The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) invites scholars across academic disciplines to bring their scholarly habits of mind and research expertise to the investigation of problems and questions that affect teaching and learning in higher education. SoTL has two equally important goals: the generation of new knowledge that informs a wider field and the application of results to one’s own classroom teaching practice.
SoTL provides multiple entry points for scholars with different levels of experience with research on teaching and learning. It often grows out of a cycle familiar to reflective instructors: reflection and question posing about teaching and learning, gathering additional information or modifying pedagogy, and assessing student learning. SoTL projects move beyond this reflective instructor cycle by engaging meaningfully with existing knowledge about teaching and learning. Meaningful engagement includes both drawing on relevant theoretical and empirical literature to design SoTL projects and making findings public and open to critical review so that they contribute new knowledge to this literature.