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The Current Landscape of Faculty Developers in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Across Diverse Campuses in the United States

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Abstract

Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) are uniquely poised to support instructors engaging in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through professional expertise in evidence-based teaching practice and dedicated staff resources. Models for this support have ranged from purely a funding source, to learning communities, to one-off technical training and consultations, to comprehensive mentoring and partnerships. In the decade since Schwartz and Haynie published “Faculty Development Centers and the Role of SoTL,” we aimed to profile the current landscape of university CTLs and their involvement in SoTL. In this review, we draw on the multiple models of CTL participation in SoTL developed by Lukes et al. to categorize the work conducted at a sample of American institutions. Using a data mining approach of publicly available information online, we compiled a sample dataset that shows the distribution of CTLs across the US engaging in various forms of SoTL. We examine current trends of CTL and SoTL presence amongst institution types and geographic regions, with consideration for different SoTL program models. We conclude with a discussion of the current landscape of CTLs and their SoTL involvement compared to our aspirations: what will the future of faculty development look like, and what role will SoTL play? Given the pros and cons of each different model for CTL and SoTL integration, is the current distribution of these models as effective as it could be? What changes could lead to greater impact both for CTLs and for SoTL?

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Data Availability

The data used in this study is available from the educationdata package in R developed by Tyagi and Ueyama and can be accessed at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/educationdata/index.html. The code used for this study as well as the de-identified file dataset generated as a result of this work can be accessed at https://github.com/mesako/ctl-sotl-study. While this study used publicly available website data, individual participants did not supply this data for the purpose of this study. Given the sensitivities of a comparative meta-analysis of the work of faculty developers across institutions, the author has chosen to protect the identities of individual institutions and the work portfolio of their CTLs. The exact identities of the institutions included in the random stratified sample is available upon request to repeat this study.

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  1. Center for Teaching & Learning, University of California, Berkeley, Wheeler Hall 206, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Melissa E. Ko

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Ko, M.E. The Current Landscape of Faculty Developers in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Across Diverse Campuses in the United States. Innov High Educ 48, 1009–1032 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-023-09666-5

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