What is 'Scholarly Teaching'?
by Paul Baepler
Every discipline seems to have its own jargon, its own bloviating
magniloquence. The teaching world, of course, is no different.
Thus we have something called "scholarly teaching" and
this is distinct from the ubiquitous "scholarship of teaching
and learning" or SoTL. And both of these categories are
entirely different from the formal concept of "good teaching." Make
sense? Well, that's why we need to define our terms.
In general, you can think of the three categories – good
teaching,
scholarly teaching, and SoTL – existing along a continuum,
one perhaps more complex and involved than the next. (Even at this
point, though, I have to offer the caveat that good teaching could
be more complicated and time consuming than some scholarly teaching
or SoTL. It's also possible that good teaching may not be
explicitly informed by scholarship. For the sake of argument, though,
remember that I'm painting with broad strokes and not trying
to pick a fight.) The literature on what constitutes good teaching
is wide and varied. It's probably safe to say, though, that
good teaching results in significant learning as well as other
positive student outcomes. This could be realized in many ways
and is the subject of
most SoTL.
Scholarly teaching, as its name implies, invokes a scholarly approach
to teaching. That is, scholarly teachers may not produce actual
scholarship on teaching and learning, but they'll be familiar
with it. They might involve themselves in teaching discussions
with their colleagues, reflect on their own teaching, and even
conduct informal teaching experiments in their classrooms. There's
probably a good amount of informal assessment going on, too. But
for whatever reason, these teachers choose not to formalize their
practice in the form of written and peer-reviewed scholarship.
It's also the case that conducting scholarly teaching doesn't
guarantee positive student outcomes and thus qualify as "good
teaching."
Now we're down to the nugget. What is SoTL? Again, we could
worry about the semantics, but I suspect most people just want
an operational definition. Here are a couple. Illinois State University
calls SoTL "the systematic reflection/study on teaching and
learning made public." Lee
Shulman, former president of the Carnegie Foundation, calls it "a
form of
systematic, problem-focused inquiry, subject to analysis and peer
review." What these and most other SoTL definitions have
in common are three criteria: SoTL is systematic, public, and peer-reviewed.
On the surface, that seems pretty straightforward … until
you think about other kinds of writing that teachers do. For instance,
is a reflective essay SoTL? Would an informal report about a particular
teaching technique
be considered SoTL if it wasn't rigorously assessed? If,
under the
strictest definitions, we don't call these forms SoTL, what
are they?
Maryellen Weimer, editor of The Teaching Professor newsletter,
uses the term "pedagogical scholarship" to cover the
full range of professional
writing on teaching. She further divides the category into two
subcategories: "wisdom of practice scholarship" and "research
scholarship." Informal reports and reflective essays would
fit under the "wisdom of
practice" heading while SoTL and educational research in
general would more likely fit under the "research" rubric.
But wait, things become even more confusing! Weimer further subdivides
these scholarship types into seven finer-grained categories, and
Craig Nelson from the University of Indiana has put forward an
altogether different schema.
At this point, you have to ask yourself, does any of this truly
matter?
To some degree, the distinction between "scholarly teaching" and
SoTL,
however defined, is only as important as we make it (or as it is
rewarded by the institution). Currently, the concept of SoTL has
gained a lot of momentum nationally, and these definitions may
be a way to both
legitimize an emerging field as well as give it some rigor. One
of the foundational ideas behind SoTL was to place teaching more
closely on a par with traditional research, and a logical way to
do that is to create a research agenda out of teaching itself.
SoTL, by its strictest definition, begins to accomplish this by
formalizing the processes that we use to document, assess, and
share teaching investigations. That's all good news. However,
it would be a shame to overlook or undervalue "scholarly
teaching" or those other forms of writing about teaching
("wisdom of practice scholarship," for instance) that
don't fit a strict SoTL definition.
References
Nelson, C. E. (2003). Doing it: Examples of several
of the different genres of the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Journal of Excellence in
College Teaching, 14(2/3), 85-94.
Richlin, L. (2001). Scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching.
New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 86, 57-68.
McKinney, K. (2007). Enhancing learning through the scholarship
of
teaching and learning: The challenges and joys of juggling. Boston:
Anker.
Weimer, M. E. (2006). Enhancing scholarly work on teaching and
learning: Professional literature that makes a difference. San
Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Paul Baepler is an education specialist at the Center for
Teaching and Learning.
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