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What is SOTL?

The Basic Definition

The basic language for SOTL can be found in Ernest L. Boyer’s 1990 publication, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton ,NJ : The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching).  There, Boyer argues that if higher education is to meet its full range of responsibilities the concept of scholarship must be broadened to include not only basic research but other kinds of intellectual work in which faculty engage. Toward this end, four types of scholarship are proposed:

N	the scholarship of discovery (traditional, basic research);
N	the scholarship of integration (including such work as textbook writing, or synthetic reviews of literature in the
	field);
N	the scholarship of application (professional service, or outreach, which draws on scholarly expertise);
N	and the scholarship of teaching.

According to the Carnegie Foundation, for many educators, it was this Carnegie report that introduced the phrase "the scholarship of teaching."
Bender and Gray (in the 1999 publication The Scholarship of Teaching, Research & Creative Activity [April 1999, XXII:1 and on the Web: http://www.indiana.edu/%7Ercapub/v22n1/p03.html ]) define this new, fourth type of scholarship as follows:  The scholarship of teaching is not the same as good teaching and "teaching our scholarship." The scholarship of teaching "begins where all intellectual inquiry begins, with questions about what is going on and how to explain, support, and replicate answers that satisfy us." It means that "we must use what we learn about student learning as data that justify or require us to change our practices."

SOTL in the UW-System

At UW-RF, we have developed our understanding of SOTL according to the works of colleagues in the UW-System with expertise in this area, like Bill Cerbin and Tony Ciccone.  Cerbin’s publications are numerous;  the Carnegie Foundation has drawn upon his expertise (naming him a Carnegie Lead Scholar for the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and learning (CASTL).  Ciccone has served as Director of the The Center for Instructional and Professional Development at UW-Milwaukee.  We are grateful for their support in our work.

Excerpts from an essay by Bill Cerbin on SOTL

Production of this web site is made possible by a grant in SOTL provided by OPID (the Office of Professional and Instructional Development) and by matching funds provided by the Office of the Provost at UW-RF