ve heard the term whispered in hallways or seen it pop up in a departmental email. Perhaps it sounds vaguely academic, maybe a bit intimidating, or possibly like just another educational buzzword. Or maybe, just maybe, a spark of recognition lights up – “Oh, that thing!”
If you’re nodding along, curious, or even a little skeptical, you’re in the right place. Let’s pull up a chair (virtual or otherwise) and unpack exactly what this SoTL thing is all about. It’s not just jargon; it’s potentially one of the most transformative movements in higher education (and beyond) for anyone passionate about effective teaching and deep student learning.
SoTL: What Exactly Is It?
Think of it this way: As faculty or educators, we’re incredibly skilled in our disciplines. Biologists research biology, historians delve into archives, engineers solve complex technical problems. We dedicate years to mastering our subject matter and contributing new knowledge to our fields – that’s research scholarship, and it’s highly valued (rightly so!).
But what about our teaching? Often, teaching is seen as a craft, something learned through experience and intuition. While invaluable, experience alone doesn’t always tell us why a particular approach works, or how students are actually learning the complex concepts we present.
This is where the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) steps in. Coined prominently by Ernest Boyer in his 1990 work Scholarship Reconsidered, SoTL proposes that teaching itself can and should be a form of scholarly inquiry. It’s about applying the same rigorous, evidence-based, and investigative mindset we use in our disciplinary research to our teaching practice and our students’ learning.
In simpler terms, SoTL asks: How can we systematically investigate what’s happening in our classrooms to understand how learning works best, and then use that knowledge to improve?
Scholarship: It’s not just casual reflection; it involves asking meaningful questions, designing inquiries, gathering evidence (like student work, surveys, observations, grades, interviews), analyzing data, and drawing conclusions.
Teaching: It focuses centrally on the act of instruction, the methods we use, the assignments we design, the interactions we foster.
Learning: Ultimately, the core focus is on the student experience – how they acquire knowledge, develop skills, grapple with complexity, and integrate learning.
Why Bother? What’s the Big Deal About SoTL?
Okay, so it sounds like extra work. Why add “researching my teaching” to an already overflowing plate? The reasons are powerful and resonate on multiple levels:
1. Move Beyond Guesswork & Anecdote: Instead of relying solely on “I think this worked” or “Students seemed engaged,” SoTL provides actual evidence. Did that new active learning strategy actually improve conceptual understanding? Did restructuring that assignment lead to better critical thinking skills? SoTL gives you data to answer those questions.
2. Improve Your Own Teaching Effectiveness: This is the most direct benefit. By systematically studying your practice, you identify what truly works and what doesn’t. You become more intentional, more effective, and more confident in your choices. It transforms teaching from routine to a dynamic process of discovery.
3. Enhance Student Learning & Success: This is the ultimate goal. SoTL isn’t navel-gazing; it’s about uncovering ways to help students learn more deeply, retain knowledge longer, develop crucial skills, and succeed in their academic journeys. When you understand how they learn in your specific context, you can tailor your approaches far more effectively.
4. Contribute to a Shared Knowledge Base: When you do SoTL and share your findings (through presentations, publications, departmental workshops), you’re not just helping yourself. You’re adding valuable insights to the collective understanding of teaching and learning in your discipline and across academia. Your small classroom study might solve a puzzle another educator is struggling with.
5. Bridge the Teaching/Research Divide: For many faculty, the pressure to prioritize disciplinary research over teaching is real. SoTL provides a powerful way to integrate these roles. It elevates teaching to a scholarly activity, potentially contributing to tenure and promotion portfolios by demonstrating a commitment to excellence in both research and pedagogy.
6. Professional Renewal & Community: Engaging in SoTL can be intellectually stimulating and re-energizing. It connects you with a community of educators across disciplines who are passionate about improving education. Asking “Anyone familiar with SoTL?” becomes an invitation to join a vibrant conversation.
What Does SoTL Actually Look Like in Practice?
It’s incredibly diverse, reflecting the vast range of disciplines and teaching contexts! Here are a few tangible examples:
The Literature Professor: Wondering if incorporating digital annotation tools improves students’ close reading skills and participation. She designs a study comparing student annotations, discussion board contributions, and final essay analysis between sections using the tool and those using traditional methods.
The Biology Lecturer: Notices students consistently struggle with a specific concept in genetics. He develops two different explanatory models and short diagnostic quizzes. He tests both models in different lab sections, analyzes quiz performance and lab reports, to see which approach leads to better conceptual mastery.
The Statistics Instructor: Concerned about math anxiety, she investigates the impact of incorporating brief mindfulness exercises at the start of class on students’ self-reported anxiety levels, quiz scores, and completion rates for challenging problem sets.
The Nursing Faculty: Wants to know if a new simulation-based module improves clinical judgment more effectively than the previous case-study approach. She uses standardized assessments of clinical judgment skills and collects student feedback before and after implementing the new module.
The Engineering Professor: Curious about the effectiveness of peer review on improving technical report writing. He analyzes drafts, revisions, and final reports, plus surveys students on their perceptions of the peer review process’s usefulness.
The scale can vary immensely – from a focused inquiry in a single course over one semester to a multi-year, multi-institution project.
How Do I Get Started with SoTL? (You Don’t Need a PhD in Education!)
Feeling intrigued but overwhelmed? Start small and focused! Here’s how:
1. Observe & Wonder: Pay close attention in your class. Where are students thriving? Where are they consistently getting stuck? What puzzles you about their learning? What small change have you been meaning to try? (“Hmm, why do so many students bomb question 3 on every quiz?”)
2. Ask a Specific, Answerable Question: Narrow down your curiosity. Instead of “How can I teach better?”, try “Does providing structured outlines for lecture notes improve comprehension of complex theoretical concepts in my upper-level course, as measured by exam scores on relevant questions?” Focus is key.
3. Gather Evidence (Ethically!): Think about what data could answer your question. Existing data (grades, assignment submissions)? Simple surveys? Analysis of specific exam questions? Student reflections? Pre/post-tests? Crucially, get IRB approval if needed – student work and data used for research typically requires it.
4. Analyze & Reflect: Look at your evidence. What patterns emerge? What surprised you? Did the evidence support your hunch, or tell a different story? What might explain the findings? What are the limitations of your inquiry?
5. Act & Share: Use what you learned to tweak your teaching for the next iteration! Did the outlines help? Great, keep refining them. Didn’t make a difference? Time to brainstorm other strategies. Consider sharing your process and findings informally with colleagues, at a department meeting, a teaching center workshop, or even a conference. Sharing is a core part of the scholarship.
So, Anyone Here Familiar with SoTL?
Now you are! The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning isn’t an exclusive club or an impossible standard. It’s an invitation. An invitation to be curious about the learning happening right in front of you. An invitation to apply your innate investigative skills to make your teaching more impactful and your students’ learning deeper. An invitation to join a community dedicated to understanding and improving the heart of education.
It starts with a question, just like the one that sparked this exploration. Maybe your next small classroom inquiry begins today. The coffee station (or online forum) awaits the next conversation.
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