Research On The Process Of Development Of Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning About American Universities

Concerning the decreasing quality of American Higher Education and suffering the crisis of confidence due to the situation on “highlighting research and deprecating teaching” on campus, Ernest L. Boyer did the report titled “Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professorate”in1990, and originally creatively elicited the term “Scholarship of Teaching”, who claimed that teaching should be put in a position equal to research. Then scholars enriched this theory from idea to practice constantly. This term later was broadened as “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” by Lee S.Shulman who stressed we should understand it from two aspects which are teaching of teachers and learning of students.This dissertation summarizes some characteristics in the process of the development of scholarship of teaching and learning by outlining the different phrases during the entire process of scholarship of teaching and learning, combining the actual situation of our teaching in higher education, providing some revelations and suggestions for the development of higher education in our China. First chapter in this dissertation introduced the development of SoTL which can be divided into three stages: the embryonic stage, forming stage and in-depth development stage. Respectively, these three stages involved relevant social environment and academic background, the symbol of creation of SoTL and follow-up perfecting and developing of SoTL. The second chapter, from a kind of macro perspective, analyzed the dynamic factors in the process of SoTL while the third chapter was inclined to stand in the micro point of view to analyze different specific behaviors of different organizations, groups, which promoted the development of SoTL. We know that the government, the third party institutions, those colleges and universities, teachers are integral parts of the power and predominant roles. Each of them has different missions and responsibilities to prompt the development of SoTL. Last chapter analyzed the status of the development of higher education in China and its main problems and combined with the successful experiences of SoTL in USA, from two aspects of teaching itself and the external factors, put forward the corresponding countermeasures, which may provide some references to the development of higher Education in China, especially the improvement of our teaching quality.