Scholarly Teaching and Inquiry

What is Scholarly Teaching?  

Scholarly teachers approach their teaching as scholarly practice. This means that they consult the literature on teaching in their field and they apply scholarship about teaching and learning and disciplinary knowledge in their field to their practice.  

Scholarly teachers reflect on their teaching regularly and participate in dialogue about scholarly teaching with other instructors in their department, at their institution, within their field, or through the teaching centre at their institution.  

At the Centre for Educational Excellence, we model scholarly approaches to teaching and faculty development in all our work. Our programs and consultations are grounded in research on effective course and curriculum design, student engagement and inclusive teaching.  

We support and facilitate scholarly teaching at SFU by  

• Sharing recent research on teaching in our programs
• Inviting visiting scholars to share their research at our teaching symposia and workshops
• Creating communities of practice where SFU instructors can engage in dialogue about scholarly teaching

What is Scholarship of Teaching and Learning? 

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) involves conducting and producing scholarship about teaching and learning, and disseminating this scholarship through communities of practice, conferences or publications so that it can inform scholarly teaching. Scholars who engage in SoTL ask questions about student learning and use systematic inquiry to answer them, using methods that make the research replicable. 

Teaching and Learning Journals

• 100 teaching journals from over 30 disciplines published by ACRL organized by discipline: https://acrl.ala.org/IS/instruction-tools-resources-2/pedagogy/a-selected-list-of-journals-on-teaching-learning/

• Searchable directory of disciplinary and interdisciplinary SoTL journals published by the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kennesaw State University: https://facultydevelopment.kennesaw.edu/scholarly-teaching/journals/index.php?tags=Pedagogical%20Research%20-%20General

Featured research on teaching

Each month we will summarize a study that is timely and relevant to the teaching practice of SFU instructors.

Dewsbury BM, Swanson HJ, Moseman-Valtierra S, Caulkins J (2022) Inclusive and active pedagogies reduce academic outcome gaps and improve long-term performance. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0268620.

This longitudinal study demonstrated that students who experienced active and inclusive pedagogies used in a large first year required biology course performed better in second year and subsequent upper year courses, and that inclusive teaching approaches reduced outcome gaps between white and BIPOC students.