Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture and Education 2018
978-967-15257-8-4

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and its Implications on Research Approaches for Composition and Rhetoric Faculty

Brad Curabba

American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is one of the fastest growing areas of inquiry in higher education today. (Gibbs, 2013). Composition and rhetoric courses are ubiquitous in American colleges and universities, and often in universities abroad where English is the language of instruction. A survey of research being published in composition studies in the United States shows an almost unanimous preference towards Critical Theory and Postmodern analyses of topics related to class content, yet fails, in many cases, to provide any insights into either student learning outcomes or pedagogical implications for the composition classroom. This study was an attempt to compare research methods of SoTL and composition and writing studies using the model offered by Divan, Ludwig, Matthews, Motely and Tomlijenovic-Berube (2017) in order to help composition teachers, begin to formulate research questions that may have a more immediate impact on teaching and learning outcomes in the classroom.

KEYWORDS

SoTL, Composition and Rhetoric, Research Methods