Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for the Discipline of Theatre

Abstract

Earnest Boyer's newly defined concept of “scholarship” had a great impact on higher education in the US. His idea of “scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)”, further developed by his followers mainly at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, is highly suggestive and very useful for research in theatre education as well. In fact, employing Boyer's ideas, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) started developing SoTL for the discipline of theatre studies and succeeded in lifting up the academic level of the discipline itself.

The present paper is a result of the theatre education project in the Japanese Society for Theatre Research. The project was completed last year. In the paper possibilities and necessities of researching theatre education in Japanese colleges and universities are discussed with reference to the cases in the US. The paper also pays attention to Boyer/SoTL concepts and Lave and Wenger's idea of “community of practice” as well.