Guides: Library support for teaching & learning: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) is a method for:

analysing your own teaching practice
engaging with relevant literature
using an intervention or review.

Discover the ideal Library databases for education research and how to find the right journal to publish your research.

Contact a Liaison Librarian to discuss how we can support you.

Finding information

These Library databases focus on education research and are valuable when looking for information including:

teaching methods
curriculum design
pedagogy
learning outcomes, and
other topics of relevance to teaching academics.

Start with research keywords (e.g. "reflective practice", methodology, or theoretical frameworks).

You can combine these with your own discipline keywords to focus your search on your particular area (e.g. "blended learning" and biology).

A+ Education (Informit Full-Text)
Covers all aspects of Australian education. Use this to see how your research fits in an Australian context. Try adding keywords from your discipline i.e. "classroom management" AND engineering.
Education Database (Proquest)
ProQuest database for literature in education and related fields. International.
Education Research Complete (EBSCOhost)
Research on early childhood education to higher education, and educational specialties. This will give an international perspective on your research area. Also searches across the ERIC database.
Scopus
The largest citation and abstract database of peer-reviewed literature and web sources. Covers scientific, technical, medical and social sciences, as well as arts and humanities.
Web of Science - Core Collection
Excellent for targeting high impact research. Use this for an international perspective on the key literature in your research area.

Choose the right journal

When it comes to publishing your research, it's important to choose the right journal. Some journals focus entirely on the subject of research in teaching and learning, but you should also consider journals in your discipline with education-related content.

Points to consider around journal quality:

Is it peer reviewed?
Is it a high-impact journal?
Is it indexed in Scopus or Web of Science as per UOW Research Active Policy?

This video demonstrates how to use both Scopus and Web of Science to identify the right journal for you.

Video transcript

This video will show you how to use Scopus and Web of Science to identify journals aligned to your research topic.

You can use this technique to identify potential journal outlets and their metrics when publishing your research.

From the Library website select, A-Z Databases
Select S, then Scopus
Enter your UOW username and password

Our example topic is: Fostering collaboration in online learning at university

At the search screen, enter your search strategy.

You’ll notice that we have used quotation marks for common phrases, asterisk to find variations in word endings and OR to include synonyms.

Click search. Here are our results.

To identify potential journals, limit your results by Document Type, then select Articles and Review Articles, then select Limit To.

You can browse source titles to see the range of journals in your search results; click onto a journal title to view its metrics.

The journal, Computers & Education has a CiteScore of 5.88. It is placed into 2 subject categories and is ranked 7 out of 979 in the subject Education.

Repeat your search in Web of Science. Click search. Under Document type, select Article and Review to refine your search. Select View all Options to examine the source titles in your result list. Click onto a journal title view its Impact factor, Rank and Quartile.

If you need more help, contact the Library.