Key Characteristics of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

00:12:56
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDKHHyx7YY

Summary

TLDRThe Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a field where educators systematically examine their teaching and the learning of their students to improve educational practices. SoTL involves hypothesis testing about teaching strategies and monitoring results systematically. Key to SoTL is the practice of reflective inquiry, focusing primarily on student learning as well as one's teaching practices. Faculty apply their scholarly habits to teaching; they ask questions, gather evidence, seek insights, and apply discoveries to enhance student outcomes. SoTL does not only entail private reflection but encourages public sharing of findings to aid collective educational improvement. Characteristics of SoTL include asking meaningful questions about teaching and learning effectiveness, being evidence-driven, and maintaining a cycle of reflection and improvement. It expands traditional educational research by involving more diverse practitioners, thus increasing its practical impact. SoTL work involves developing questions, designing appropriate methodologies, analyzing findings, sharing insights, and implementing changes to improve learning outcomes.

Takeaways

  • 🔍 SoTL is about systematic inquiry into teaching and learning.
  • 📊 Evidence is crucial in testing hypotheses in SoTL.
  • ❓ Asking meaningful questions drives SoTL research.
  • 📚 SoTL encourages sharing findings to improve practices collectively.
  • 🧠 Reflective practice is the starting point for SoTL.
  • 👨‍🏫 Educators apply scholarly skills to improve teaching through SoTL.
  • 🔄 SoTL involves continual questioning and evidence assessment.
  • 📈 SoTL aims to improve student learning outcomes.
  • 🚀 Expanding SoTL practices increases its educational impact.
  • 🌐 SoTL originates from diverse backgrounds to enrich education.

Timeline

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is likened to a systematic inquiry where educators treat their classroom as a site of experiment. Each time a course is taught, it is viewed as a hypothesis: the syllabus and order of lessons are designed with the aim of specific outcomes like student learning and growth. Typically, the final step of reflecting on results and adjusting the hypothesis is informal. However, SoTL insists on a systematic approach—integrating reflective practices and closely examining the impact of teaching on student learning. It's about adopting scholarly habits to unravel whether educational assumptions hold up and how teaching can be improved.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:12:56

    SoTL is distinguished by the rigorous questioning and critical examination of student learning. It begins with educators identifying questions that arise from challenges or curiosities in their teaching experience. With a focus on student outcomes, methodology is developed to gather evidence and answer these questions, often involving collaboration or adapting educational approaches. Sharing findings publicly is considered essential, enhancing the broader educational discourse. It emphasises the importance of conducting SoTL with a scholarly perspective, where developing good questions, employing suitable methodologies, and disseminating results are key characteristics that drive improvements in teaching and learning.

Mind Map

Video Q&A

  • What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)?

    SoTL is the systematic inquiry into student learning in one's own teaching context, involving reflective practice and research methods.

  • How does SoTL differ from regular teaching?

    SoTL involves systematically testing hypotheses about teaching practices and student learning, using evidence and reflection to improve educational outcomes.

  • What are the key characteristics of SoTL work?

    Key characteristics include inquiry into student learning, asking meaningful questions, using evidence and research to guide teaching practices, and sharing findings publicly.

  • Why is evidence important in SoTL?

    Evidence is critical in SoTL as it allows educators to test their hypotheses about teaching methods and student learning, refining their practices based on the findings.

  • How does SoTL improve teaching and learning?

    By encouraging educators to systematically investigate and reflect on their teaching strategies and student outcomes, leading to data-driven improvements.

  • Who typically conducts SoTL research?

    SoTL is typically conducted by faculty or educators who apply scholarly methods to examine and improve their teaching and students' learning outcomes.

  • What is the role of sharing findings in SoTL?

    Sharing findings helps expand the understanding of effective teaching strategies, contributing to the broader educational conversation and peer learning.

  • Why is questioning important in SoTL?

    Questioning is central to SoTL as it drives the inquiry process, focusing on understanding and improving student learning through evidence-based methods.

  • What methodologies are used in SoTL?

    SoTL methodologies vary but often include the gathering and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, reflective practices, and collaboration among colleagues.

  • How has SoTL evolved over the years?

    SoTL has expanded to include diverse methods and increasingly involves a range of educators, promoting more comprehensive research and wider impact.

View more video summaries

Get instant access to free YouTube video summaries powered by AI!
Subtitles
en
Auto Scroll:
  • 00:00:00
    The most basic definition of scholarship of teaching and learning that I use
  • 00:00:03
    is that it is faculty undertaking
  • 00:00:06
    systematic inquiry of learning in his or her own classroom.
  • 00:00:11
    Every time
  • 00:00:15
    a professor or a teacher teaches a course
  • 00:00:18
    they're engaged in an experiment; the
  • 00:00:22
    syllabus is a hypothesis that if I teach the class
  • 00:00:26
    this way, if I teach this material in this order, and if students do these things
  • 00:00:31
    then I hypothesize that something will happen. Students will learn,
  • 00:00:35
    they'll grow, they'll benefit, and
  • 00:00:38
    that's how we play out every single time we teach.
  • 00:00:42
    What's missing is that that final step of what an experimental mode would be,
  • 00:00:46
    which is this is my hypothesis, this is the unfolding,
  • 00:00:49
    and now I have to look very closely at the results and reexamine my hypothesis.
  • 00:00:53
    So that loop closing happens
  • 00:00:56
    always in some informal way -- that didn't work, I'll never do that again,
  • 00:01:00
    that was great, I'm always good on that day, students love this --
  • 00:01:05
    but we often don't undertake that loop
  • 00:01:09
    in a very systematic way, so for me the scholarship for teaching and learning is
  • 00:01:13
    about taking that last step
  • 00:01:15
    in the hypothesis testing that every act of teaching is
  • 00:01:19
    and picking some dimension, looking at it systematically,
  • 00:01:23
    looking sensitively and rigorously at the evidence of student learning,
  • 00:01:27
    and asking if the assumptions that are going into this learning design are
  • 00:01:32
    correct and if there are things that I might do differently.
  • 00:01:34
    The key characteristic of SoTL work for me is that it's a form of inquiry.
  • 00:01:38
    Some people like the term research, some people prefer inquiry.
  • 00:01:43
    It is certainly based on notions of
  • 00:01:46
    reflective practice and reflecting on your teaching; that's the starting point.
  • 00:01:49
    For me personally, SoTL involves not just an inquiry into your teaching
  • 00:01:54
    practices, but it has to have focus on students' learning.
  • 00:01:57
    So student learning is the actual focus of inquiry in SoTL,
  • 00:02:02
    thats that's my personal understanding of it. A definition that I like
  • 00:02:06
    is sort of as follows... It's
  • 00:02:09
    faculty bringing their habits and skills
  • 00:02:13
    as scholars to their work as teachers.
  • 00:02:17
    So habits of asking questions, gathering evidence of all different kinds,
  • 00:02:22
    drawing conclusions or raising new questions,
  • 00:02:26
    and bringing what they learn through that to
  • 00:02:30
    the thing they were looking at in the first place, which is students' learning --
  • 00:02:33
    and their own teaching, of course.
  • 00:02:35
    So it's a kind of cycle, but it's essentially
  • 00:02:39
    behaving as they do as a scholar in other settings and bringing that to their
  • 00:02:44
    work
  • 00:02:45
    as teachers. The key characteristics of SoTL really
  • 00:02:49
    are bringing your research to your teaching in a systematic way
  • 00:02:53
    so that what you plan to do for your students
  • 00:02:57
    you carry out and you test and you figure out
  • 00:03:01
    exactly their response and what might make their learning better.
  • 00:03:04
    So it's about really addressing your teaching
  • 00:03:09
    with the research knowledge that you have. In the root metaphor
  • 00:03:13
    of scholarship of teaching and learning is inquiry,
  • 00:03:16
    and that's what differentiates
  • 00:03:20
    that kind of teaching from regular teaching is that
  • 00:03:24
    you are continually asking a question... It doesn't have to be a cosmic question
  • 00:03:29
    about whether
  • 00:03:30
    education in some theoretical way is
  • 00:03:34
    working as a model, but it's more a question
  • 00:03:38
    that could be relayed simply to, "Are students achieving what I hoped for,
  • 00:03:41
    or what they hoped for?" And so the central feature is that you're asking a question.
  • 00:03:46
    What that means is that
  • 00:03:50
    when you're doing scholarship of teaching and learning, you are looking for an answer,
  • 00:03:54
    and that brings into play a second
  • 00:03:57
    key idea, which is that involves evidence. Some
  • 00:04:01
    scholarship of teaching and learning work is purely conceptual, but much of it is
  • 00:04:06
    asking a question, observing something to see if
  • 00:04:10
    you can find an answer to that question, and then framing what you learn from it.
  • 00:04:14
    The key characteristics of SoTL have probably changed over the past 20 years
  • 00:04:19
    since the
  • 00:04:21
    term entered the vocabulary in higher education.
  • 00:04:25
    To me the key element
  • 00:04:29
    is for faculty and
  • 00:04:32
    those who are working with them to look closely and critically at student
  • 00:04:35
    learning.
  • 00:04:37
    But in fact you can elaborate that because it
  • 00:04:41
    involves what you do with that knowledge.
  • 00:04:44
    First of all, to look closely and critically, it helps to have a really good question,
  • 00:04:48
    so having a question would be the first step, and its typically
  • 00:04:53
    the way in which people enter the scholarship of teaching and learning,
  • 00:04:57
    by thinking about something that troubles them in their classroom or
  • 00:05:01
    something that pleases them,
  • 00:05:02
    something they'd like to know better. So it's developing that
  • 00:05:06
    sense of... inquiry
  • 00:05:10
    in what you do in the classroom, or as we'll probably talk a little later
  • 00:05:15
    about in your program or some larger
  • 00:05:18
    unit in which you are a part.
  • 00:05:22
    So asking that question is very important
  • 00:05:25
    and then you get to devising ways of answering a question.
  • 00:05:29
    How you go about answering that question -- that is one
  • 00:05:34
    where it's very helpful to have colleagues to
  • 00:05:38
    work with and think about. Sometimes you can
  • 00:05:42
    answer your question just by a careful look at student work for your
  • 00:05:46
    class, but sometimes you have to be thinking about you question before you
  • 00:05:50
    even devise and
  • 00:05:52
    design your assignments for your class so that you'll have work that will
  • 00:05:56
    more readily answer it. Many people go further than that
  • 00:06:00
    and they look at... they do some other things too --
  • 00:06:03
    interview students, they'll do surveys, they'll do other things, and...
  • 00:06:10
    kinda depends what you asked and what you want to know
  • 00:06:13
    and what you're comfortable with methodologically.
  • 00:06:17
    Frequently taking comfort in
  • 00:06:20
    procedures you're familiar with from your discipline.
  • 00:06:24
    So there you have a question, you have a way of going about
  • 00:06:27
    answering it, and for some people, the most important part
  • 00:06:30
    is what you do with that information and
  • 00:06:33
    that is where you
  • 00:06:37
    redesign, reboot... your course or assignment,
  • 00:06:41
    an assessment, or even a whole program based
  • 00:06:45
    on many things that you're learning about
  • 00:06:48
    what your students are thinking and what they are doing.
  • 00:06:51
    And for some people the really critical
  • 00:06:55
    piece after that is going public with what you are learning.
  • 00:07:00
    We've tried to
  • 00:07:04
    think of going public frequently in programs for the scholarship of teaching
  • 00:07:08
    and learning
  • 00:07:09
    in a wide... with a wide range of...
  • 00:07:12
    speaking with your colleagues about it at the most informal level
  • 00:07:17
    all the way up to publishing
  • 00:07:20
    papers or books,
  • 00:07:24
    as a result of the whole program of work, but
  • 00:07:27
    people shouldn't start the scholarship of teaching and learning
  • 00:07:31
    with that as their only idea about what it means to public.
  • 00:07:35
    There are many ways in between that are fruitful
  • 00:07:39
    and that help move the discussion about teaching and learning forward.
  • 00:07:42
    Key characteristics of SoTL work...
  • 00:07:46
    I think focus in some part, anyway,
  • 00:07:49
    not just on the nature of the work but who is doing the work.
  • 00:07:53
    I have been asked a few times about the difference between educational research,
  • 00:07:57
    which we've been doing for
  • 00:07:59
    centuries, and SoTL, which appears to be a relatively new thing on the landscape.
  • 00:08:05
    My answer is it's not so much about
  • 00:08:08
    necessarily the research questions or even some of the methods, but it is about
  • 00:08:12
    who -- who's doing the work, and when SoTL
  • 00:08:17
    is going well, the number of people doing the work is greatly expanded,
  • 00:08:22
    the range of people, the diversity of people is greatly expanded,
  • 00:08:26
    and what that's supposed to do is increase
  • 00:08:29
    the impact of the work, because more of it is being conducted, as we might say,
  • 00:08:34
    at the coal face. I think the key characteristics for SoTL work
  • 00:08:38
    begin with asking interesting questions, and those interesting
  • 00:08:43
    questions
  • 00:08:44
    typically but not always come from a challenge that
  • 00:08:48
    someone is having with their teaching or with their students' learning
  • 00:08:52
    or the interface between the two.
  • 00:08:55
    So I think asking those interesting questions
  • 00:08:59
    begins with the characteristics of
  • 00:09:02
    good SoTL work, and then working out a methodology, a way
  • 00:09:07
    of gathering answers to the question --
  • 00:09:11
    the evidence from the students, the teachers' reflections --
  • 00:09:15
    all the relevant evidence... Finding a design and methodology that not only
  • 00:09:20
    reflects
  • 00:09:22
    the nature of the question but
  • 00:09:25
    in many ways, sometimes more importantly,
  • 00:09:29
    the nature of the expertise of the researcher or researchers.
  • 00:09:33
    Now I know that's a slightly contested response because some people say that
  • 00:09:36
    the
  • 00:09:37
    the research design and methodology should come specifically from the
  • 00:09:41
    question and the question alone,
  • 00:09:43
    but to avoid
  • 00:09:46
    what some have called amateur work in SoTL,
  • 00:09:50
    I think we have to bring our expertise to the table, and
  • 00:09:54
    I think there's plenty room in SoTL for a variety of ways to answer
  • 00:09:57
    questions,
  • 00:09:59
    and so I think a methodology grounded in...
  • 00:10:02
    a methodology for answering questions grounded in a question
  • 00:10:05
    and the researchers' expertise,
  • 00:10:09
    and then finely, I think a key characteristic would be
  • 00:10:13
    going public in some way -- sharing the findings, whether they're positive or
  • 00:10:18
    negative findings, whether I found
  • 00:10:20
    that my students' learned greatly or
  • 00:10:23
    revealed many misconceptions that make me have to go back to the starting point.
  • 00:10:27
    Whatever those findings are,
  • 00:10:28
    sharing them publicly beyond just one's institution,
  • 00:10:32
    to a larger audience, to
  • 00:10:35
    build knowledge on whatever the question is because chances are many people have
  • 00:10:41
    asked the same question or wondered the same thing or dealt with the same
  • 00:10:44
    challenge
  • 00:10:46
    but to build on that conversation, to build that knowledge,
  • 00:10:50
    to continue the conversation,
  • 00:10:53
    and to enter that kind of broader
  • 00:10:57
    audience beyond one's institution. So for me
  • 00:11:01
    those three characteristics are essential for SoTL:
  • 00:11:06
    beginning with an interesting question, having a methodology that's grounded in
  • 00:11:10
    the question
  • 00:11:11
    and the researcher's expertise, and then going public in some
  • 00:11:15
    broad way. I think of SoTL
  • 00:11:18
    in four ways. It's a perspective on teaching and learning;
  • 00:11:23
    it's a set of practices that we use to investigate teaching and learning;
  • 00:11:27
    it's a product that comes about from that investigation;
  • 00:11:32
    and it's also something that has an impact. So
  • 00:11:35
    I would start by saying that the most important part of
  • 00:11:40
    SoTL work for me is the fact that it's a perspective;
  • 00:11:43
    it says that teaching and learning are
  • 00:11:46
    areas where we can ask intelligent, consequential
  • 00:11:50
    questions. We start there, I don't think we can go very far wrong.
  • 00:11:54
    When you're doing it yourself, two things happen.
  • 00:11:59
    One is that you get to look at the questions that you really care about.
  • 00:12:04
    So I'm often looking when I'm reading people's articles
  • 00:12:07
    at whether what they're talking about is useful to me. Can I apply it? Can I
  • 00:12:11
    adapt it?
  • 00:12:12
    Can it inform my teaching?
  • 00:12:16
    But when I'm asking my own questions, it's a much more direct process.
  • 00:12:20
    The other thing that happens when you do your own
  • 00:12:23
    is that you have to think much more carefully
  • 00:12:27
    about what I think student learning looks like
  • 00:12:31
    because you have to define it.
  • 00:12:34
    You have to look at the work that somebody did and say
  • 00:12:37
    "yeah that's what learning looks like, right there," and that process I think
  • 00:12:41
    makes me
  • 00:12:43
    a better teacher in ways that reading other people's articles doesn't,
  • 00:12:49
    because it gets me closer to it.
Tags
  • SoTL
  • education
  • teaching
  • learning
  • inquiry
  • reflection
  • evidence
  • faculty
  • scholarship
  • methodology