Knowledge for teaching, knowledge about teaching: exploring the links between education research, scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) and scholarly teaching

Abstract

The relationship between education research and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) is still debated, while a distinction has been made between scholarly teaching and SOTL. This study compares and contrasts two programmes of work that took place in a particular 2nd year engineering course, both led by the author. The first programme was an educational research project investigating student learning in the course. The second programme was a period of teaching, leading to some SOTL output. Analysis of the knowledge drawn on in teaching, confirms that good university teaching is not a direct application of research findings but rather draws on a broad and largely tacit practical base of knowledge. The article also offers a deliberation on whether it is productive to maintain the distinction between education research and SOTL.