Carnegie Foundation | Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Higher Education

Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Higher Education

CASTL represented a major initiative of the Carnegie Foundation. Launched in 1998, the program built on a conception of teaching as scholarly work proposed in the 1990 report, Scholarship Reconsidered, by former Carnegie Foundation President Ernest Boyer, and on the 1997 follow-up publication, Scholarship Assessed, by Charles Glassick, Mary Taylor Huber, and Gene Maeroff.

The CASTL Program sought to support the development of a scholarship of teaching and learning that: fosters significant, long-lasting learning for all students; enhances the practice and profession of teaching, and; brings to faculty members' work as teachers the recognition and reward afforded to other forms of scholarly work.

Achieving these goals involves significant shifts in thought and practice. For faculty in most settings, teaching is a private act, limited to the teacher and students; it is rarely evaluated by professional peers. "The result," writes former Carnegie Foundation President Lee S. Shulman, "is that those who engage in innovative acts of teaching rarely build upon the work of others; nor can others build upon theirs." Thus, the goal of CASTL is to render teaching public, subject to critical evaluation, and usable by others in both the scholarly and the general community.

Senior Staff

Pat Hutchings
Mary Taylor Huber
Richard Gale
Anthony Ciccone
Barbara Cambridge

Major Publications

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered: Institutional Integration and Impact
Pat Hutchings, Mary Taylor Huber, and Anthony Ciccone. Jossey-Bass, 2011.

The scholarship of teaching and learning offers a set of principles and practices that are critical to achieving institutional goals for student learning and success. Drawing on experience with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, this book examines four areas where faculty inquiry into their teaching and their students’ learning can have significant institutional effects: classroom teaching, professional development, institutional assessment, and the recognition and reward of pedagogical work.

The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons
Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings. Jossey-Bass, 2005.

The Advancement of Learning explores the premise that the scholarship of teaching and learning is key to improving the quality of higher education. The authors look at the defining elements of this work, the traditions it builds on, and its distinctive claims and possibilities. They also introduce a new concept--the teaching commons, a conceptual space in which communities of educators committed to inquiry and innovation come together to exchange ideas about teaching and learning and use them to meet the challenges of educating students for personal, professional, and civic life.

Campus Progress: Supporting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Barbara L. Cambridge, volume editor. Marcia Babb, Constance E. Cook, Richard Gale, Devorah Lieberman, Duane Roen, and Ellen L. Wert, section editors. American Association for Higher Education, 2004.

In this volume, over forty colleges, universities, and associations report the latest developments in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Sections of the book include developing infrastructure, collaborating for change, instituting policies, documenting and assessing impact, and learning along the way. Framed with essays by Barbara Cambridge and Pat Hutchings, the book's chapters reveal the strategies developed by institutions of all kinds to foster and support the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Balancing Acts: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Academic Careers
By Mary Taylor Huber. Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education, 2004. (Available through Stylus Publishing)

How can faculty integrate the scholarship of teaching and learning into their academic careers? Balancing Acts addresses this question through the experience of four scholars who have been innovators in their own classrooms, leaders of education initiatives in their institutions and disciplines, and pioneers in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The author looks at the routes these pathfinders have traveled through the scholarship of teaching and learning and at the consequences this work has had for the advancement of their careers, especially tenure and promotion.

Ethics of Inquiry: Issues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Pat Hutchings. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2002.

In the scholarship of teaching and learning, faculty pose questions about student learning, investigate those questions, and share what is discovered for colleagues to critique and build on. This “ethic of inquiry” brings with it the need for careful thought about issues that arise when teachers treat their classrooms as sites for scholarly inquiry. In this book, scholars of teaching and learning reflect on informed consent, the use of student work, impact on audiences and policy making, and response to campus and federal regulations on research with human subjects.

Disciplinary Styles in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Exploring Common Ground
Edited by Mary Taylor Huber and Sherwyn P. Morreale. Washington, D.C: American Association for Higher Education, 2002. (Available through Stylus Publishing)

Will the scholarship of teaching and learning find its home with other pedagogical discussions—on the margins of most disciplines? Or will it be registered and legitimated within the heart of the disciplines themselves? In response to an orienting essay raising such questions, scholars from ten disciplines describe the history of discourse about teaching and learning their field; the ways in which their discipline’s style of discourse influences inquiry into teaching and learning, and the nature and role of intellectual exchange about teaching and learning across disciplines.

Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Pat Hutchings. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2000.

Opening Lines features reports by eight college professors who have received national fellowships to participate in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Writing about their efforts to examine their teaching and their students’ learning, the authors document a process of reflection and analysis, illustrating a wide range of methods for undertaking such work in different fields and diverse institutional contexts. Their reports provide diverse models for advancing this work and suggest how it can bring to teaching the recognition and support afforded to other forms of scholarly work.