6 Summary of Session 1
This session has introduced you to Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and you have examined how SoTL is different from scholarly teaching and discipline-based educational research. You have learned the six principles of SoTL and how these principles and the concepts of reflection, critical reflection and reflexivity are integral to the design and evaluation of a SoTL inquiry. You have encountered the stages of a SoTL inquiry and started thinking how the resources in this session will help towards your SoTL practice.
Hutchings and Shulman (1999) assert that SoTL is not synonymous with excellent teaching but it is a condition for excellent teaching:
…the scholarship of teaching is a condition – as yet a mostly absent condition – for excellent teaching. It is the mechanism through which the profession of teaching itself advances, through which teaching can be something other than a seat-of-the-pants operation, with each of us out there making it up as we go. As such, the scholarship of teaching has the potential to serve all teachers – and students.
SoTL frames teaching differently, separating it from the traditional focus on training and remediation, but aligning it more strategically with the inquiry and review process common to all research that generates evidence about efficacy of teaching (McCarthy, 2019).
Now move on to Session 2 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .