Frequently Asked Questions
This FAQ section is designed to answer some of the most common questions about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). It addresses questions about how to do SoTL work, why this work is important, and how to find other faculty interested in this work, among other questions. If you would like to submit a question that you do not see here please go to the Contact Us page.
Click on the questions below to see the answers.
Q. What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)?
Q. What does SoTL work require of individual scholars?
Q. Is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning just another way to explain good teaching?
Q. What kind of institutional climate best supports SoTL?
Q. How do I get started doing SoTL work?
Q. What are some examples of SoTL questions?
Q. Do I need IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval to do SoTL work?
Q. How do I find other faculty interested in doing SoTL work?
Q. What kind of institutional support exists for SoTL work?
Q. Are there grants available for doing SoTL work?
Q. Where can I get my SoTL research published?
Q. Where can I go to read/learn more about SoTL?
Q. Are there SoTL conferences or workshops I can attend?
Q. Why is this work important?
Q. What types of methods do SoTL researchers use? Where can I find out more about these various methods?
Q. What are the barriers to doing SoTL work?
Q. Who does the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?
Q. Should Scholarship of Teaching and Learning work be disciplinary-specific, or interdisciplinary?
Q. Is there a role for students in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?
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Q. What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)?
A. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) refers to systematic research conducted on teaching and learning issues. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research assumes:
- "an understanding of teaching and learning "problems" as legitimate questions for scholarly research;
- "that teaching is intellectual work and worthy of research and inquiry, and is not just the effective use of methods and techniques;
- "that the discipline specialist is often best prepared to pose and pursue teaching and learning problems/questions in his/her own field;
- "that teaching is a set of reflective practices which can be advanced through scholarly research into student learning;
- "that the results of this inquiry/research should be made public, available for critical review, and accessible for exchange and use by other scholars
Q. What does SoTL work require of individual scholars?
A. Researchers who are interested in doing SoTL work must have the ability to ask significant questions about the learning that takes place in their classrooms, a commitment to examining multiple sources of evidence and to using diverse methods of inquiry, a willingness to engage peers in collaboration at all stages of inquiry, and a commitment to build upon the work of others and advance our knowledge of effective teaching and student learning.
Q. Is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning just another way to explain good teaching?
A. Yes, if your definition of good teaching includes systematic inquiry into teaching and learning issues, critical reflection on teaching/learning strategies, techniques, and possibilities, application of reflection to practice, assessment of student learning practices, peer review and self-reflection, public dissemination of research results, and creation of accessible and useable products. No, if your definition of good teaching is "excellent instructor evaluations" or "good peer evaluations," or even "scholarly teaching." Scholarship of Teaching and Learning goes beyond "teaching evaluations" and "scholarly teaching." Scholarly teachers keep up on the literature and research in their fields and learn about recent pedagogical advances. Scholarly teachers foster student learning by getting feedback from students, by asking our peers to visit our classrooms and provide us with constructive criticism, by developing innovative curriculum materials, and by attending faculty development workshops. Clearly, scholarly teaching is vital to student learning. But the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning goes one step beyond scholarly teaching. As Pat Hutchings and Lee Shulman point out in an article in the September/October 1999 issue of Change Magazine, "the scholarship of teaching and learning requires a kind of "going meta," in which faculty frame and systematically investigate questions related to student learning--the conditions under which it occurs, what it looks like, how to deepen it, and so forth--and do so with an eye not only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it." So the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning requires a "research" component that is typically not part of the definition of scholarly or effective teaching. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning asks teachers to QUESTION and INVESTIGATE their students' learning, to submit their findings to peer review, and to make those results public so that others can learn from, and build upon, them.
Full text of the Hutchings/Shulman article in Change Magazine.
Q. What kind of institutional climate best supports SoTL?
A. A scholarly community that encourages and supports effective teachers, has a commitment to successful student learning outcomes, provides opportunities for collaborative work and exchange, supports peer review of scholarly work, and offers incentives and/or rewards for research on teaching and learning issues.
Q. How do I get started doing SoTL work?
A. Research into teaching and learning issues is no different than research on any other topic. You begin by asking a significant question (or identifying a teaching/learning problem for inquiry). Once you have identified a potential question/problem, then it is important to examine the research on this topic that has preceded your inquiry so that you can build upon it. Next, based on your literature review, you identify the specific question(s) you wish to investigate, design a study to investigate the question(s), and select a research method that allows you to gather the data necessary to answer your question/problem. When the data has been gathered, you analyze the results, and draw conclusions based on the data. These conclusions are the answer to your question, or the solution to your teaching/learning problem. Often these conclusions lead you to other questions in this domain. As with any research, it is then important to present your results for public scrutiny and peer review. Only through this process are others able to benefit from your investigative work.
Q. What are some examples of SoTL questions?
A. SoTL questions all revolve around teaching and learning issues/problems. They are questions that seek to advance the practice of teaching through scholarly inquiry into student learning. Hence all SoTL work involves a focus on student learning and how our teaching practices can enable our students to learn more effectively. SoTL questions can involve any teaching/learning problem. Common formats for framing questions include centering them on
(a) goals you have for your students,
(b) problems you are encountering with your teaching or students' learning, and/or
(c) questions you have about your teaching or your students'learning. Examples of possible SoTL questions include:
- What goals do you have for your students' learning (How can you help students to better understand a difficult idea or concept, how can you help students to be more reflective or critical thinkers, how can you help students to learn how to use feedback on their assignments so as to make the follow-up assignment better?);
- What problems are you encountering with your teaching or students' learning (Do students ask the same questions about the same theory over and over, are students not participating in class discussion, are students unable to apply concepts/theories to real-world contexts?);
- What questions do you have about your teaching or your students' learning? (How do students view group participation, and how does that impact their learning, how can we help students learn to think critically, how is creativity related to student learning, how do students draw on prior knowledge to learn about new information, how do students' interactions with each other and with teachers affect their learning?)
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Q. Do I need IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval to do SoTL work?
A. You need IRB approval whenever you are investigating human behavior, and you wish to make the results of your investigation public by publishing your results. Since most SoTL work involves focusing on students' learning and since the goal of SoTL work is to make it public, it is highly likely that you would need IRB approval for any investigation that you conducted. If you conducted a meta-analysis (which is a process of gathering data from a set of previous investigations on a single topic and analyzing the results of all of these studies together to look for similarities and trends), you would not need IRB approval because you are not studying actual human behavior. If you did any study where you were just looking at published texts, you would not need IRB approval. But if you are looking at any work that your students are doing in your classes, you will most likely need IRB approval (if you plan to publish the results of your investigation). Each campus has their own IRB process, so it is best to work through the committee on your campus. You can also view a pdf of the LS whitepaper, "Guidelines for Human Research Participants in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning."
Q. How do I find other faculty interested in doing SoTL work?
A. All faculty spend a great deal of their time facilitating students' learning through their teaching activities. Hence, questions about teaching/learning issues are potentially important to every faculty member. But like any research domain, not all faculty are interested in this particular topic. One way to find other interested faculty is to find those individuals who are passionate about effective teaching and care deeply about their students' learning. Another option is to connect with your Faculty Development office on your campus (if you have one). These offices are geared toward developing faculty teaching competencies. Some disciplinary societies have divisions that are focused primarily on teaching and learning issues, and you might link up with another faculty member from your discipline at these meetings. Publishing articles or presenting results from SoTL research that you have accomplished is another excellent way to attract the attention of other faculty who might be interested in doing this kind of research work. Finally, the Experts Directory can help you find other faculty interested in doing SoTL work.
Q. What kind of institutional support exists for SoTL work?
A. All campuses differ in terms of the institutional support that is offered for SoTL work. On some campuses there are grants and faculty development support for this type of research. Other campuses count research on teaching/learning in the merit and tenure review process just like they count all other types of research (although such campuses are still rare). Again, a good place to find out more about the institutional support for SoTL work is through the faculty development office on your campus. The UW System Office of Professional and Instructional Development has been instrumental in supporting SoTL work in recent years through grants, the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Teaching Scholars program, and through various workshops and development programs. The UW System Leadership Site for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (housed at UW-Milwaukee and a Carnegie designated SoTL site) also offers support to UW System researchers who are doing SoTL work.
Q. Are there grants available for doing SoTL work?
A. There is grant support for SoTL work. In the UW System, the Office of Professional and Instructional Development housed in Madison offers grant monies to investigators doing SoTL research. These grants, called the UTLG (Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Grants), are yearly grants. The proposal call for these grants is usually posted on the OPID website early on in the spring semester. Some campuses also have their own grant monies that they distribute for this work. In addition, there are national grant monies available. See the potential granting agencies listed on our website.
Q. Where can I get my SoTL research published?
A. There are many outlets for publishing SoTL work. Many of these resources are housed within the disciplines (click here to view a list of sotl publication outlets). In addition to disciplinary sites for publishing SoTL work, there are also interdisciplinary journals devoted to publishing SoTL work.
Q. Where can I go to read/learn more about SoTL?
A. There are numerous sources available to learn more about SoTL work. Go to the Publications page for more information.
Q. Are there SoTL conferences or workshops I can attend?
A. Each year in the spring (usually April), the UW System Office of Professional and Instructional Development offers a two day conference focused on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The Center for Instructional and Professional Development at UW-Milwaukee has an annual conference/workshop(s) that address SoTL issues each spring. National SoTL-related conferences include the POD conference and the AAC&U conference. In addition, there are many conferences that take place within the UW System on the various campuses.
View a list of SoTL events on our website.
Q. Why is this work important?
A. Although many of us are great teachers, we often do not understand "why" something works or doesn't work. Much teaching is still "trial and error." This is especially true when we begin to think about teaching and learning practices as disciplinary-based. Why might one teaching practice be effective for promoting learning in one discipine, but not so useful in another discipline? The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning offers all faculty a unique opportunity to learn more about their teaching and their students' learning in their own discipline. If we ever hope to be able to discuss the "science" of teaching and learning, instead of just the "art" of teaching and learning, we need to do systematic research on teaching/learning issues that can be replicated, utilized by practitioners, and developed into theoretical frameworks. Similar to the medical field where systematic investigatory work has replaced the advice of medicine men/women and resulted in a much greater understanding of diseases, their causes, and effective remedies, so too systematic inquiry into teaching/learning issues could/should result in a much greater understanding of teaching/learning problems, their causes, and effective solutions. Although it is true that many of us teach by emulating those who we consider to be outstanding teachers (and in fact, this method can work well for some of us), it is also true that emulation does not answer the question of "why" this teacher was outstanding. Moreover, it is only in knowing more specifically, and systematically, what teaching practices result in improved student learning, that we can ever construct a baseline for "teaching the teacher." We need systematic research that (a) allows us to draw concrete conclusions about why certain teaching practices contribute to student learning (and conversely, why others fail in this realm), and (b) provides a basis for building theory and practical knowledge about teaching/learning practices.
Q. What types of methods do SoTL researchers use? Where can I find out more about these various methods?
A. SoTL researchers use a variety of methods. The method chosen should fit the research question being asked. Both quantitative methods and qualitative methods can be useful for investigating teaching/learning questions. Some examples of how these methods might be employed are offered below: One researcher might be interested in doing a survey that asks about students' attitudes and feelings toward working in classroom groups, and analyzes those responses using statistics (quantitative methods).Another researcher might be interested in finding out how international students feel about working in groups, and might feel that a focus group discussion (rather than a survey) would be a better venue for eliciting responses from this group. The focus group discussions could be videotaped, transcribed, and content analyzed (interaction coded into preset categories), or they could be more qualitatively analyzed by looking at themes that run through the interaction.
Another researcher (conducting this same study with international students) might decide that individual interviews with the students is the best way to elicit information. Again, these interviews could be audio- or videotaped, transcribed, and then content analyzed (coded). Or the researcher could listen to the audiotapes for recurring themes, phrases, ideas. Another researcher might be interested in looking at students' thought processes as they revise their papers. This researcher might ask students to "talk-through" (protocol analysis) the procedures they will use when they revise the paper so as to discern how students use instructor feedback in the revision process. These "think aloud" sessions could be audio taped, transcribed, and content analyzed (coded into pre-set categories), or they could be more qualitatively analyzed by searching for commonalities (themes, common practices, ideas) across the students' comments. Yet another researcher might wish to analyze students' writing by looking for themes in the journals or papers that they submit. Or students' writing could be subjected to a qualitative analysis via a computer program that searches for various words or word sets. As indicated, the method a researcher chooses should fit the question being asked. There are many resources for learning more about various quantitative and qualitative methods.
Q. What are the barriers to doing SoTL work?
A. Perhaps one of the greatest barriers to doing SoTL work is that it is not always recognized as "legitimate" research in some disciplines. Hence, it does not always "count" in the tenure review process, nor in promotion and merit reviews. This is especially burdensome for non-tenured assistant professors who may be interested in doing SoTL work, but feel that they will not get rewarded for it at tenure/promotion time. Some disciplines are more disposed toward SoTL work than others. If you are interested in doing SoTL work, but are concerned about how it will be received by your department and/or scholarly review committees on campus, you might want to check your university's tenure/review policies before you embark down this path. For some academics, SoTL research can be their only research program, but for many academics, if one does SoTL research, it is considered "extra" or "peripheral to" the disciplinary research they are expected to produce. Hence, one may have to make decisions about which stream of research to work on at any given point in ones career. Some faculty choose not to embark on a SoTL research program until they have achieved tenure. Others choose to do some SoTL research while also publishing disciplinary-based research. It is hoped that as SoTL work becomes better known, and more widely accepted, this barrier to doing SoTL research will become extinct. Other barriers that one encounters in doing SoTL research are similar to those that accompany any type of research project: obtaining IRB approval, finding background research, carving out time to do the necessary work, seeing the project to completion, getting it published in a reputable journal or other outlet, obtaining grant monies to help fund the project, etc. All research projects run into barriers. Because of its relatively new status on many campuses, SoTL research may currently experience a few extra barriers that more traditional disciplinary-based research does not.
Q. Who does the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?
A. Teachers in any discipline can do the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. It does not belong solely in the School of Education, but belongs anywhere a faculty member has a question about student learning, and systematically goes about finding an answer to that question. For many faculty members, questions about how students learn is important throughout their careers. Although most of us were not trained in graduate school to do this type of investigative work, all of us are teachers, and many of us are interested in questions of pedagogy or learning (because of the nature of the work that we do). So faculty in any discipline can ask a question about student learning, and set out to systematically find an answer to that question.
Q. Should Scholarship of Teaching and Learning work be disciplinary-specific, or interdisciplinary?
A. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning work may benefit from both a disciplinary-specific and interdisciplinary focus. It seems that that investigatory "method" chosen for these studies is often disciplinary-specific; that faculty within disciplines are likely to choose, and find credible, investigations that use methods sanctioned by their discipline. On the other hand, discussion of the questions and findings may well benefit from an interdisciplinary perspective. In the end, it is hoped, that the results from much Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research will cut across disciplines, and in so doing, expand our ways of knowing both within and across disciplines.
Q. Is there a role for students in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?
A. Some campus SoTL teams have decided that the student voice is essential to their research. UW-Milwaukee has funded several faculty-student SoTL research partnerships. In these teams, the students (both undergraduate and graduate students) work alongside the faculty member(s) on designing the investigation, conducting the research, analyzing the data, and writing up the results. Students bring to these teams experience and knowledge that only learners newer to the discipline can bring. As Barbara Cambridge wrote in the December 1999 AAHE Bulletin, "Done well, undergraduate research is a form of active learning that contributes to deep understanding. This kind of research has the powerful advantage of creating new knowledge for the discipline while enabling student researchers to become more aware of their own process of learning and the circumstances under which they can best learn within a discipline that views the world through a particular set of lenses and warrants and analyzes evidence in particular ways. Undergraduate research can spur students to base their knowledge of their own learning on more than individual intuition or experience."