Enhancing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Study of the Factors Identified as Promoting and Hindering the Scholarly Activities of Academics in One Faculty

Abstract

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has, at its very core, the linking of research and teaching/learning. Conceptions of SoTL differ to degrees (Trigwell and Shale, 2004) but the common thread within all accounts is the integration of research within teaching and learning to enhance and further develop practice. Additionally, in line with other research activities, consensus emerges on the need for scholarly inquiries to be shared with the wider teaching and learning community to ensure open review and scrutiny. The linking of research and teaching/learning also runs to the processes by which SoTL is carried out. Badley (2003), for example, highlights that scholarship involves the same stages as the research process planning aims and goals of the inquiry, selecting appropriate methods to use, obtaining and analysing results, disseminating the knowledge gained and critically reflecting on the whole process. In this way it matches, as Laurillard (2008) discusses, the teacher as action researcher.