1.Introduction
The scholarship of teaching and learning is a term coined by Schulman (2011:4) who argues that to be deemed “scholarship,” teaching and learning has
to encompass three essential features: “ it should be public, subject to peer review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by members of one’s
disciplinary community”.
According to Huber and Hutchings (2005), SoTL is an approach whereby communities of teachers who are committed to pedagogical inquiry and innovation, meet to exchange ideas about teaching and learning and subsequently apply
ema nating ideas to address the challenges of educating students.
Using the SoTL approach, teachers identify and investigate questions about their students’ learning which reflects to the classroom in terms of applying new curricular, new assessment methods and new pedagogies, which in
turn become subjects of new inquiry. By using evidence-gathering and documentation strategies,
teachers make their students’ learning more visible, and this helps scholars of teaching and learning to develop their capacity as observant, thoughtful and innovative teachers.
Simultaneously, making their work public contributes to pedagogical knowledge in their disciplines (Hutchings,Huber and Ciccone, 2011) and creates a new space of pedagogical exchange and collaboration (Huber and Hutchings, 2005).
The scholarship of teaching and learning promotes teaching as a scholarly endeavor, while drawing on the reciprocal relationship between teaching and learning, and research. According to Hutchings et al.,
(2011), SoTL encapsulates res
earch and teaching & learning.
