Collaboration Resources for
College and University Teachers

SoTL
Annotated Bibliography

Introduction to SoTL, Expanding Definitions of Scholarship, Making Teaching Public, Campus-Wide Focus on Teaching and Learning, Engaging in Pedagogical Research, SoTL in Various Disciplines, SoTL as A Career Priority, Selected SoTL Journals

What is SoTL? Expanding Definitions of Scholarship

Getting started

Boyer, Ernest L. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.

This work has been widely cited as the impetus behind many efforts to consider and then reward a broader range of faculty scholarship: that of discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Boyer begins the important work of making a case for these types of scholarship as well as offering suggestions for how they might be evaluated.

Glassick, Charles, Mary Taylor Huber, and Gene Maeroff. Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1997.

The culmination of work at the Carnegie foundation under Ernest Boyer’s leadership, this work continues the line of thinking put forth in Scholarship Reconsidered (1990). It offers six qualitative standards by which all types of scholarship—discovery, integration, application, and teaching—might be assessed. The authors suggest that evaluation processes on various campuses also be judged by these same standards. Scholarship Assessed is useful for individual scholars as well as institutions implementing or revising standards for faculty evaluation.

O’Meara, KerryAnn, and R. Eugene Rice. Faculty Priorities Reconsidered: Rewarding Multiple Forms of Scholarship. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

This work is particularly important for administrators and faculty developers. Drawing from the work of AAHE (the American Association for Higher Education, an organization that folded several years ago but whose work has been carried on by the Carnegie Foundation) on faculty roles and rewards, it includes three sections: Context, i.e. issues relating to the four categories of scholarship identified by Boyer; reports from nine campuses participating in AAHE's “Reflecting on Best Practices” project, each including  the history of faculty roles and rewards on their campus, the process of making change in this area, outcomes of policy reform, advice to others, and questions for the future; and “national perspectives,” considering the impact of the movement to redefine scholarship. O'Meara and Rice include a report on a survey of chief academic officers and a guide to best practices in encouraging multiple forms of scholarship.

Further Reading

            http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classification  

The Carnegie Classification system, in use for over 30 years with slight modifications, was significantly revised in 2005. “With the 2005 revision, the single classification system was replaced by a set of multiple, parallel classifications. The new classifications provide different lenses through which to view U.S. colleges and universities, offering researchers greater flexibility in meeting their analytic needs. They are organized around three fundamental questions: what is taught …, who are the students…, and what is the setting….” This site provides access to documentation, descriptions of categories, and Classifications FAQs, along with related articles.

Kreber, Carolin, ed. Scholarship Revisited: Perspectives on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Vol. 86, New Directions for Teaching and Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

This volume presents findings of a 1998 survey of 11 SoTL experts, seeking to reach consensus about important components of SoTL and about unresolved issues in SoTL, as well as suggesting ways to address these problems. This is useful for those hoping to clarify thinking about what SoTL is, how it differs from and connects with scholarly teaching, and how institutions might promote enhanced scholarship in teaching.

McCormick, Alexander C., and Chun-Mei Zhao. “Rethinking and Reframing the Carnegie Classification.” Change (September/October 2005): 51-57. 

With a focus on the Carnegie Classification system for higher education and the revisions to this system that were released in November 2005, the article describes the many issues faced by those who develop, use, and maintain any classification system. It also provides highlights of the Carnegie revision.

Paulsen, Michael B., and Kenneth A. Feldman. “Exploring the Dimensions of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Analytics for an Emerging Literature.” New Directions for Institutional Research 129 (2006): 21-36. 

Paulsen and Feldman clarify Boyer’s concept of SoTL by using a four-function paradigm that examines four purposes for connecting scholarship and teaching and learning: scholarship of “pedagogical content knowledge,” “scholarly preparation of college teachers,” “scholarly teaching,” and “scholarly evaluation and development of college teachers.” The work includes a list of examples for each category.