Scholarly Teaching- Teaching that entails certain practices of classroom assessment and evidence gathering; teaching that is informed not only by the latest ideas in the field but by current ideas aobut teaching generally and specifically in the field; and teaching that invites peer collaboration or review.

Scholarship of teaching- An act of intelligence or artistic creation becomes scholarship when it possesses at least three attrributes: it becomes public, it becomes an object of critical review and evaluation by members of one's community, and membeers of one's community begin to use, build upon, and develop those acts of mind and creation. (Definitions after Hutchings and Shulman)

Many conceptualizations of SOTL have been offered over the years. This one is ours. Others will be exhibited in the next module.

Every teaching-related act can be represented as a point somewhere within the three elliptical regions. Elliptical shapes are chosen solely for convenience of representation. All deeds that teachers perform in the name of carrying out their teaching assignments can be imagined as individual points within the large ellipse labeled “teaching.”

The centillions of such points include acts of materials development, grading, individual tutoring … every teaching activity in or out of the classroom. Within this big red ellipse of teaching acts, we can identify a subset that meet special criteria for “scholarly teaching.” The smallest ellipse (yellow) represents “scholarship of teaching and learning.” Scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) is rooted in teaching but extends beyond it (out of the red ellipse). SOTL involves creation and dissemination of original work that makes a useful contribution to knowledge and practice of other teachers.

Though sharply defined in the picture, the boundaries of ellipses can seem a bit fuzzy when classifying certain teaching-related acts. This occasional fuzziness does not lessen the usefulness of this seemingly simplistic conceptualization.