Scholarship
The DLSI’s focus on advanced teaching and learning includes support for the Scholarship of Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (sometimes called SOTL or SOTLA), as well as for scholarship more broadly, which after all is a form of advanced teaching and learning for professional peers.
The DLSI’s support of SOTLA emerges directly from Ernest Boyer’s (1990) model of scholarship, in which he champions the scholarship of teaching and learning as a critical — and critically needed — form of scholarship, alongside the scholarships of discovery, integration, and application. For a quick and accessible overview of Boyer’s model, including examples of each of the four types, see this faculty development presentation from McNabb and Pawlyshyn at Northeastern University.
SOTLA is also directly related to our Lasallian roots. As Br. William Mann, FSC, current La Salle University Trustee and past President of St. Mary’s University in Minnesota, has explained, Jean Baptiste de La Salle and the early Brothers from the Christian Schools stood out from other contemporary educators not necessarily because of the best practices they adapted and invented, but because they documented those practices and their reasons for them in The Conduct of the Christian Schools and other Lasallian texts.
In addition to support for the Scholarship of Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, the DLSI is committed to supporting research collaborations between and among Lasallian institutions around the world through the Lasallian Research Network.
We have a number of initiatives to support SOTLA and other forms of scholarship in the works, but we are open to suggestions and guidance from the faculty community about what would be of most use.