The Role of SoTL in the Academy: Upon the 25th Anniversary of Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered

In this essay, we explore definitions and taxonomies of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and present a model of the Dimensions of Activities Related to Teaching (DART) which provides a context for SoTL along two dimensions: public/private and systematic/informal. The four quadrants: practice of teaching, sharing about teaching, scholarly teaching and, finally, scholarship of teaching and learning, provide academics with a conceptual model to distinguish various approaches to the teaching process from research into that process. We explore the relationship of SoTL to the Boyer model of scholarship, to teaching excellence, and to scholarship, ending with an argument for the importance of SoTL to the Academy