The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in an age of accountability: Building bridges

In recent years, as pressures for accountability have increased in higher education,some members of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) communitymay worry that the inquiry-based,improvement-focusedpractices they advocatecould be put at risk by easy-to-administer,one-size-fits-allforms of assessment,quality assurance, and administrative control. But while acknowledging bothreal and perceived tensions between these two movements, we also examinesome of the ways and settings in which they are converging, featuring a numberof international examples in which external quality and assessment mandateshave been employed to support SoTL-likework. We look, too, at the roles thatscholars of teaching and learning can play as mediators and brokers between thetwo movements, helping to translate accountability requirements into opportunitiesfor improvement. In short we argue that these two movements presentopportunities for each other. SoTL can contribute to what is, or should be, thecentral goal of accountability: ensuring and improving the quality of studentlearning. The accountability movement, for its part, can provide a new contextfor integrating and valuing SoTL as a force for positive change on campuses andbeyond. Taken together, the two approaches can make meaningful contributionsto higher learning today. The paper concludes with recommendations to the SoTLcommunity for building bridges between the two movements.