The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL): the thorn in the flesh of educational research

ABSTRACT

Thirty years ago Boyer’s report Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990) inspired the launch of the ‘SoTL movement’ which sought to raise the status of learning and teaching in higher education. In this paper we argue that despite its honourable intentions the SoTL movement has been a thorn in the flesh of serious scholarship into learning and teaching in higher education. Drawing on various debates within and outside the SoTL movement and interviews with teaching and learning leaders in the UK, we argue that the time has come to consign SoTL to history, and start the process of asserting the value of higher education research. A widened understanding of SoTL that we conceptualise as SoTL 2.0 has superseded and edged out earlier conceptualisations of SoTL (SoTL1.0), weakening SoTL’s potential research rigour, legitimacy and validity.

KEYWORDS:

• Scholarship of teaching and learning
• educational research
• academic development
• institutional policy
• teaching excellence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work emerged from a Higher Education Academy project ‘Defining and supporting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): A sector wide study’. However, the article does not necessarily reflect the views of anyone other than the named authors.