[2] SOTL necessarily builds on many past traditions in higher education, including classroom and program assessment, action research,[3][4][5] the reflective practice movement, peer review of teaching, traditional educational research, and faculty development efforts to enhance teaching and learning.
Dissemination for impact among scholarly teachers may be local within the academic department, college or university, or may be in published, peer-reviewed form.
DBER differs from the more general SoTL concept in that it is closely linked to specific subject areas, such as physics or mathematics.
[7] Closely related to SoTL is also the Decoding the Disciplines approach, which aims more at making the tacit knowledge of experts explicit and helping students master mental actions.
The notion of signature pedagogies has expanded in recent years, as scholars have examined their use in e-learning,[11][12] for example.
The framework includes four levels through which complex problems can be studied: micro (individual), meso (departmental), macro (institutional), and mega.
[17] The framework has been proposed as a means to engage in strategic planning and institutional reporting of SoTL activities.
It is also argued that SoTL has become too broad in definition and is conflated with non-evidenced based teaching interventions and innovations.