Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Why Should We Engage?

Session Abstract

So what is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)? Why should you care about it, much less engage in it yourself? And what is the relationship between this new scholarly field and what teaching historians often refer to as their “own work,” the Scholarship of Discovery? These are the questions we’ll explore in this interactive session. Briefly, SoTL is discipline-based research into student learning and pedagogy in Higher Education. Our session will feature an eminent scholar of History Education, who will offer a short presentation to help us understand better the relationship between education research and SoTL in history and what each has to offer the other. Then four panelists, who have levels of experience in this kind of scholarly work from novice to expert, will briefly answer the question posed in the session title from their perspectives. After these presentations, the audience will move into smaller discussion groups moderated by the panelists. Possible discussion topics will be: how SoTL can help us better evaluate our work as teachers and scholars, how graduate students can begin to develop expertise in this area of inquiry, SoTL as a bridge to a more collaborative understanding of teaching and curriculum, and the relationship of this form of scholarship with others practiced in the academy. In the final fifteen minutes of the session we will reconvene as a whole to share some of the discussion from the smaller groups.