As researchers in higher education (HE) we find ourselves interested in the ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’ (SoTL) (Felton, 2013). While difficult to pin-down, SoTL is both ‘field’ and ‘movement’: it is an object of fruitful educational research and also a movement within and beyond HE settings. We are conscious SoTL is ‘popular’ as a field of educational and pedagogic inquiry globally beyond the UK (especially in North America and Australasia), with some longstanding practices in the UK (Fanghanel et al., 2016), yet little referred to by ‘teacher education’, schools and pedagogy research. Given the global popularity of SoTL we believe it is time for varied UK educational researchers to adopt ‘SoTL’ for greater collaborative potential. We see the role of a SoTL ‘mindset’ to work across multiple educational sectors (schooling, teacher education, practitioner, leadership, sociology and psychology, SENDA, social justice), to develop means by which research practices become explored in a less siloed, more collaborative way. In this blog post we explain the nature and role of SoTL and begin to reflect upon how SOTL might be harnessed for greater value in cross-sector research.

SoTL encourages scholars – teachers from any sector – to bring scholarly mindsets and skillsets to their teaching. For example, it might encourage the creation of new curriculum or new approaches to practice. SoTL might explore re-examining of lenses used by educators to reflexively account for ‘what happens and why’ in practice. While this sounds like ‘pedagogic research’, and is, what makes it ‘SoTL’ is the open, public, intentional and explicit adoption of scholarship to these activities. Teachers probe, ask questions, gather evidence, draw conclusions and raise new questions, impacting students’ learning. It is not defined nor limited by a methodological canon nor a claim of objectivity/subjectivity/positionality but a recognition that ‘scholarly approaches’ encompass all of these. SoTL is not driven by utility, although it does have practical outcomes, recognising the need for rigorous and sustainable endeavors (Felten, 2013). It has values-informed approaches, grounded in partnership, valuing public-facing inquiry. Engaging in SoTL can help practitioners develop as reflective and scholarly teachers, demonstrating commitment to teaching/supporting learning.

‘SoTL is not defined nor limited by a methodological canon nor a claim of objectivity/subjectivity/ positionality but a recognition that ‘scholarly approaches’ encompass all of these.’

In our institutional context we have launched a SoTL journal Patterns of Practice aimed to explore the importance of SoTL for all. However, we argue that SoTL isolated to only HE is not good enough: educational research thrives on collaboration, and partnership between schools and universities is essential for driving meaningful progress. By working together, schools and universities create a bridge between theory and practice, ensuring that education evolves based on evidence rather than assumptions (Jakhelln & Postholm, 2022). We would like this partnership to show the way forward for future developments in the field of SoTL. The benefits are clear: for schools, research collaboration with universities provides access to cutting-edge research. But, of course, schools are not just consumers of research, they are active participants, offering real-world classrooms as spaces for testing/refining ideas. Universities benefit from these partnerships by grounding their research in realities of everyday teaching, leading to tangible improvements in student learning. When schools and universities collaborate, they co-create knowledge that is relevant, practical and impactful. This dynamic exchange fuels innovation in education (Lapointe & Klausen, 2024), which we believe is of key importance to the SoTL mindset. We can also see real fruitfulness in schools and universities working together, partnering with students, to define what ‘scholarly’ approaches to teaching might be and how they might inform collaborations around inclusion, access, transition and curriculum for both sectors.

By engaging in SoTL, stakeholders can learn from each other. Not only are those who engage in SoTL putting years of scholarship to good use beyond discipline-based research, they also contribute steadily to cultures of bottom-up change from practice on the ground. This connectedness helps disseminate teaching and learning oriented findings, promoting a culture of sharing and public scrutiny, contributing to a culture of change. And of course, all this work benefits learners above all. We think it is time for all those involved in educational research to adopt a ‘scholarly’ mindset and researcher identity and use this to pursue partnership practices, helping to demonstrate how collaborative ‘scholarly mindsets and skillsets’ might fruitfully enable all sectors of educational research to work collaboratively.

References

Fanghanel, J., Pritchard, J., Potter, J., & Wisker G. (2016). Defining and supporting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): A sector-wide study. Executive summary. Higher Education Academy.

Felten, P. (2013). Principles of good practice in SoTL. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 121–125. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.121

Jakhelln, R., & Postholm, M. B. (2022). University–school collaboration as an arena for community-building in teacher education. Educational Research, 64(4), 457–472. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2022.2071750

Lapointe, S., & Klausen, C. (2024). A new model for school-university collaborations: Mobilising academic knowledge and building cross sectoral synergies around inquiry learning. In Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: building connections across diverse educational systems (pp. 59–75). Springer Nature Singapore.