Figure 1
Publications grouped into 5-year blocks for articles in medicine and other health professions.
Table 1
SoTL operationalizations by audience: public disseminations, local disseminations, and public or local disseminations.
| PUBLIC DISSEMINATION | LOCAL DISSEMINATION | UNDETERMINED (i.e., PUBLIC OR LOCAL) DISSEMINATION | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS | PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS | BOOKS | GRANT FUNDING | TEACHING | CLINICAL PRACTICE | TEACHING PORTFOLIOS | EVIDENCE BASED TEACHING OR EVALUATION STRATEGIES | NEW COURSES/CURRICULA | AWARDS/PEER RECOGNITION | CREATING EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES | ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION | |
| MEDICINE | ||||||||||||
| 12 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 9 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 11 | 3 | 10 | 11 | |
| Medicine Totals | 18 | 20 | 35 | |||||||||
| OTHER HEALTH PROFESSIONS | ||||||||||||
| Nursing | 10 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 12 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 12 | 4 | 10 | 13 |
| Nursing Totals | 25 | 18 | 39 | |||||||||
| Pharmacy | 9 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 6 |
| Pharmacy Totals | 21 | 8 | 18 | |||||||||
| Physical Therapy | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Physical Therapy Totals | 0 | 3 | 2 | |||||||||
| Occupational Therapy | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Occupational Therapy Totals | 1 | 3 | 2 | |||||||||
| Dentistry | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Dentistry Totals | 4 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| HPE/Mix | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| HPE/Mix Totals | 8 | 4 | 9 | |||||||||
| All Other Professions Total: | 59 | 37 | 71 | |||||||||
| Totals in Full Corpus | 37 | 17 | 10 | 13 | 33 | 5 | 13 | 6 | 31 | 10 | 31 | 34 |
| 77 | 57 | 106 | ||||||||||
Table 2
Descriptions of SoTL in relation to promotion and tenure across time in medical education and other health professions education literature.
| BEFORE 2000 | 2000–2004 | 2005–2009 | 2010–2014 | 2015–2019 | 2020–2026 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schools and academic teaching hospitals have revised their promotion and tenure guidelines to recognize SoTL | Medicine | Beattie 2000; Haffler 2000 | Fincher 2006; Wood 2006; Schrader 2008; Ruiz 2009 | Grigsby 2011; Searle 2012; Crites 2014 | Kyle 2017; O’Brien 2019 | ||
| Other HPE | Smith 2005; Spake 2005 | Gupta 2014 | Register 2018 | ||||
| Promotion and tenure committees (or similar gatekeeping bodies) that were unfamiliar with SoTL | Medicine | Morahan 2007; McGaghie 2009; Ruiz 2009 | Grigsby 2011; Crites 2014 | Ander 2017; Kyle 2017; Franzen 2018; Irby 2018 | Milner 2023 | ||
| Other HPE | Miller 1991 | Reece 2001; Glanville 2004 | Eddy 2007; Spath 2007; Peterson 2005; Smesny 2007; Spake 2005 | Oermann 2014; Lanning 2014 | Opacic 2017; Register 2018 | ||
| Promotion and tenure committees lacked mechanisms to judge the SoTL activities and products presented in promotion | Medicine | Haffler 2000; Simpson 2000; Collins 2004 | Simpson 2007; Ruiz 2009 | LaMantia 2010; Grigsby 2011; Shah 2012; Crites 2014 | Ander 2017; Irby 2018 | Hoffman 2020; Jacobs 2020; Blanco 2022; Bockrath 2024; Gribble 2026 | |
| Other HPE | Glanville 2004 | Eddy 2007; Smesny 2007; Wise 2008 | McNeal 2014; Lanning 2014 | Oermann 2017; Opacic 2017; Register 2018 | |||
| Promotion and tenure committees upheld traditional metrics for academic success (e.g., peer-reviewed publications, grant funding) that reflected the primacy of research | Medicine | Beattie 2000; Haffler 2000; Smith 2001 | Schrader 2008; McGaghie 2009 | Greenberg 2010; Grigsby 2011; Searle 2012; Crites 2014 | Jordan 2016; Kyle 2017; Franzen 2018; Irby 2018 | Jacobs 2020; Beck Dallaghan 2023 | |
| Other HPE | Starck 1996; Everett 1998; Sherwen 1998 | Riley 2002 | Stull 2005; Wise 2008 | McNeal 2014; Oermann 2014; Jahangiri 2011 | Mehvar 2017 | ||
| Quantifying the success of SoTL activities and products was very difficult, and they suggested that this impeded the recognition of physician educators via promotion and tenure decisions | Medicine | Simpson 1999; Schneeweiss 1997 | Beattie 2000; Simpson 2000; Collins 2004 | McGaghie 2009 | Irby 2018 | Jacobs 2020 | |
| Other HPE | Angstadt 1998 | Glanville 2004 | Spath 2007 | McNeal 2014; Oermann 2014 | Register 2018 | ||
Figure 2
Besharov and Smith’s (2014) Type of Logic Multiplicity Within Organizations.
Table 3
The differences between scholarly teaching, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and educational research.
| SCHOLARLY TEACHING | SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING | EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Definition | “Scholarly teaching is teaching that is well grounded in the sources and resources appropriate to the field. It reflects a thoughtful selection and integration of ideas and examples, and well-designed strategies of course design, development, transmission, interaction and assessment” [160 (p. 49)]. “Scholarly teaching relates to using the work produced by others (the literature) to inform and guide one’s practice and the teaching-learning experience” [161 (p. 825)]. | SoTL is “a broad set of practices that engage teachers in looking closely and critically at student learning in order to improve their own courses and programs, and to share insights with other educators who can evaluate and build on their efforts” [1 (p. xix)]. SoTL “advances the profession of teaching itself”, by using SoTL activities “at the level of institutional and national policy, to develop competence, excellence, and promotion frameworks” [161 (p. 825)]. SoTL can address topics that may not be easily categorized as teaching or learning (e.g., medical school admissions; specialty selection; clinician educator career paths) | Educational research creates and disseminates “better ways of thinking about the problems we face [in HPE] … the value of our scientific discourse (our talks and papers) will arise not from our ability to create a general solution that will apply to everyone’s problems or even our ability to solve each other’s problems, but rather from our ability to help each other think better about our own versions of the problems” [162 (p. 37)]. |
| Key features | Scholarly teaching “promotes student engagement and learning using the educational literature and systematically assesses learning outcomes” [137 (p. 257)]. “Scholarly teaching draws on the expertise of others” [161 (p. 825)]. | SoTL “communicates the goals, preparation, methods, results, presentation, and reflection of teaching in the literature” [137 (p. 257)]. “SoTL contributes to the expertise of others” [161 (p. 825)]. | Educational research uses research designs—be they quantitative, qualitative, or mixed—to study educational questions of broad relevance [137]. Educational research contributes new knowledge to HPE’s body of literature. |
| Audience for Disseminations | Local audience (i.e., improving teaching and learning within the local context). “Sharing is aimed at enhancing the value of teaching at the institution as well as developing and supporting individuals in their subsequent teaching practice” [161 (p. 825)]. | Public audience (i.e., HPE educators external to the local context; may be of interest to HPE researchers) | Public audience (i.e., broad audience of all external HPE educators and HPE researchers) |
| Evidence [137] and disseminations [52] | Teaching portfolio [137]; teaching; clinical practice [including workplace-based teaching]; teaching evaluations; implementing evidence-based teaching, course creation, or evaluation strategies; local awards recognizing teaching excellence | Peer-reviewed publications presenting instructional design or assessment insights; local, national, or international talks on educations [137]; program evaluation with broadly transferable findings; reporting of educational resources with evaluation data | Peer-reviewed publications presented as research studies in educational literature [137]; peer-reviewed conference presentations and abstracts; authoring books and/or book chapters; securing of grant funding; awards for contributions to HPE’s knowledge base. |
| Advancement of knowledge [52] | Harnessing knowledge about how teaching educations learners/transmits knowledge to learners. The learners’ knowledge is advanced. The educator’s skill are improved. Advancements are locally focused. | Development and assessment of educational approaches, curricula, innovations, etc. for the transmission of knowledge to learners. The knowledge in the HPE field about how to effectively engage in HPE is advanced. | Discovery of new knowledge through investigation [52] (i.e., research); integration of knowledge to generate new understanding [52] (i.e., literature reviews/syntheses); knowledge and understanding about topics impacting HPE are advanced [161]. |
| Impact [52] | Measurable impact at the local level (e.g., student learning is enhanced by the educator’s teaching and/or evaluation practices) [52]. | Measurable impact at the local, national, and/or international level (e.g., an educational innovation developed by an educator is adopted across their local institution, and/or other institutions nationally, and/or institutions in other countries) | Measurable impact at the national and/or international level (e.g., a research discovery influences the direction of the HPE field or provides a platform for others to build on; a meta-analysis integrates a body of knowledge for new insights, policies, or guidelines) [52]. |
| Illustrative example | The educator learns about/reads into/takes training to use Team Based Learning. They implement it in their classroom activities to integrate foundational and clinical science knowledge and skills to diagnose and manage a patient with dyslipidemia. Student evaluations reveal greater engagement with the material and greater enjoyment of classroom time. The educator reports this work in their teaching portfolio. | The educator analyzes their TBL teaching activity (focused on integrating foundational and clinical science knowledge and skills to diagnose and manage a patient with dyslipidemia), and communicates the insights gained via this analysis by reporting the goals, preparation, methods, results (e.g., student performance outcomes; student feedback to the educator), and reflections on/interpretations of their teaching experiences. The educator publishes this work [163] in MedEd Portal, a publicly available repository of stand-alone, complete teaching or learning modules. | The researcher investigates an offering of TBL in their local institution to explore how many changes can be made to an educational intervention (i.e., TBL) to still be considered an example of that intervention. This research proposes distinguishing between the techniques, principles, and philosophy of the intervention, and theorizes that techniques can vary wildly but, if the intervention stays true to the principles and philosophy of the intervention, it remains an example of that intervention. This model (techniques vs principles vs philosophy) is offered as a way of understanding the conceptual structure of any educational intervention [164]. It is published in a peer reviewed journal. |