The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education - On its constitution and transformative potential

Author(s):  
Laurie Woollacott
Author(s):  
David Starr-Glass

Following a critical appraisal of research and teaching in U.S. higher education, Ernest Boyer advocated that teaching should be recognized and rewarded as an activity that was at least as important as traditional disciplinary scholarship. He insisted that teaching had its own scholarly component which deserved fuller recognition, appreciation, and dissemination. This chapter explores Boyer's reconsideration of the activities and priorities of higher education and the emerging history of what would become known as the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). From an early stage in its historical trajectory, SoTL explorations were linked to a publication imperative. Publication was seen as essential for consolidating the discipline's status and for improving the efficacy of teaching. The chapter reconsiders the publication requirement, its impact on the vision and mission of SoTL, and the degree to which it has repositioned and reprioritized teaching in the academy. It also provides suggestions for furthering SoTL's impact and for new directions for research, practice, and publication.


Author(s):  
Alisa Hutchinson ◽  
Anabel Stoeckle

Mid-Semester Assessment Programs (MAPs) have been successfully utilized as a professional development tool for faculty interested in improving their teaching in the context of higher education by assessing voluntary formative student feedback that guides changes instructors make in the classroom. Faculty centers and educational developers have the unique opportunity to recruit instructors via MAPs who have participated in these programs to promote and support the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) among faculty who already display an innate interest in best teaching practices and are open to advancing their own teaching in order to improve student learning and to propel student success. This chapter provides a guide for educational developers who seek to become active partners for faculty to become interested and engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning through a unique recruitment mechanism that serves as a natural steppingstone for faculty not having engaged with SoTL yet.


Author(s):  
Kathryn Janet Meldrum ◽  
Kristi Giselsson

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has been suggested as an ideal vehicle for engaging faculty with professional development for teaching in higher education. However, previous authors have identified that faculty find writing about SoTL difficult. The aim of this chapter is to support educational developers (EDs) to collaborate with faculty to support writing. Two theoretical frameworks to support collaboration are proposed: the first, the Knowledge Transforming Model of Writing, to assist with the process of writing; the second, an adaptation of Brigugilio's working in the third space framework to support collaboration. The authors utilise both frameworks to reflect on their own SoTL collaboration and subsequently pose questions to support faculty and EDs to do the same. Ultimately, it is proposed that collaboration not only enhances the practices of faculty and EDs but improves what should be an important priority for the wider academy: the learning outcomes of students.


Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 1026-1042
Author(s):  
Laura Connelly ◽  
Remi Joseph-Salisbury

Although literature on the role of emotions in teaching and learning is growing, little consideration has been given to the university context, particularly from a sociological perspective. This article draws upon the online survey responses of 24 students who attended sociological classes on the Grenfell Tower fire, to explore the role emotions play in teaching that seeks to politicise learners and agitate for social change. Contributing to understandings of pedagogies of ‘discomfort’ and ‘hope’, we argue that discomforting emotions, when channelled in directions that challenge inequality, have socially transformative potential. Introducing the concept of bounded social change, however, we demonstrate how the neoliberalisation of Higher Education threatens to limit capacity for social change. In so doing, we cast teaching as central to the discipline of sociology and suggest that the creation of positive social change should be the fundamental task of sociological teaching.


Author(s):  
Andrea S. Webb

Novice Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) leaders making the transition from scholarly teaching to SoTL to SoTL Leadership face many challenges within higher education. Not only does traditional academic culture confine most academics to disciplinary silos, but promotion and tenure requirements encourage faculty members to conduct SoTL work “off the side of their desk,” if at all (Boyer, 1990; Dobbins, 2008; Webb, Wong, & Hubball, 2013). This paper shares some of the findings from a recent study that investigated what constrained educational leaders’ understanding of SoTL while enrolled in a SoTL Leadership program at a Canadian research-intensive university. The paper will also explore implications for the support and enrichment of educational leadership.


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